Problems of the Ocean¹

Abstract

THE International Permanent Council for the Exploration of the Sea has issued, as a jubilee volume, a record of all that the contributors think most worthy in the performance of their respective thirteen nations during a quarter of a century of international exploration of the sea. It is thus not only a record of national accomplishment and cooperation, but also an up-to-date epitome of oceanography with the highest authority. He who will know the latest views as to the movements of the Atlantic may read Otto Pettersson on the Gulf Stream and E. Le Danois on the seasonal va-et-vient of Atlantic waters, while Everdingen recounts the Dutch observations on the velocity of currents in the North Sea. Of nitrifying and de-nitrifying bacteria and the variation of phosphate and nitrate content, K. Brandt gives a brief but clear account; salinity and its relation to freezing, alkalinity and its relation to carbonic acid, are expounded in an attractive essay by W. E. Ringer: Gran considers the response of the plankton to all these varying conditions, and Ostenfeld its geographical variation (see also the obituary notice of Cleve), with consideration of the extent to which herrings select from it or feed omnivorously. Hjort's souvenir of s.s. Michael Sars is a compendium of the salient facts as to drifting of spawn and the good and bad years of fish production, and the latter question can be followed further in the short summaries by Borley of Miss Thursby-Pelham's work, and by A. C. Johansen of the investigations of Johansen and Kirstine Smith. The general reader, the general biologist, the geographer, and the legislator will find here, in 270 pages of fairly easy reading, the cream of a generation's hard work on the problems of the ocean.