56 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 128 



In preparation for winter dredging, several good places over rubble 

 bottom with rich fauna had been located by triangulation during 

 the summer of 1949. However, storms during October of that year 

 carried great quantities of mud containing vast amounts of tun- 

 dra vegetation and debris from Elson Lagoon into the ocean, and 

 large quantities of mud from the mud-zone bottom were stirred up 

 and carried out to sea. This finer material was still floating when the 

 ocean froze over, causing the top 8 inches of ice to be muddy. By 

 the time the ice was 8 inches thick, this fine mud had settled below 

 the freezing point and was deposited to a depth of 3 or 4 inches 

 over the bottom, covering many of the animals. Instead of a rich 

 rubble-bottom fauna there was obtained a mixture of those animals 

 that had not been completely covered by the mud, or that had come 

 to the surface, and a few that had been carried from their normal 

 mud-zone habitat and had become established in the mud layer over 

 the rubble. No doubt quantities of sessile rubble-zone animals were 

 smothered by the mud. Under normal circumstances rubble bottom 

 could have been found at depths of 125 feet and, in certain places, 

 even at no feet. 



Dredging through the ice during the winter of 1948-49 would have 

 yielded a hundred times more marine fauna than did the operation in 

 1949-50, and probably much more information regarding the winter 

 activities of the animals, but knowledge of the vicissitudes of life to 

 which these arctic animals are subjected would not have been obtained. 



This is another example of the necessity for several years of con- 

 tinuous work on any ecological survey, which the writer has always 

 advocated. It is hoped that someone will be able to do sufficient 

 dredging to determine how long the mud covering lasts and how 

 much time is required for the animals to reestablish themselves. 



BOTTOM SAMPLING, WINTER, 1949-50 



Innumerable samplings were taken through the ice by means of 

 grabs in order to get some idea of the extent of the mud covering and 

 in the hope of finding a spot that was not so covered. Several miles 

 of coast were explored in this manner to a distance of 4.5 miles from 

 shore, but no area was found free from the blanketing mud. Dredg- 

 ing and sampling were extended to a depth of 185 feet, but the con- 

 ditions there were no better, and it was impossible to try greater 

 depths because the ice did not extend out far enough. 



Two sizes of grabs, neither of which brought up a very large sam- 

 ple, were used. The smaller brought up about a third of a cupful of 



