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CKA.PTSR III 



PRESENT SITUATION IN OGSAKOGRAPHY IN kmZRlCk 



I, INTROrijCTION 



The last hali" of the past century may be named the heyday of 

 the deep-sea explorin:? expedition, in '.vhich phase of oceanography the 

 United States played a leading role with the cruises of the "Blake" 

 end "Albatross", It was then" that the brosd relief of the submerine 

 floor wDs mapped, the general nature of its sediments determinea, and 

 the general character of the deep-sea fauna explored. In all this 

 American ships and oc eanographcrs took a leading pert. But there 

 followt;d in America a period of stagnation, when the day of pioneer- 

 ing passed, and when continued exploration in thes: preliminary lines 

 proved more corroboretive than nov^l. A.s in many a new science, so 

 in Oceanography in America, a period of quiescence succeeded s peak 

 of activity, as soon as persistence in the old methods and habits of 

 thouRht no longer yielded new and wonderful discoveries. In Europe, 

 however, synchronous with this American decline, there had arisen new 

 schools cent'^ring their attention not so much on refrional surveys of 

 the oceans as on the biologic economy of its inhabitants as governed 

 by their physical and chemical environment. This change of viewpoint, 

 from the descriptive- to a conscious att'.mpt to interpret oceanic 

 phenomena in terms of its organic inhabitants, marks the beginnine- of 

 the modern science of Oceanic Biology, trnd it is interesting that the 

 real inc-ntive came, in this case, from the demands of declining 

 fisheries for betterment, i.e. from econom.ic necessity. 



At the same tim.e, the foundation was being laid in Scandinavia 

 for our present-day understanding of ocean dynamics which was destined 

 to raise the study of the circulation of the sea to a new plane. 



A.t first the op.-ning of these new gateways to an understanding of 

 life in the sca, and of the physics of the latter, seemed to have 

 passed almost unnoticed in America, at least so far as translation of 

 recognition of the new viewpoint into active participation is con- 

 cerned. It is, in feet, hardly an exaggeration to describe Oceano- 

 graphy in America during the first yt;ars of the pr-sent c-ntury as 

 "dead", with the old ways no longer yielding advances commensurate 

 with the effort. This period of stagnation, hovifever, was short, and 

 the awakening- that followed must fairly be credited to the example of 

 the International Committee for the Exploration of the Sea, in North 

 European waters. 



As is so usually the case, the first evidences of this reawaken- 

 ing were not only several, but these several nearly simultaneous. 

 Modern Oceanography in America may, we think, be dated from the 

 following events: the establishm-:nt , in 1904, of The Tortugas 

 Laboratory of the Department of Marine Biology of the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington; the adoption of a regular pro.eram of 

 oceanographic study at the Scripps' Institution for biologic research 

 at La Jolla, California in 1908; the institution in 1903 of studies 

 of the bottom sediments, shore line geolosry -ind physics of the wat-^rs 

 around Florida and the Bahamas, of which the Committee on Sedimenta- 

 tion of the National Research Council wa? an outscrowth; the inception 

 of the cooperative study of the natural economy of the Gulf of Maine 

 by the U. S, Bureau of Fisheries, and the Museum of Comparative . 



