the confines of either one area or the other 

 and seldom have cruises been made in both 

 areas in concurrent seasons or years. 



In this history I have attempted to present 

 data in chronological order according to the 

 year of the surveys and to describe in greater 

 detail pertinent oceanographic studies which 

 are possibly not well publicized. I have tried 

 also to make this history as comprehensive 

 as possible, but I do not claim completeness. 

 I excluded papers that I believed did not fall 

 under the term oceanography, or papers re- 

 viewed by Bigelow (1926, 1927). In this history 

 I have included estuarine surveys that covered 

 some offshore areas and contributed to our 

 knowledge of the oceanography of the Gulf of 

 Maine proper. Surveys of a strictly estuarine 

 nature will be included in a bibliography on 

 the ecology of estuaries of the Eastern United 

 States being prepared by the U.S. Fish and 

 Wildlife Service, Bureau of Commercial Fish- 

 eries. A chart of the Gulf of Maine and the 

 names of places referred to in the text are 

 given in figure 1. 



HISTORY 



The indentation of the coast between Cape 

 Sable on the east and Cape Cod and Nantucket 

 on the west was first referred to as the "Gulf 

 of Maine" by Mitchell (1881). Johnson (1925), 

 who considered the banks erosional rather 

 than depositional, made the most comprehen- 

 sive and analytical of the early studies of the 

 geology of the area and its contained banks 

 and basins. He postulated that streams at the 

 end of the Tertiary cut the banks in bedrock, 

 that Georges Bank was a submarine continua- 

 tion of the coastal plane cuesta found to the 

 southwest, and that the deep portion of the 

 Gulf of Maine was a drowned inner lowland 

 and the product of mature river erosion. 



Modern oceanographic research in the 

 Gulf of Maine may be dated from the summer 

 of 1878 when the steam tug Speedwell was 

 used to take temperatures in Massachusetts 

 Bay and off Cape Ann, including serials at 31 

 stations with reversing thermometers. De- 

 scriptive oceanography of the Gulf of Maine 

 dates to the summer of 1912 when the [U.S.] 

 Bureau of Fisheries and the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology of Harvard University 

 jointly undertook an oceanographic and biolog- 

 ical survey of the Gulf of Maine with special 

 reference to its fishes and plankton, its 

 physical and chemical state, and its water 

 circulation. The vessels principally used for 

 the surveys were the schooner Grampus (1912- 

 16), the steamer Albatross (1920), and the 

 steamer Halcyon (1920-22). Henry Bigelow 

 directed the surveys, and the results were 

 published in three monographs - -on fishes, 

 plankton, and hydrography. These reports are 

 the foundation of modern oceanography in the 



coastal waters of the United States. Adescrip- 

 tion and summary of oceanographic observa- 

 tions made in the Gulf of Maine previous to 

 this, time and a bibliography of published 

 material are included in these reports. 



The first of these classic monographs to be 

 published concerns the fishery and the fishes 

 of the Gulf of Maine (Bigelow and Welsh, 

 1925). The second monograph concerns the 

 zooplankton and phytoplankton of the area 

 (Bigelow, 1926). The third monograph de- 

 scribes the hydrography of the Gulf of Maine 

 (Bigelow, 1927) based on observations made 

 between 1912 and 1922, as well as considerable 

 data collected by other workers before and 

 during this period (notably Huntsman, 1924; 

 Mavor, 1921, 1922). 



Two other surveys made during the 1920's 

 should be mentioned. The Fish Hawk made 

 14 cruises from December 1924 to June 1925 

 to study the production and distribution of cod 

 eggs in relation to the inshore stock of cod 

 in Massachusetts and Ipswich Bays. Horizontal 

 and vertical ring-net tows, temperature and 

 salinity observations at specific depths, and 

 drift bottle releases were made. Fish (1928) 

 analyzed these data. Serial telegraph snapper 

 and boat dredge samples in 14 different areas 

 in Massachusetts Bay and on Stellwagen Bank 

 were obtained from the sloop Katherine in the 

 summer of 1922. Trowbridge and Shepard 

 (1932) described the sedimentation in the area 

 and interpreted the origin and condition of 

 deposition of marine sediments based on a 

 textural, mineral, and shape analysis of the 

 bottom samples. 



Comparative values for the replacement of 

 Bay of Fundy waters were determined by 

 Hachey (1934) from differences in the annual 

 range of temperature at various water levels 

 for each year of the period 1924-30. He 

 correlated the temperature differences with 

 the average amount of St. John River runoff 

 and the direction and velocity of the wind. 



Davidson (1934) analyzed the horizontal and 

 vertical ring-net phytoplankton collections 

 made at weekly intervals at a station of 30 

 meters' depth in the St. Croix estuary and at 

 monthly intervals at a station of 90 meters' 

 depth northeast of Campobello Island during 

 the period 1924-31. He presented data on the 

 monthly, seasonal, and yearly fluctuations in 

 the abundance and species composition of 

 diatoms at the two stations and their relation 

 to physical and biological factors. He concluded 

 that the turbulence of the waters in this area 

 was the greatest single factor in determining 

 phytoplankton abundance. 



During the 1930's United States and Canadian 

 vessels made many cruises to specific areas 

 within the Gulf of Maine. For the most part, 

 these surveys and especially the subsequent 

 reports deal with specific details of the bio- 

 logical and physical oceanography. The follow- 

 ing history and description of the most 



