94 EXPEDITIOX OF THE "ALBATROSS," 1899-1900. 



One pair, one and a half miles off the south point of Rongelab, at fifteen 

 fathoms in 450 fathoms, and inside at our anchorage, at twelve fathoms 

 one mile from the shore. 



One pair, half a mile off South Pass into Likieb, at fifteen fathoms in 

 468 fathoms, and inside of Likieb Atoll at our anchorage, at ten fathoms. 



One pair, one mile off South Pass into Wotje, at 30 fathoms in 482 

 fathoms, and one mile inside Rurick Pass, at our anchorage, at fifteen 

 fathoms in twenty-two fathoms. 



A sino-le haul off the southeast point of Tarawa, in fifteen fathoms in 

 200 fathoms ; a single haul, at our anchorage in Arhno Lagoon, at fifteen 

 fathoms in twenty fathoms. 



All these showed an excess of organic life in the lagoon as compared 

 with that obtained outside of the lagoons. It does not strike me as if 

 the results obtained heretofore, or the few data we collected, were of 

 great value in determining the question of the proportion of food sup- 

 plies to corals growing inside of a lagoon or on its sea faces, either on 

 the weather or lee side. 



The conditions inside of a lagoon are very different from those 

 outside, and depend greatly upon the depth of water on the weather 

 rim of the lagoon, the extent of the land-rim, the number and dimen- 

 sions of the passages leading in and out of the lagoon on the weather 

 or lee side, and the trend of the lagoon as related to the prevailing 

 winds. 



Li a lagoon which is comparatively shut out from the general circulation 

 of the waters surrounding it, we naturally have conditions radically different 

 from those lagoons in which the prevailing winds drive over the submerged 

 rim of the weather-side a mass of water, pouring into the lagoon all the 

 surface organisms of the adjoining sea. Such a closed lagoon is Pinaki, 

 for instance. The amount of pelagic life which finds its way into its 

 shallow lagoon through the narrow gap communicating with the sea must 

 of necessity be very small compared to the mass of water driven into 

 such a huge lagoon as Wotje, of which so great a part of the outer rim 

 is .submerged, with one to six fathoms; and again, quite a different state 

 of things must exist in the interior of a lagoon of which the rim on the 



