516 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, VoL XIX, October 1965 
The inventory in Table 2 is not complete. 
Many specimens were damaged beyond identi- 
fication by violent churning during the rough 
voyage from Antarctica to Australia. This dam- 
age was probably aggravated by inadequate 
preservation. 
DISCUSSION 
While no observations were made of ice 
thickness in the pools considered here, John T. 
Hollin (personal correspondence) says the ice 
must have been at least 30 cm thick in the 
autumn and 100 cm thick in the winter, and 
that vehicles were freely driven across the pools. 
The present author, moreover, observed a pool 
approximately 30 cm deep frozen solid on 
March 5, 1956 at Ross Island (78°S). Accord- 
ing to List (1951), about 0.98 lys. min -1 of 
solar radiation would have reached that posi- 
tion at the time. The same amount of energy is 
available to Clark Peninsula on April 1. Hollin 
(op. cit.) reports the pools are wind-swept 
with about 3 cm of fresh snow overlying sev- 
eral centimeters of sublimation. While the lat- 
ter is quite significant, the snow-cover alone 
completely insulates the ice 3 and all organisms 
must have been frozen either into the ice or 
in underlying sediments before mid-April. 
Hollin (op. cit.) accounts for salinity in the 
pools by heavy Quaternary glaciation of Clark 
Peninsula. After retreat of the ice the land was 
uplifted 30 m and, since the pools lie at a lower 
elevation, they were formerly pools of sea water. 
3 The albedo being ca. 72% only about .0081 lys. 
min" 1 could penetrate 3 cm of fresh snow (Thomas, 
1963). 
TABLE 1 
Location and description of pools from which samples were taken in the Clark Peninsula 
area of Wilkes Land, Antarctica, January and February, 1957 
POOL 
NO. 
LOCATION 
ELEVATION 
(ABOVE MLW ) 
m 
APPROX. 
AREA 
m 2 
APPROX. 
DEPTH 
cm 
SALINITY 
%o 
1 
Wilkes Station, near meteorology building 
7 
140 
30 
1.6 
2 
Wilkes Station, water supply 
14 
340 
45 
0.8 
3 
North central side of Clark Peninsula 
3 
170 
40 
6.6 
4 
Northeast central side of unnamed islet 
3 
900 
40 
3.5 
5 
Northeast central shore of Clark Peninsula, 
in a creek 
2.5 
10 
25 
10.2 
6 
Northeast central shore of Clark Peninsula, 
mouth of a creek 
1.5 
1,000 
100 
24.3 
7 
Wilkes Station, rocky ledge above meteor- 
ology building 
9 
19 
35 
5.0 
8 
Clark Peninsula, 2 km southeast of station, 
in a creek 
4 
280 
30 
4.8 
9 
Pot-hole on northeast side of Clark Penin- 
sula, near penguin rookery 
12 
12 
30 
0.6 
10 
Northeast side of Clark Peninsula, in a 
penguin rookery 
3 
9 
20 
11.2 
11 
Pot-hole on northeast side of Clark Penin- 
sula, in a penguin rookery 
10 
4 
35 
0.9 
12 
East corner of Clark Peninsula, near lagoon 
3 
12 
25 
14.8 
