224 POLAR PROBLEMS 



This is better than taking a negative position that there are large 

 areas without Hfe and that we are searching for the hmits of those 

 areas. 



Inadequacy of Observation from the Air to Settle Question of 

 Existence of Life in the Arctic Sea 



We shall close this section on a lighter note. Reporters, editors, 

 and even scientific men of some standing in other fields have lately 

 been discussing in the newspapers the bearing of observations from an 

 airplane or dirigible upon the question of life or lifelessness under the 

 floating Arctic ice. Several commentators think it now at last settled 

 that there is no life in certain vast areas, because Amundsen, Byrd, 

 and Wilkins have reported none observed from the air. Apparently 

 these commentators were not trying to be funny. 



Obviously an unfrozen ocean presents a better field of stud}^ from 

 the air than one which is partly frozen. Yet none of the fishing com- 

 panies thought of going out of business just because codfish were not 

 reported on the Newfoundland Banks by Hawker or Alcock and Brown 

 as they flew eastward across the Atlantic. Nor did Byrd report any 

 more fish in the Atlantic when he flew to France than he did in the 

 Arctic when he flew to the north- pole. Why should anyone think 

 that air observations have any sort of bearing on whether there is 

 life under the Arctic Sea ice? For no reason at all, except that the 

 newspaper public is willing to take anything as confirmatory evidence 

 if it does not contradict what they already believe. 



Problems of Arctic Fishing Technique 



If the time ever comes when scarcity of food in the rest of the 

 world, or some other reason, inclines fishermen to attempt commercial- 

 izing the Arctic, they will be met by several new problems of method. 

 But in view of the difiiculties that have been solved already with 

 regard to earth and sea and air, there is no reason to doubt that suit- 

 able technique for Arctic fishing will be developed before the need of 

 it has been pressing on the world for many years. However, in listing 

 unsolved problems we must set down as a major one the development 

 of a procedure that will enable us to capitalize the life under the mobile 

 ice of the sea as we now do the life in the waters that are either free 

 or covered with stationary ice, for such methods as explorers have 

 used to support themselves on Arctic expeditions are suited only for 

 securing seals and for maintaining a hunting rather than a commercial 

 population. 



Mineral Resources 



The Arctic has been so little prospected for minerals that if we 

 attempt to estimate the eventual discoveries by some addition to or 



