Some Results from the Swedish ''Albatross” Cruise^ 
Hans Pettersson^ 
Six years ago, lace in November, 1947, the 
Swedish research ship, the 1,450-ton motor 
schooner "Albatross,” on its round-the-world 
cruise entered the harbor of Honolulu, where 
we had a magnificent reception. Two years 
later, in December, 1949, I was invited over 
here from the Mainland to give a preliminary 
survey of the main results of the cruise ob- 
tained through work in the Oceanographic 
Institute in Goteborg and in collaborating 
institutes in Sweden and abroad to that time. 
Now, 4 years later, I am happy to say that 
fair progress has been made in this work, so 
that already some volumes of our "Reports 
from the Swedish Deep-Sea Expedition” have 
been printed, and more are coming. 
We have also had the satisfaction of seeing 
other deep-sea cruises, sent out from Den- 
mark, from Great Britain, and from the United 
States, working on the lines the "Albatross” 
followed, partly with aid of the technique 
developed in Sweden, and also that their re- 
sults have on several important points con- 
firmed our own. 
I shall now give a summary of the results 
gained since I was here last, particularly those 
in submarine geology. 
^ Digest of a lecture delivered at the University of 
Hawaii, January 6, 1954, sponsored by the Hawaiian 
Academy of Science, the Geophysical Society of Ha- 
waii, and the Hawaii chapter of the Society of the 
Sigma Xi. Manuscript received February 5, 1954. 
2 Director, Oceanografiska Institutet, Goteborg, 
Sweden. 
A glance at a map of the world which 
indicates the depths of the oceans will show 
you immediately why the Pacific Ocean, and 
especially its central parts, are the cherished 
hunting ground of deep-sea oceanographers. 
Here is the greatest area of ocean deeper than 
4,000 metres, or 13,000 feet. From these 
depths the Hawaiian Islands ri5e as great 
mountains. 
Our cruise here through the equatorial 
Pacific Ocean, from the Galapagos Islands 
to the Philippine Islands, crisscrossing the 
equatorial current system, took us 5 months 
to accomplish, one third of the time alloted 
for our whole cruise. The course we followed 
is shown on the map accompanying my earlier 
article in Pacific Science (2 [4]: 231-238). Be- 
tween Tahiti and Oahu we followed the 
course of H.M.S. "Challenger,” made over 
70 years earlier, but in the opposite direction. 
Here Sir John Murray had found indications 
of the sediment having accumulated with 
extreme slowness. Here, therefore, the piston 
corer, invented and manipulated on board by 
Dr. Kullenberg, would be likely, with its 
maximum range of 60 to 70 feet, to penetrate 
further backward in time than anywhere else. 
Thanks to radioactive age- determinations 
made in Goteborg on different sediment lay- 
ers in our cores, we are now able to say that 
the Mid-Pacific Red clay increases in thick- 
ness by about 1 millimetre in 1,000 years. 
This implies that, for adding 1 inch to the 
sediment carpet in that area, some 25,000 
359 
