MIGRATIONS VIA SUEZ.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20828, 21 September 1929, Page 14

MIGRATIONS VIA SUEZ.

MARINE LIFE IN THE CANAL. LOBSTERS, CRAYFISH, AND CRABS. >. . The French oceanographer, Professor Gruvel, who has been studying the submarine life of the Suez Canal, recently revealed in a, paper read before the French Academy of Sciences that others than ships make use of that channel as a short cut between the Occident and the Orient.

Ihe lobster, he found, is a regular semi-annual migrant between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocea,n, via the canal, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Sea. A similar migration he found undertaken by the langouste, which is usually translated crayfish. This crustacean, which figures so largely on French menus, does not, however, travel with the speed of the ordinary lobster, nor ! does it travel so far, from the Mediter- 1 ranean to the Red Sea and back being I usually the annual extent of its l itinerary, ’ ' Still, the crayfish is much more hasty than the crab, said the professor, for it took one. particularly marked crab 30 years to go through the Suez canal. The popular Parisian press is at a loss to know how Professor Gruvel obtained such precise information, and one of his critics adds; “Still, it is easy to imagine the thrill that must have electrified the patient, persistent crab on emerging long l as { in the Mediterranean.'’'.