DEEP SEA FIREWORKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 260, 2 November 1928, Page 6

DEEP SEA FIREWORKS.

The Rime- of the Ancient Mariner" mi«ht have been an even more vivid picture of the enchanted seas had Coleridge only had before him such a description of the richness and beauty of marine life as that which appears in the latest number of the Royal Geographical Society's Journal. This account was given in a paper l e r a i or , e the societ .V in London this year by Mr. A. C. Hardy, who described the scientific work carried out in the Southern Ocean recently by the Royal research ship Discovery, of Antarctic exploration fame. Most of the Discovery's cruising was done under sail, but if the passage to the south was slow it was full of interest and charm to the zoologist. Frank Bullen, in his Cruise of the Cachalot," wrote that he could conceive of no more delightful journey for a naturalist to take than a voyage in a southern whaler, especially if he were allowed to examine at his leisure such creatures as were caught MiHardy, quoting this remark of Bullen, said "He is right. Here many of us experienced the joys of seeing for the first time the beauty and richness of tropical pelagic life: Jellyfish, pelagic worms and molluses, and cyustacea, all in <Teat' V f r d e * y h tO " Say 110 thins of the fish and schools 1

xt. The a Discovery's zoologist enumerated some of these flashing marvels of the great deep. There were the remarkable displays of phosphorescence caused by the organism Pyrosoma. "In appearance, he wrote, "it is like an incandescent gas mantel—six to nine inches long—made of stiff jelly in which are embedded hundreds of small individual animals, each, when agitated, glowinc with a bright blue-green light. For several nights after crossing the Equator the ship passed through dense zones of these living lanterns, millions and m w! Z h^ n ll so , that a broad P atch °* Hght was left behind the ship for half a mile or so " There was another phosphorescent organism, the Ctenophore Deiopea. "It is a jellyfish-like animal of the most delicate nature, which from time to time gives out a brilliant and instantaneous flash. Here the effect was pro duced by vast numbers, but this time over the whole surface of the sea irrespective of our passage; it was as if we were steaming through shower after shower of submarine rockets which burst just below the surface." —JX2. i