SEASONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC STUDIES IN 

 MCMURDO SOUND, ANTARCTICA 



Willis L. Tressler 



Marine Sciences Department 

 U. S. Navy Hydrographic Office 



and 



Audun M. Ommundsen 



Arctic Institute of North America 



I. INTRODUCTION 



A. Historical 



Since the days of Captain Cook's Antarctic voyage (1772-1775), 

 soundings, water temperatures, salinities, and other oceanographic 

 elements have been an important part of cruises to the southern 

 continent. At the present time a mass of oceanographic data exists, 

 much of which has been correlated with the corresponding features of 

 adjacent waters, so that the physical, chemical, and biological charac- 

 teristics of the Antarctic seas are now fairly well known, at least 

 as far south as the Antarctic Convergence or to the northern edge of 

 the pack ice. Of the waters adjacent to the coast, especially the 

 inshore portions, considerably less is known and it has been only 

 comparatively recently that work has been attempted in this area. 



When Sir James Clark Ross sighted and later named McMurdo Sound 

 in 1841, he was unable to penetrate the Sound because of fast ice. 

 Ross's men, notably Joseph Hooker, however, made many oceanographic 

 observations in the Ross Sea and other parts of the Antarctic. 

 Seasonal studies in the Antarctic were first carried out by Arctowski 

 and his assistants on board the BELGICA during the winter of 1898 

 when this ship was beset in the ice in the region north of the 

 Bellingshausen Sea, an area which surprisingly enough remains one of 

 the least known oceanographically of Antarctic waters. Some seasonal 

 oceanographic studies have been made at most of the Antarctic bases 

 since then, notably by the Gauss Expedition in 1902 and 1903, the 

 Australians and French, and more recently by the Russians. The earlier 

 studies were sporadic in nature and were carried out under very adverse 

 conditions, the work being done in open iceholes for the most part. 



