80. What is the most important discovery made about the 

 oceans? 



One of the most important discoveries about the oceans is the true 

 nature of the sea floor. Not so long ago it was generally believed that 

 much of the deep ocean floor was a featureless plain. We now know that 

 there are numerous mountains under the sea, some of them higher than 

 Mt. Everest. But perhaps the most striking discovery is that all oceans 

 except the North Pacific are divided in the center by an almost con- 

 tinuous system of mountains. 



Some of the other important discoveries are: 



Discovery in 1938 of the coelacanth, a fish thought to have become 

 extinct 50 to 70 million years ago, but which was found to be thriving 

 off South Africa. 



Discovery of a layer of living organisms spread over much of the 

 oceans at a depth of several hundred fathoms (deep scattering layer). 



Discovery of nodules of manganese, cobalt, iron, and nickel which 

 can be dredged from the sea floor. 



Discovery that the earth's crust is much thinner under the sea than 

 under the land and that the bed of the ocean is underlain by basalt 

 rather than by granite which makes up the continents. 



Discovery of a deep sound channel that carries sounds for thousands 

 of miles. 



Discovery of life in the deepest parts of the oceans. 



Perhaps the most important recent discovery is that man can live and 

 work in the ocean for extended periods of time. Captain George F. 

 Bond, a medical officer in the United States Navy, discovered that, once 

 a diver's blood has become saturated with breathing gases at a given 

 depth, decompression time is related only to the depth and not to the 

 length of time the diver remains there. This led to the concept of under- 

 water habitation by Cousteau and Link. 



Carson, R. L. 



The Sea Around Us, Oxford University Press, 1951: Mentor Books 



(Paperback), 1954. 

 Engel, Leonard, and Editors of LIFE 



The Sea, Life Nature Library, Time, Inc., 1961. 



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