806 EIGHTH PACIFIC SCIENCE CONGRESS 



the space S and SW of Chimbote, or W of Huarmey as one of the most 

 susceptible zones for the entrance of warm oceanic waters with the 

 tendency to spread out, not only in the direction of the flow of the 

 Peruvian Current, but also in the opposite direction (sometimes with 

 a wide-reaching influence on fisheries). 



The presence of warm water in this part near the coast is also shown 

 in the isophletic diagram published by Schott (1931) for the abnormal 

 period of March 1925. The diagram reveals that the ships passing 

 between 8° and ]0°S registered in almost all voyages higher tempera- 

 tures than those observed further north. This held true in April 1953 

 (Fig. 11) when temperatures of 26.5°C west of Chimbote were higher 

 than the temperature found about 3 days later off Cabo Blanco. The 

 possible heating influence of this zone upon the southward warm water 

 flow, recorded in 1925, has been mentioned by the author in an earlier 

 paper (Schweigger, 1949). 



According to his own repeated experiences and the frequent obser- 

 vations made by merchant ships in all months of the year in this zone, 

 the author came to the conclusion that the advance of the warm waters 

 must be directed to the northeast as it is also suggested by Figures 4, 

 6 and 11. But nearly every one of our maps referring to summer months 

 shows at the NW or at the west of Chimbote the curvature of the iso- 

 therms, especially of those for 27° and 26° and 25° with its axis directed 

 to the SE, as if the warm water were rushing in from NW (see also 

 Fig. 3 for comparison). This, however, is a problem whose discussion 

 may be taken up later. 



Perhaps more interesting still is the region in the extreme south 

 of the Peruvian littoral which could be circumscribed as situated between 

 Atico-Ilo-Arica and Iquique (see Fig. 12). The center of this zone seems 

 to be the area off Ilo, from where the warm water makes its appearance 

 and then disperses partly in direction N and NW (together with the 

 Current) and partly to the southeast, turning outside Arica southward 

 and making itself discernible as far as the latitude of Iquique in the 

 form of a "tongue" of warm water keeping always at a certain distance 

 off shore. 



The author has been able to corroborate such a distribution of 

 surface-temperatures in different opportunities travelling between Iqui- 

 que and Peruvian ports mostly during winter months, when tempera- 

 tures in this "tongue" were not so high to make it difficult to correlate 

 them with other temperatures in more northerly zones of the Peruvian 

 coast. But although this paper is really not so much concerned with 

 the southerly flow of warm water in northern Chile, it may not be 

 superfluous to illustrate such a situation by means of Figure 12, which at 



