arctic oceanography 

 Organic Life (Plankton) 



13 



Misled by the abundance of vegetable as well as animal plankton 

 they have found in the North Polar Sea near the outskirts of its 

 ice masses, some travelers have assumed that similarly there is much 

 plankton in the water in the interior parts of that sea. This is, how- 



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FiG. 5 — Section extending from tiie northeastern part of the Norwegian Sea across the submarine 

 ridge northwest of Spitsbergen and into the North Polar Sea, showing the diluted Atlantic water run- 

 ning over this ridge into the North Polar Sea. Vertical scale exaggerated 600 times. (From the author's 

 " Spitzbergen, " Leipzig, and edit., 1922, p. 207.) For location, see Fig. 3. Symbols the same as in 

 Fig. 4. 



ever, a mistake. The North Polar Sea, covered in its interior by 

 an almost continuous layer of thick ice, is extremely poor in plant as 

 well as animal life. The sunlight is absorbed by the ice, and hardly 

 any of those rays necessary for plant life are able to penetrate the 

 thick fioes and into the cold water beneath them. Extremely little 

 plant life can therefore be developed in this sea — there is only just a 

 little, chiefly in the water lanes between the floes in the short summer; 

 and without plant life there can be no animal life. This interior, 

 continually ice-covered part of the North Polar Sea may therefore 



