Benthonic Algae — SCAGEL 
497 
SALINITY %, 
Fig. 3. T-S diagrams for stations in Queen Charlotte Strait and adjacent areas in June, 1953. 
with some measure of success by Dawson (1945, 
1951) in Baja California, Doty (1946) in Ore- 
gon, and Womersley (1956) in Australia. 
The physical environment of the sea imposes 
problems of considerable magnitude which, in 
contrast to many land environments, presents 
formidable obstacles such as complex tidal and 
circulation patterns. In an effort to manipulate 
or simulate some aspects of this environment, 
both in the field as well as in the laboratory, the 
more generally available resources are soon taxed. 
Thus the methods that have been used in marine 
algal ecology have, in many instances of neces- 
sity, been crudely quantitative, less than ideal 
experimentally, frequently encumbered by ter- 
minology as a result of limited concurrent phys- 
ical and chemical data, and sometimes they have 
failed to establish clearly the objectives being 
sought. As a result most of the efforts in marine 
algal ecology have been descriptive rather than 
functional in nature. As in most oceanographic 
work there is value in an approach from the 
grosser aspects to the particular. To the ocean- 
ographer the most complicated physical or chem- 
ical situation to explain may be the smallest 
unit of the environment with which he is faced. 
This is partly a problem of instrumentation. 
However, it is usually much easier to recognize 
significant discontinuities in properties, such as 
temperature, salinity, and even plankton dis- 
tributions, over extensive areas of the ocean 
than in restricted or local regions. It is also 
easier to use such information in describing 
dynamic processes. Hence, it is suggested that 
more attention should be given to studies of the 
general distribution of various physical and 
chemical properties in the marine environment 
in an attempt to set up some workable hypo- 
