ARCTIC OCEANOGRAPHY 7 



A task of great scientific importance still to be performed in the 

 Arctic Regions is thus to determine by soundings the extension of 

 the North Polar deep sea in all directions and to establish the bounda- 

 ries of the continental shelf on the Siberian as well as the American 

 side of this sea. It should be noted that in this manner alone can be 

 solved the problem of the distribution of land, i. e. the continents, and 

 sea, i. e. the deep sea, because the continental shelf must be con- 

 sidered part of the continents and its edge marks the real boundaries 



Fig. 2 — Section across the continental shelf in a region of hard 

 primary rock, north of the Lofoten Islands, Norway. Vertical 

 scale exaggerated 25 times. (From the author's paper, Geogr. 

 Journ., Vol. 30, 1907, p. 474.) For location, see Fig. 3. 



or the "submarine coasts" of the great continental land masses 

 (cf. Fig. 2). The exploration of the extension of the continental 

 shelf, irrespective of whether it happens to be slightly below water 

 level or above it in the shape of islands, is therefore of more geographic 

 or oceanographic interest than the tracing of the coasts of land above 

 sea or the discovery of any new islands situated on the shelf. When 

 we know the edge of the continental shelf round the Arctic Basin we 

 may assume that no land masses of importance will be found in this 

 basin outside the steep continental slope descending from this edge. 

 There may, however, be isolated volcanic islands or cones like Jan 

 Mayen in the Norwegian Sea, or even broad volcanic platforms like 

 that of the Faeroes. There may also be submarine ridges across the 

 Arctic Basin outside the edge of the continental shelf. 



We know that the deep basin of the North Polar Sea extends 

 eastwards north of Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land to north of the 

 New Siberian Islands. As was mentioned above, a deep sea, with 

 depths more than 3000 meters, has also been found north of Alaska, 

 but we cannot decide at present whether it is continuous with the 



