VEGA- EXPEDITION ENS VETENSKAPLIGA AliBETEN. 



341 



The voyage of Nordenskiöld with the Ymer in 1H76 

 gives a good example of the usual condition of this part of 

 the Kära Sea in the siimmer. After entering the Kära Sea by 

 the Matochkin strait the ship was obhged to take a semi-circular 

 route to the southward, in order to avoid the still unmelted 

 ice-floes in the midst of the sea, and reached the open sea 

 north of the Beli Ostrow island after a struggle of some days 

 with the ice west and south-west of this island. 



From the observations of the Vega-expedition, which had 

 the good luck of crossing the Kära Sea without any serious 

 hindrance from the ice, we see (section I), that the temperature 

 at the surface sunk and the saltriess increased on approaching 

 the middle of the sea, where the iso-saline curve indicating 

 3.03 p. c. of salt rose to the surface. I consider this surging 

 up of cold and salt water from below, in the midst of the 

 Kära Sea, to be due to the sidewise action of the great current 

 from the Obi and Yenisei upon the adjacent water, just as 

 the relatively little stream. from the Malygin strait makes the 

 cold water rise like a bank on both sides, as shown in section 

 I. This cold water naturally prevents the melting of the ice 

 or delays it until very late in the summer. 



Besides, if we consider the salt water at the bottom of the 

 deep western basin of the Kära Sea along the coast of Novaya 

 Zemlya [see the profile of the bottom in sect. I & XI] to be 

 an indraught of arctic water from the Siberian sea — which 

 is by no means improbable, since the fauna of this part of the 

 sea is almost exclusively of arctic origin — we must admit, 

 that the deeper layers of this water ought, by its own motion, 

 to be surged up around the banks in the midst of the Kära 

 Sea between the TS"'^ and the 74*'' parallel. Great masses of 

 foundered ice-blocks are frequently heaped up on these banks, 

 which therefore have been mistaken for real islands by some 

 explorers. 



Beside the Vega-observations there are a few previous 

 deep-soundings made in 1875 and 1876 by Nordenskiöld 

 and Kjellman in the deep basin of the Kära Sea along the 

 coast of Novaya Zemlya and the Waigatch island, which are 

 of great importance as showing, that the conformation of the 

 deep water-strata is left completely undisturbed from one 

 year to the other by the influence of the temporary changes 

 of the climate, the sea sons, the winds etc, which affect the 

 upper layers. 



