Specifications 



Biological 



Salinities 



Supervision of Experiment Station 

 The field assigned to the several investigative sub-committees will 

 appear in the reports of their work which follow. This sub-division 

 of work is felt to have resulted in much more effective utilization of 

 the interest and energy of the large membership composing the main 

 Committee than could have been accomplished otherwise. In pur- 

 surance of its plan of work the Committee has employed year-long a 

 biologist and a chemist, with whom contracts have been entered into 

 reserving to the Committee the right of patent, or other disposal, of 

 any new ideas or inventions which may result from their direct em- 

 ployment by the Committee. During the latter part of the year also 

 a competent engineer has been employed full-time on the work of the 

 Service Records Sub-Committee. 



Committee Equipment 



Through the courtesy of the Southern Pacific Company, the Com- 

 mittee has been able to establish a biological field laboratory and 

 experiment station on that company's freight pier adjacent to the 

 Oakland Mole. Here, with running water both fresh and salt, marine 

 borers have been maintained in continuous health and activity, as well 

 as subjected to varying salinities down to perfectly fresh water. This 

 * work is permitting a most valuable controlled check upon the very 

 significant synthesis indicated by the field work this year in respect 

 to the critical factors operative in the survival and extension of 

 Teredo. Here also will be tested the toxicity upon marine borers of 

 various creosote constituents and other chemicals. Reached by ladder 

 below the field laboratory is a working platform at the approximate 

 level of high tide, from which experiments under actual tidal condi- 

 tions can be conducted. This platform and the surrounding piling is 

 also being used by the Sub-Committee on Protections for the exposure 

 to borer attack of the various piling protections which it is testing. 



Through the similar courtesy of the California & Hawaiian Sugar 

 Refining Company the Committee is now being supplied with a second 

 biological field laboratory, at Crockett, Calif., just at the critical tension 

 point of Teredo's survival in Carquinez Strait during the past season 

 (as discussed in the Biological Section of this report). At this labora- 

 tory, at least during several months of 1922, a second biologist in the 

 employ of the Committee will carry on special investigations under 

 Professor Kofoid's direction with reference to the factors determining 

 this survival. Here also the Committee has installed a recording ther- 

 mometer for the study of the temperature factor. 



