PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY OP THE GULF OP MAINE 909 



The next summer a series roughly at right angles to this last was set out on a 

 line running northeastward from the western end of Browns Bank. Fourteen of these 

 were reported from the Gulf of Maine; 6 of them scattered along the west shore of 

 Nova Scotia; 7 were from widely separate localities in the Bay of Fundy, from its 

 mouth to its head, after intervals of 64 days and upward; and 1 was from Penobscot 

 Bay, Me. The drifts are thus much the same as those of the preceding summer, 

 hugging the Nova Scotian coast to the Bay of Fundy. The time interval for the 

 Penobscot Bay bottle was so long (113 days) that it, too, may have entered and 

 circled the bay. 



Twelve bottles from lines set out off Country Harbor, off Beaver Island, and off 

 Cape Canso, Nova Scotia, were also reported from the Gulf of Maine (all of them from 

 Yarmouth and northward along the western coast of Nova Scotia) and from the 

 two sides of the Bay of Fundy. Only a single bottle from these eastern lines has 

 yet been reported from the western side of the gulf — one set adrift a few miles off 

 Sable Island by the Ice Patrol cutter Tampa on April 18, 1924, and picked up at 

 Gloucester, Mass., 118 days later. The distance in a direct line being about 450 

 miles and something like 500 miles by the probable route around the northern side 

 of the gulf, this bottle made an unusually rapid journey. 



Since the preceding was written, Doctor Huntsman has contributed a summary 

 of five monthly series, each of 200 bottles, set out offshore from Brazil Rock (off 

 Cape Sable), July to October, 1926. Twenty-six of the 35 returns from the July set 

 were close by, five from the Nova Scotian shore of the Bay of Fundy, and two from 

 the New Brunswick side. The 46 retm"ns from the August series were similar, except 

 that the proportion of near-by returns was smaller (16); of returns from St. Marys 

 Bay and the Nova Scotian shore of the Bay of Fundy larger (29). Fifteen of 23 

 returns from the lines of September 1 were again from this same sector of the Bay of 

 Fundy region, three from the New Brunswick shore, and five between the point of 

 release and Cape Sable. Three of the 15 returns from the series of September 27, 

 however, were from the eastward (Shelburne to Port Mouton), nine near where set 

 out, and only three from the Bay of Fundy. The series of October 20, again, gave 

 50 per cent of returns (six) near-by, four returns to the eastward (Negro Harbor to 

 vicinity of La Have River), with two, only, from the western coast of Nova Scotia 

 within the Gulf of Maine. 



In sum, the evidence of a general northward drift hugging the Nova Scotian 

 side of the gulf to the Bay of Fundy, and of its continuation westward as far as 

 Penobscot Bay, is made cumulative by these drifts into the gulf. 



The Brazil Rock series of 1926 also show the following seasonal succession: In 

 July and August the dominant movement from the offing of Cape Sable was into the 

 Gulf of Maine, but by the end of September the Scotian eddy had spread westward 

 far enough to involve some bottles from this line in drifts best interpreted as circling 

 anticlockwise, first offshore and then in again to the coast, to the eastward. 



Further details as to the tracks followed are to be expected in Doctor Huntsman's 

 forthcoming account. 



