180 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



that they floated to the surface dead or in a dying condition. 

 It is known that in that spring there were furious northerly 

 gales, and an unusual quantity of ice off the coast of New- 

 foundland, and the cold Arctic current flowing south-west 

 inside the GuK Stream is said to have been unusually strong. 

 Professor Verrill had made known, from his extensive 

 dredgings on the New England coast, that there is, on the 

 continental shelf south of Cape Cod, a broad belt (which he 

 called the Gulf Stream Slope) along the inner border of the 

 Gulf Stream at from about 65 to 150 fathoms, where the 

 temperature of the bottom water is decidedly higher than it is 

 either inside or farther out, and on this broad belt he had 

 found many animals which were only previously known from 

 the Gulf of Mexico or off the coast of Florida. There is, in fact, 

 a continuation upwards of the West Indian guLf-stream fauna, 

 and probably the tile-fish is a member of that community. 

 In a dredging expedition after the destruction of the 

 tile-fish Professor Verrill reported the scarcity or total 

 absence of many of these sub -tropical species which had 

 been taken in abundance in the two previous seasons at 

 the same localities and depths. He found that the inver- 

 tebrate bottom fauna of southern origin was practically 

 obliterated on his Gulf Stream Slope. 



The Fish Commission also sent a fishing vessel to go over 

 the ground and fish systematically for the tile -fish in their 

 former haunts. That boat worked for three days at the 

 localities where they had been so abundant in the previous 

 two years, but did not catch a single tile-fish. 



From all the evidence there seems to have been a whole- 

 sale destruction of life at the bottom on this Gulf Stream 

 Slope, caused by a lateral shifting of currents so as to bring 

 colder water into the area where the tile-fish and the other 

 sub -tropical animals had been formerly found in abundance. 

 It was estimated by the Fish Commission investigators 

 that the bottom of the ocean in this region must at 

 the time have been covered to the depth of about 6 feet 



