PHYSICAL OCEANOGEAPHY OF THE GULF OF MAINE 515 



tabulated by Rathbun (1887) . The very large number of temperatures taken on the 

 lightships in the ordinary routine since that time have not been examined critically, 

 however. 



The Albatross occupied a large number of dredging stations along the offshore 

 slope of Georges Bank during 1883, 1884, 1885, 1886, and 1887, but only five of her 

 serial readings and a few of the bottom records fall within the limits of the Gulf of 

 Maine.^ An extensive series of temperatures taken by Dr. W. C. Kendall at the 

 surface and at small depths in the western part of the gulf, in connection with mack- 

 erel investigations carried out by the Grampus in 1897, also deserves mention (p. 594) . 



A gap foUows in the thermal history of the gulf imtil the summer and autumn 

 of 1904, when the Tidal Survey of Canada took a lai^e number of surf ace and subsur- 

 face temperatures in the Bay of Fundy region and off the west coast of Nova Scotia 

 (Dawson, 1905, 1922). Many of these were repeated in 1907. In July, 1908, a few 

 readings were taken from the Orampus in the region of Nantucket Shoals. 



The reestablishment of the biological station of the Biological Board of Canada 

 at St. Andrews, at the mouth of the St. Croix Eiver, in 1908 marks an epoch in the 

 oceanographic study of the Bay of Fundy region. The first published survey of the 

 temperature and density (the latter determined by hydrometer) in the neighbor- 

 hood of St. Andrews was carried out in July, 1910 (Copeland, 1912). Since then 

 the taking of temperatures and of salinity has been a regular part of the station's 

 work, and such of the data as have been pubUshed are mentioned below. 



Although the preceding summary may seem somewhat formidable, very little 

 was yet known of the subsurface temperatures of the offshore parts of the gulf, even 

 in summer, for only one small area in its western side had been examined with 

 satisfactory instruments. Nor had anything been learned of its winter state or of 

 the salinity of its deep waters at any time of year untU 1912. In that year the 

 United States Bureau of Fisheries and the Museum of Comparative Zoology jointly 

 undertook the general oceanographic exploration of the gulf, which, continued to 

 date under my direction, has been the foundation of this report and of those that 

 have preceded it (Bigelow, 1914 to 1926; Bigelow and Welsh, 1925). 



The first fruits were the serial records at 46 stations (10001 to 10046) in the 

 northern half of the gulf during that July and August (p. 978; Bigelow, 1913, 1914), 

 including the first determinations of the salinity of the water of the gulf by the 

 titration method (p. 976) that for some years had been in general use on the other 

 side of the Atlantic. This, subsequently, has been a routine part of our station work. 

 Observations were taken bimonthly off Gloucester by the Blue Wing during the 

 winter of 1912-1913; north of Cape Cod during the following spring by W. W. 

 Welsh (stations 10047 to 10056; W. W. Welsh stations 1 to 32; and Bigelow, 1914a) ; 

 also a few temperatures and water samples between Massachusetts Bay and Georges 

 Bank by Thomas Douthart and W. F. Clapp (table, p. 980) . 



The Grampus carried out a general survey of the western and northern parts of 

 the gulf in the summer of 1913 (stations 10057 to 10061, 10085 to 10112,p. 982; Bigelow, 

 1915), as well as of the coastal waters between the longitudes of Marthas Vineyard and 

 Chesapeake Bay. This was followed by a more comprehensive oceanographic exami- 

 nation of the offshore banks, as well as of the inner parts of the gulf and of the coastal 



* For these Albatross data see Townsend (1901, dredging stations 2053, 2054, 2060-2064, 2068, and 2522). 



