im - 

 probably the entry of the drift of the Kuro-Siwo into the 

 region of the Gulf of Alaska is chiefly a summer phenomenon, 

 at least in the northern portion, the water from the antarctic 

 more or less supplanting it in the winter. 



The Conditions in the Kuril islands. 



We do not know any antarctic (or any other) crinoids from 

 the Kuril Islands. Along the Kuril chain in the summer the con- 

 ditions are the same as those described for the Californian 

 coast ; that is, typical abyssal water rises to the surface, giving 

 the islands, particulary the central, a forbidding arctic climate. 



From the occurrence of the species of the genus Florometra 

 further south, from the southern extremity of the Kuril chain 

 to Tokyo and Sagami Bays, they having in this region a 

 remarkably extended bathymétrie and thermal range comparable 

 to that which they have off southern California, we may assume 

 that, as in California, the water which wells up along the 

 Kuril chain is ultimately of antarctic rather than of local abyssal 

 origin, reaching the Kurils from the western Aleutian Islands 

 by passage southwest under the surface currents. 



The cause of the welling up of the deep water along the 

 Kuril chain is probably, in addition to the occurrence of westerly 

 winds blowing the surface water off shore, the approximation 

 to those islands in the summer of the powerful Japanese current 

 which, by here turning to the right toward the open Pacific, 

 creates a sort of vacuum along the Pacific side of the Kuril 

 chain which is occupied partly by water drawn southward 

 from the Kamchatka current, but mostly by abyssal water drawn 

 to the surface from under, and to the northwest of, the Kuro- 

 Siwo. 



Thus the action of the Kuro-Siwo in its relation to the 

 conditions to the east of the Kuril Islands is identical with the 

 action of the California current in its relation to the conditions 

 off the coast of California. 



Probably the effect of this upwelling of abyssal water is no 



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