326 



DISCOVI-HY 



The Exploration of 

 the Sea 



By R. N. Rudmose Brown, D.Sc. 



It is little short of fifty years since H.M.S. Challenger 

 sailed on her world-circling cruise of three and a half 

 years' duration. The expedition, as is well known, 

 was dispatched in 1872 by the British Government 

 for the physical and biological examination of the 

 ocean basins, and was under the command of Captain 

 (later Sir George) Nares and the leadership of Professor 

 Sir Wyville Thomson. The results of that expedition, 

 published by the British Government in fifty large 

 volumes, inseparably associated with the name of 

 their editor. Sir John Murray, laid the foundations of 

 the science of oceanography. Previous to the cruise 

 of the Challenger there had been some deep sea investi- 

 gation, especially in the North Atlantic and Arctic 

 Seas, but most of the great oceans had never been 

 explored, and very little was known of the physics and 

 biology of the sea. The work of the Challenger was 

 followed up by many expeditions, but few under 

 British auspices. American, Dutch, and German 

 vessels have investigated the Pacific Ocean, while a 

 number of nations have taken part in the exploration 

 of the North Atlantic, but British enterprise has not 

 been conspicuously in the forefront. Occanographical 

 research is a relatively costly and difficult undertaking. 

 These considerations delaj'ed its development. Prac- 

 ticallj' all research has to be done by indirect methods 

 whose accuracy depends on the delicacy of the instru- 

 ments and the skill with which they are handled. 

 The observer is at one end of a wire and his instruments 

 are at the other, separated from him by a distance 

 possibly of several miles. To add to the difficulties, 

 the work has to be done on a vessel which is rarely 

 steady, and not infrequently is in violent motion. 



The equipment of an occanographical expedition on 

 a large scale is beyond the scope of individuals or 

 learned societies, with their scanty resources, in these 

 days. State help is essential if the work is to be 

 undertaken on an adequate scale worthy of a seafaring 

 nation. Since the days of the Challenger, great im- 

 provements have been effected in the apparatus used 

 for this kind of work, and new vistas of research have 

 op)ened. Probably the greatest improvement in ap- 

 paratus is due to the substitution of wire for hemp 

 ropes in all apparatus. The Challenger sounded with 

 hemp lines ]" in diameter, while in modern sounding, 

 piano wire i mm. in diameter is employed. The finer 

 wire not only curtails a great saving in space on 

 board ship, but also meets with far less friction in 

 the water, and so enables soundings to be taken 



with greater speed and accuracy. Great improve- 

 ments have also been effected in the sounding 

 machine itself, the sounding tube and methods 

 of releasing the weights. For the problems arising 

 out of water temperature and analysis, much new 

 apparatus has been devised since the days of the 

 Challenger, a great deal of it through the devotion 

 of the Prince of Monaco to occanographical research. 

 Swedish and Norwegian oceanographers have also done 

 much in this direction. Reversing thermometers 

 worked by a sliding weight dowTi the wire or by 

 propeller release have now taken the place of maximum 

 and minimum thermometers. Appliances for collecting 

 marine life at all depths have been much improved. 

 Here, again, the hemp has given way to steel in the ropes 

 emploj'ed. This gives greater strength, ensures speed 

 in working, and saves much space. The trawl, the 

 dredge, and the townet have all been made more 

 efficient. It is now possible to collect organisms 

 from all depths of the oceans and bring them to the 

 surface in good condition. Much attention has been 

 paid in recent years to apparatus for catching plankton, 

 and many useful nets have been devised. 



The work of the Challenger stands, but it requires 

 amplification by modem methods. In its day it was 

 pioneer work, and in many seas there has been little 

 or no occanographical work since the daj-s of the 

 Challenger. New problems have also arisen and 

 require investigation. The North Atlantic Ocean, 

 the southern part of the Greenland Sea, the North 

 Sea, and the Mediterranean have been fairly well, 

 but not exhaustively, explored. The coastal waters 

 of many parts of North America and several other 

 parts of the world ha\-e been carefully examined. 

 But vast tracts in the Pacific, South .Atlantic, and 

 Indian Oceans remain to be explored. The Southern 

 or Antarctic Ocean is imperfectly known, although. 

 strangely enough, it has received rather more attention 

 by modern methods than some more accessible waters. 

 This is due to the many Antarctic expeditions in the 

 ten or fifteen years before the war, notably Bruce's 

 expedition in the Scotia, Nordenskjold's in the Anl- 

 arctic, and Mawsons and Davis's in the Aurora. 

 Antarctic and Arctic seas would, however, be outside 

 the scop)e of a general occanographical expedition, 

 owing to ice conditions in those waters demanding a 

 highly specialised typw of ship. Yet a great deal of 

 pioneer work remains to be done outside the hmit of 

 floating ice. To give but one instance, the vexed 

 problem of submarine connections between .\ntarctica 

 and the other Southern continents should be estab- 

 lished one way or the other. At the recent meeting 

 of the British Association at Cardiff, it was urged by 

 biologists, geographers, geologists, chemists, and phy- 

 sicists, on the initiation of Professor W. A. Herdman 



