Ocean Studies Off New Zealand Coast

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31151, 30 August 1966, Page 14

Ocean Studies Off New Zealand Coast

Measurement of depths and temperatures in waters off the New Zealand coast and north into the Pacific as far as New Caledonia, the sampling of sea-floor sediments and the testing of new scientific recording equipment are to be carried out in the next two months during cruises arranged by the Oceanographic Institute of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in the chartered motor-vessel Taranui.

The party, working off New Caledonia during September, is to visit the equivalent oceanographic institute of the French Administration at Noumea with whom there is advantageous scientific liaison in Pacific oceanography. The first party left Wellington in mid-August for the area of the Chatham Rise, east of Banks Peninsula, to collect samples of animal and plant life on the sea bottom and to test underwater photographic equipment. In the Cook Strait area later tests were made of instruments recently obtained by the institute. One automatically records temperatures and depths down to nearly two miles; another sends out sound waves in sediments on the ocean floor, reflections by layers of different density being recorded for interpretation into a sediment profile similar to a soil profile. Just as from a soil profile a pedologist may read much valuable information basic to understanding of the formation, use, and management of soils, so an ocean sediments profile lifts the veil from much concealed beneath the seas around New Zealand's coasts. Data collected by oceanographers contribute materially to progress in other scientific fields such as geology, vulcanology, and seismology.

Echo soundings to establish the bottom topography of the area between Great Barrier Island and the Bay of Islands, and the collection of sediment samples whose content of minute fossil shells is expected to yield significant information will be the principal object of a cruise which left Wellington on Saturday and will return to Auckland on September 3. Knowledge of New Zealand's bedrock geology is expected to be extended by rock dredging to be done between September 3 and 8 in the Kermadec Ridge area between East Cape and 180 miles north-east of it.

Echo sounding, magnetometry, and dredging for rock samples in the area of the Norfolk Ridge and Lord Howe Rise during the cruise to New Caledonia between September 9 and October 2 are expected to help decipher the geological history of the south-west Pacific.

Working around recentlydiscovered sea mounts in the Bay of Plenty area between October 3 and 13, a party measuring temperatures and taking bottom samples will seek evidence of possible submarine volcanic activity. Data for the publishing of bathymetric and sediment charts of the areas around Three Kings Islands and Cape Egmont respectively will be collected by the last of the seven parties leaving Auckland on October 14 and returning to Wellington on October 21. Parties making the cruises comprise mainly scientific and technical staff of the Oceanographic Institute, but according to the object of particular work they may include representatives of other scientific interests. In this year’s programme geophysics and the University of Wellington are represented.