SCIENCE AT SEA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 26, 31 January 1934, Page 10

SCIENCE AT SEA.

THE DISCOVERY 11.

RESEARCH IN WHALE AREAS.

CAPTAIN COOK'S ACCURACY.

Two ships arc berthed in Auckland to-day, one of them of the old order which is passing, the other the very latest which science l> »s had yet to give. At the King's wharf lies the Magdalene Vinnen, a four-masted barque; on the Western viaduct is the Discovery 11., the royal research ship equipped with the modest Scientific apparatus for conducting her work of oceanographical research in the whaling waters of the Antarctic. The Discovery 11. is a veritable "curiosity shop."' if the men of science aboard her will excuse the term. Everywhere there is. to be seen some scientific "gadget" for nee. in her work. She has nn up-to-date laboratory, and to-day, placed on a table so made that it i« level however the ship roll?, there was a beaker oS exhibits taken from the water at depths of anything from 500 metres above the ocean bed. whatever that might be. And around that, qiuvr mass of marine life, a shrimp-like fish, specimens which looked like very small jcllvfteh. and other objects of indefinite shape, hangs an interesting story.

Currents and Marine Life. Tt has to do, to start at the beginning, with the hydrological laboratory where analyses are taken of the salinity of the ' water from which, with the temperature, the density of the given specimen of water can be calculated. After a great number of observations over a targe area of water, currents and typee of marine life and their distribution in the water masses can be discovered, The latter fact is of importance in marine biology. The remainder of the chemical observations are concerned with the quantities of nutritive ealte, phosphates and nitrates in the water. These in their turn have a bearing on the plant life of the open sea. Plankton is a general term for these animals, which have no great power of motivation, and which are confined, generally speaking, to the same water masse*, and which provide food for other marine life. The investigation of the Discovery 11. took place in the Antarctic, particularly along the edge of the southern ice pack. At this point the scientist making the explanation drew together the thread* whiA connected the marine life, or plankton, the laboratory observations and the ico pack. "The distribution of the ice pack,' , he said, "has an important bearing on the distribution of the plankton, and *o indirectly on that of whales. The details of this complicated system of these interrelated factors' are not yet thoroughly understood. Their elucidation is one of the primary object* of the Discovery's voyage." He added that not a great deal wans known about -whalts, although the shelves above the Laboratory benches were lined with books about the great mammalia. It wne the duty of the members of the expedition to collect data, classify it, adduce conclusions and then present their results to their principals. The small marine life shown in the beaker Was the food of a larger shrimp, which in its turn provided sustenance for the whales. It was not sufficient, however, to state that where the larger shrimp was found there would be whales, because many other factors had to be considered. The same shrimp provides food for other sea life. Samples of the water, with any life it might contain, were taken at all depths from sonic 000 metres above the sea bed, upwards. It was on these observations that their calculations were based.

Recording Ocean Depths. One of the company interested in BlirVeyihg explained the process by which ocean depths were recorded, a simple process in these days of echo-sounding apparatus. A second machine gives automatic recordings and is used when such recordings are wanted frequently. On the existing chart not a great deal of information is shown about depths in the southern ocean. These latest results are plotted on the new charts, and made available to the Admiralty.

Officers oik board referred to the monotony of doing the same thing in the same way, with the same apparatus, day after day, week after week, month after month. Added to that, there was little chance of physical exercise, s,o that the life, though extremely interesting, was not as romantic as a landlubber might think. i

After leaving Auckland, the Discovery will strike south again to the ice-pack, and sail a zigzag course back to Port Kingston, in the Falkland Islands. On her way to Auckland the ship went as far south as 09.00 degrees latitude. She will -go further south than that on the next leg of the voyage, if the ice-pack permits.O'n the polar chart on which the ship's daily position is plotted is the course of Captain Cook in 1774. The remarkable accuracy of that great navigator was referred to by officers, who said that with the primitive instruments at his command in those years long ago, his recordings, measured by modern science to-day, were shown to be very nearly accurate. .