ANTARCTIC RESEARCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20889, 3 June 1931, Page 8

ANTARCTIC RESEARCH.

Even the bare outline of the investigations directed by Sir Douglas Mawson during the last visit of the Discovery to the Antarctic gives an idea of their great practical value. They are scientific in an accurate sense, and so make more of the study of facts than of the application of results to workaday affairs. Yet it is now known that the polar regions, once considered to hold little of value in relation to these affairs, save in the rare possibility of Franklin's finding a maritime short-cut by way of a North-West Passage, have problems with a direct bearing on even industry and commerce. Most arresting of all the results reported as the eventual outcome of these recent Antarctic researches is the making of navigation safer. Details of the scientists' success in collecting and studying data leading to this should be among the most interesting as well as the most valuable to be supplied when their reports are completed. The speed and direction of the ocean currents, the conditions affecting the formation and changes of the barrier ice, the movement of the magnetic pole, the prevailing atmospheric circumstances at certain times of the year, and other data of the kind, all have importance. Knowledge of them and counsels based on them should do much to safeguard further expeditions along the fringe of the Antarc-1 tie land. It will guide international] efforts in the direction of controlling; the whaling industry to know what the reports have to tell concerning, the migration and concentration of whales and the occurrence of good i and bad years. The well-known j anxiety of Sir Douglas about the ruthless slaughter of whales in this. region—a matter of practical in- • terest to this Dominion—is bound to! give these particular reports a high j value. Altogether, the work through- \ out two summers undertaken by the i expedition promises to be very fruit- j ful of useful knowledge in many I directions. ;