EXPLORING AN OCEAN BED

Taranaki Daily News, 31 March 1934, Page 22 (Supplement)

EXPLORING AN OCEAN BED

DISCOVERY OF LOST CONTINENT. HUGE MOUNTAIN RANGE. It is familiar knowledge that animal life is not possible in many of bur rivers owing to the discharge into them from industrial works. It is not so well known, perhaps, that there are areas in the Black Sea and in some of the fiords of Norway where the decay of plant and animal matter is so extensive as to restrict life below a certain depth. These r.reas are enclosed by land, which explains the conditions, but a recent discovery has brought to light an area in the open seas which is so impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen that no life can exist. This stretch of sea is below the 140-fathom mark in the Gulf of Oman, off the eastern cape of Arabia. The poison comes from the outpourings of the Euphrates and Tigris. These rivers bring down good food as

well, for the upper waters of the Gulf are rich in animal life.

This discovery is one of the many made last autumn by the Sir John Murray Expedition, whose ship, a 140-foot trawler lent by the Egyptian Government, has made four cruises in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The expedition has great scientific value, for the Challenger did not sail in Indian waters. Soundings have been taken and some most interesting facts established concerning the ocean bed.

Off the coast of Baluchistan are two submerged mountain ranges, one of which rises to a height of 10,000 feet above . the general level of the ocean bed. To the south of this mountain chain is a deep valley carved out in geological times by a river which flowed across the north of India. In this area is a lost continent, to which scientists have given the name of Lemuria, because when the sun was shining on its forests and plains the . lemurs, now rare, were the most advanced animals brought into existence by evolution. They were the first of the Primates, the Order to which Man belongs. The expedition is now cruising in the part of the Indian Ocean lying between Ceylon and Zanzibar, a region seldom crossed by ships and consequently little known.