IN THE SARGASSO SEA

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 40, 15 August 1925, Page 16

IN THE SARGASSO SEA

STEANGE DENIZENS.

The facts about the Sargassa Sea are more wonderful than fiction, writes RoyWaldo Minor, curator of the Department of Marino Life, American Museum of Natural History, in an article entitled "What is the Sargasso Sea?" in the "Mentor Magazine."

Several million years ago, according to geologists, when North and South America were not yet connected and Europe was' an archipelago, a great oceanic current swept around the world in the neighbourhood of the Equator. This girdle-like stream was due to the westerly blowing trade winds caused by the rotation of the earth. In the course of time the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea bottom, uniting the two Americas, while the various parts of the Old World joined to form the Eastern continent as we sco it to-day. The great equatorial current, thus blocked in its, western sweep through the Atlantic, split on trie coast of South America into two streams, one moving south and the other north. The north equatorial current, swept back eastward toward the coast of Africa, formed a great loop which completed the circle by again joining the westerly, equatorial current. The branchlets of the graceful sargassum weed shelter hosts of swimming, floating, clinging creatures of etrange shape and habits. Shrimp, crabs, molluscs, sea Bpiders with spiny outgrowths and coloured to imitate the weed, hide among its leaflets. If a branch of the weed is allowed to expand in a large jar of sea water, its graco and beauty become apparent. At first sight'it appears empty of all animal life, but if it is shaken, in the words of Agassiz, "hundreds of many-coloured dejizens are seen z-iishing about in all directions, eager to return to the particular spot best adapted to conceal them; and in a few minutes.only the practised eye of th'o naturalist can detect their presence." There is a remarkable nest-building fish, the "marbled angler" of brown and yellow colouration, blending exactly with the gulfweed, and weaving gelatinous strings of egg' clusters into the .plant growth with its spiny hand-like fins. Its nest contains thousands of eggs. The weed is so full of animal life of all sorts that it is visited by larger h'sb swimming up from below to feast upon its abundance. ,The inhabitants. of the Sargassum not thus devoured eventually die, and their bodies continually rain down into the deep waters below, where the strangest creatures of all dwell in' eternal darkness, thousands of fathomß below the surface. Here fish with enormous heads and absurdly short bodies open wide < mouths armed with needleliks teeth and engulf all that como within reach. Others are long and eel-shap-ed with varicoloured phosphorescent lights upon the sides of their bodies that illuminate the Styginu darkness \in which they live. These creatures also prey upon each other. Home liaro a. jointed tod projecting over the head, like a fishing polp, with a phosphorescent torch afc the pud.

Par from beii/g the reginn of Arc-id pictured by (ho 'medieval niHi-inei', I lie Sargasso Sea, is. for the naturalist, h, paradise of sUango and fascinating reWard*.