GREAT BARRIER REEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19957, 28 May 1928, Page 10

GREAT BARRIER REEF.

MYSTERY OF BIOLOGY. EXPEDITION FROM BRITAIN. DEPARTURE OF THE PARTY. Australian Press Association—United Service (Received May 27, 5.35 p.m.) LONDON. Mny 26. An expedition organised by the British ' Association to investigate the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, sailed to-day by the Ormonde. The party included Mrs. Yonge, medical officer, and Dr. C. M. ' Yonge, who is in charge. The trip will cost £IO,OOO. The expedition took a wireless plant and fivo tons of apparatus. The members will live in huts in the low islands, and sometimes 1 will visit the mainland. Dr. C. M. Yonge, who is to lead the Great Barrier Keef expedition, is in charge of the Plymouth marine biological station. The principal object of the coming investigation is to study the economic biology of the reef. This runs for more than 1200 miles along the coast of Queensland, like a rampart out at sea. The surf breaks over its islets and its ridges, making a white ribbon between the green waters of the shallows and the deep blue of the Pacific outside. In some places the channel between reef and mainland is as wide as 70 miles and as deep as 400 ft,., but in others it is much narrower and much more shallow, and "the Barrier" is ever present in the minds of the manners who take their ships up to the sugar porta of Queensland or out into the north, bound for New Guinea and the East. Ifc is the greatest coral reef in the ' world; it extends roughly from the tropic of Capricorn to Cape York and then on , to the level of southern New Guinea, and it suggests the original link of dry land between Australia and the islands to the 1 north which is said to have existed long ) ages ago. Few parts of the world still . offer to science so many unsolved problems, both economic and academic. In 1 extent, and in the variety of animal and • plant life associated with it. Its structure ■ is unique. Investigators from Europe and America have visited it from time to time and written of various aspects of it, but most of these writings are buried in obscure volumes of "Proceedings" and arc not readily accessible even to specialists.