834 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
The salinities and temperatures of the eastern side of the gulf make it probable 
that the westerly flow past Cape Sable slackens or ceases by June, at the latest, every 
year — often a month or more earlier than that. In some years sporadic movements 
of water undoubtedly take place from east to west past the cape later in the season; 
but the drift of bottles put out on several lines off Nova Scotia by the Biological 
Board of Canada during 1922, 1923, and 1924 shows that the circulation over the 
continental shelf between Browns Bank and the Laurentian Channel becomes exceed- 
ingly complex during the late summer, variable from summer to summer, and 
largely controlled by the contour of the bottom. 32 
During some summers a rather definite current from east to west persists along 
the Nova Scotian coast right through July and August. This statement is based on 
the drifts for 1924, when a number of bottles set out on three lines normal to the 
general trend of the coast between Halifax and the Straits of Canso, during July and 
August, were picked up in autumn in the Gulf of Maine. Many other bottles from 
the most easterly lines also traveled westward during that summer but stranded 
before they reached Cape Sable. 33 
The probable tracks of the bottles that went westward, localized some 12 to 25 
miles out from the land, correspond so closely with the tongue of coldest water 
charted for May, 1915 (fig. 167), that the dominant drift was evidently essentially 
the same for both. In May, as temperatures show, this east-west movement involved 
a stratum of considerable thickness; but in the summer of 1924 it was more strictly 
a surface phenomenon, probably with the underlying water circling offshore along 
Roseway and La Have Banks in the more usual anticlockwise eddy, because what 
few temperatures were taken in the gulf that summer (p. 996) suggest no greater 
transference of cold' water (such as a bottom current past Cape Sable would entail) 
than usual. 
The westerly set may again have continued past Cape Sable until September in 
1926, when many drifts were recorded from the offing of the cape into the gulf, as 
summarized on page 909. 
The bottle drifts for the other summers of record show, however, that it is 
unusual for the Nova Scotian current to persist as a definite stream-flow as far west as 
Cape Sable after June, but that the deep basin between Sable Island Bank on the 
east and La Have Bank on the west is usually dominated (in summer) by an anti- 
clockwise eddy named by Doctor Huntsman the "Scotian eddy,” similar to, though 
not as extensive as, the eddy that dominates the basin of the Gulf of Maine. 
In summers of this type whatever drift takes place intermittently around Cape 
Sable into the eastern side of the Gulf of Maine draws from what Doctor Huntsman 
describes as a sort of dead-water region off the cape. True, this, in its turn, 
receives water of low temperature from the Scotian eddy, but also from the warmer 
slope water that drifts westward along the edge of the continent, as appears from 
the recoveries of Canadian drift bottles. Consequently, the surface water that 
31 Only a preliminary statement of the general results has yet appeared (Huntsman, 1924); but Doctor Huntsman has very 
kindly allowed quotation from his unpublished notes. 
33 The account of these experiments contributed in advance of publication by Doctor Huntsman also shows complex drifts 
inshore and to the eastward for many bottles set out ofl County Harbor and off Beaver Harbor, which need not be discussed here. 
