i AUTUMN AND WINTER 1956-57. VOL V, NOS.1 AND 2 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution WOODS HOLE. MASSACHUSETTS HENRY B. BIGELOW Chairman of the Hoard of Trustees RAYMOND STEVENS 'President of the Corporation EDITOR: JAN HAHN COLUMBUS O'D. ISELIN Published quarterly and distributed to the Asso- "Director ciates of the Woods Hole Oceanographic BOSTWICK H. KETCHUM Institution and others interested Senior Oceanographer in Oceanography A .MONG the pleasanter memories of most ocean voyages are those of porpoises playing about the vessel. Whether one's interest be esthetic or merely scientific, it is easy to pass a great deal of time admiring the smooth grace with which these animals swim. In our profession we tend to temper admiration with investigation. How do these beasts swim so fast, and how fast? How do they time their breathing to their brief surfacings? How do they keep station? How do they avoid collision with each other or with the vessel? Are their squeals and barks useful for such purposes? How do they make these sounds, and how do they hear? Many a scientist has struggled with these and other questions, and several of them are now being studied at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Our handsome cover photograph was made by Jan Hahn six years ago in the northern Gulf of Mexico. These spotted porpoises (professors and other landsmen say "dolphin", but seamen say "porpoises") are members of a large group (the genus Stenella ) which is found all around the world, usually in the lower latitudes. They are not easy to tell apart, especially at sea, in spite of the conspicuous pattern of spots. In our photograph this pattern is streakily distorted by the wavy sea surface, in which is reflected the overhanging bow of our "Atlantis". The porpoises are easing along at about nine knots, keeping pace with the vessel. W. E. S. EDITORIAL Autumn and Winter 1956 - 57, Vol. V, Nos. 1 and 2. i HERE are vogues in oceanography as well as in many other fields. For the first few years after World War II the Gulf Stream System was one of the most interesting fields of investigation here at Woods Hole; the instruments and methods developed during the war, together with the use of the loran navigation system, made it possible to discover exciting new information about the Stream. A little later deep echo sounders and seismic techniques provided an extraordinarily great amount of new knowledge concerning the earth, its geological formation, the development and possible origin of continents and ocean basins. How much life the ocean can produce then became the subject of a heated controversy, a controversy by no means solved. In more recent years the marine meteorologists, equipped with airplanes, a host of new devices and reams of mathematical equations, are much in the foreground. We do not mean to imply that the subjects quickly become worn out, that all the answers become known, but rather that new techniques, new instrumentation, and new ideas spring up fairly quickly bringing surprising results and then, at least as far as public interest is concerned, slow down into a steady evaluation of the obtained results and the long, painful drag delving into the particulars of the findings and attempts at answering the host of new questions which the few answers have provided. Oceanography is an exciting subject; one feels part of dis- covery and exploration, as much so as any explorer of old. It is our hope that the Associates will feel partners in this Enterprise and will enjoy watching the developments. R. V. Atlantis at sea. The Recent Goteborg Meetings by C. O'D. Iselin In September 1955 an ad hoc group of oceanographers met in Brussels to plan the re- search vessel operations dur- ing the International Geophysical Year (IGY). This series of meetings produced the surprising information that about 50 vessels from at least 15 nations were sched- uled to take part. Also, at this time, we had our first modern discussions with Russian oceanographers whose r e - search vessels are much larger and more numerous than those of any other nation. Since the Brussels meeting several smaller international meetings of oceanographers have been called to consider regional programs, notably for the North Pacific and for the northern half of the North Atlantic. Beginning on January 15, 1957 a week-long series of discussions was held at the Oceanographic Institute a t Goteborg, Sweden, to review and coordinate the world-wide oceanographic effort during IGY, and to discuss various proposals for continuing co- operative programs. Some 51 oceanographers and observers from various international organizations were present at the outset and more arrived as the week progressed. The original Brussels group was much smaller and it reported to SCAGI (Special Committee for International Geophysical Year), which in turn is re- sponsible to ICSU (Interna- tional Committee on Scientific Union). The Goteborg meet- ings began under the same auspices. Dr. G. E. R. Deacon again acted as secretary, Colonel G. Laclavere, in ad- dition to making many of the arrangements, provided the liaison with SCAGI and, in the absence of Rear Admiral E. H. Smith, I found myself having to act as chairman. It is the policy of SCAGI to turn over the various IGY programs to the available permanent international or- ganizations. Here we ran into the chronic difficulty that besets everyone who tries to organize oceanography. It includes many scientific dis- ciples so that several inter- national bodies can claim to have some jurisdiction. The principal business was accomplished without diffi- culty. Under the leadership of Dr. G. Bohnecke, and through the meetings of the Interna- tional Council for the Explor- ation of the Sea, the program of the many ships planning to operate in the northern North Atlantic had been notably improved during the past year. Another important new feature is that three countries now expect to send expeditions to the Indian Ocean, which at the time of the Brussels meeting seemed likely to be entirely neglected. Plans for the exchange of data and for the interchange of seagoing scientists were further developed. The almost unanimous conclusions of the first three days of discussions were summarized in 18 res- olutions. It was not all work, for the proverbial Swedish hospitality also kept our evenings busy. The next such meeting will be held at Toronto in Sep- tember when it is expected that a continuing IGY co- ordinating committee will be appointed by the Association of Physical Oceanography (APO) and thus report to higher bodies through the International Union of Ge- odesy and Geophysics (IUGG) . As mentioned above, this only takes care of part of modern oceanography. A number of important subjects, for ex- ample the expected radioac- tive contamination of the sea, are in danger of remaining orphans. Thus, it was proposed that a new long-range plan- ning group known as SCOR (Special Committee on Ocean- ographic Research) come into being. In fact, the Executive Board of ICSU had already designated a bureau of four eminent oceanographers headed by Dr. R. Revelle to get SCOR started. The fourth day at Goteborg was largely devoted to discussions of what seemed to some a conflict between the responsibilities of APO and SCOR. It was also evident that at higher eche- lons there was some rivalry as to how best to capitalize on the oceanographic momen- tum that will be generated by IGY. My own view of the matter is that we are in danger of having more inter- national committees in ocean- ography than there are qual- ified people with the time to serve on them. What seemed clear to me, at any rate, was that under present circumstances the expense of travel is in danger of preventing the younger oceanographers, who in any case will have to carry out the work at sea, from having a voice in international meet- ings. I hope that we at Woods Hole can help to correct this undesirable situation by in- viting as many promising oceanographers as possible to visit us next summer in advance of the meetings at Toronto. The SCOR group has also been invited to hold its next meeting at Woods Hole after the Toronto meet- ings. By this time, presum- ably the remaining conflict- ing interests of the "alpha- betical soup" of unions and committees will have been resolved. The final two days of the Goteborg meetings were de- voted to technical discussions of radioactive waste disposal problems. So far as I know, this was the first large inter- national meeting of ocean- ographers devoted to this considerable subject. It is not likely to be the last. Dr. B. H. Ketchum made a very able summary of the Institution's research program which is one of the most basic in this new area. The encroaching sea is studied photographically from the PBY, flying thou- sands of miles along the Atlantic seaboard. Here, the changing strands of the southerly tip of Nauset Beach, Cape Cod, are shown. William S. Richardson, Airborne Oceanographers Aircraft have become a definite part of our research fleet HE Woods Hole Oceano- graphic Institution in cooper- ation with the U. S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics and the Office of Naval Research has been operating a PBY-6A aircraft for about five years. The use of this and other air- craft by members of the Institution staff for research in meteorology and cloud physics has been described in previous issues of this mag- azine*. In addition, the PBY has been used extensively for magnetic and gravity surveys and studies of coast erosion. It is the purpose of this arti- cle to describe the use of aircraft in physical oceano- graphic research. To review briefly the his- * See: Trade Winds and Trade-Wind Clouds, Oceanus, Vol. IV, No. 3. tory of the use of aircraft by oceanographers and others who work at sea, we may note that the first use was probably by fishermen for spotting fish schools. At the present time there are com- panies whose sole occupation is to provide this service for the various fishing fleets, and in the Pacific coast tuna fish- ery a small float plane is often a regular part of a fishing vessel's equipment. Our staff ichthyologists occasionally fly for this purpose and random fish sightings by our aircraft often excite considerable local interest. The International Ice Patrol began aircraft recon- naissance for icebergs in 1946 and continues it at the pres- ent time. Considerable in- formation on the motion of the surface water in the area east of Newfoundland can be obtained from their data. Similarly, the U. S. Navy Hydrographic Office uses aeri- al reconnaissance to deter- mine the time of the breakup and reformation of sea ice in the Labrador Sea. L. V. Worthington and John F. Holmes of our staff used sev- eral planes as vehicles to land on the frozen Arctic Ocean during Operation Ski- jump in 1951 and 1952. Stan- dard oceanographic measure- ments were made through holes in the ice. In 1950, Operation Cabot, a multiple- ship survey of the Gulf Stream, saw one of the first uses of aircraft in support of research vessels working on a physical oceanographic problem. By flying the air- craft to follow the visible edge of the Gulf Stream, William V. Kielhorn was able to provide the ships with a fairly synoptic picture of the location of the edge which, in the early stages of the oper- ation, was used to plan the ship's movements. Incident- ally the aircraft also provided an important service to this operation when it parachute- dropped new Bathythermo- graphs to one of the research vessels which had lost its supply of this vital instru- ment. Physical Work In all of this work — with the exception of Ski-jump — the problem is one of search using the human eye and ra- dar as the primary instru- ments. With the acquisition of the PBY, work was begun to provide other physical meas- Dr. William S. Richard- son has been concerned with temperature measurements by airborne radiation ther- mometer, physical optics of sea water, and the develop- ment of sensitive shipborne temperature measurement devices. He came to the In- stitution in 1952 from the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. urements from the airplane. One of the early attempts was a radar swell height recorder developed by Holmes. This instrument proved unsatis- factory because of the diffi- culty in maintaining an exact flight altitude. Concurrently with this work, and extensive instrumentation by the me- teorologists, Henry Stommel and his co-workers developed a radiometer for measuring the sea surface temperature from the aircraft. This in- strument was used in 1953 for aerial reconnaissance of the edge of the Gulf Stream. These measurements showed that the thermal gradient on the surface at the edge of the Stream was in some areas much more abrupt than the ship observations indicated and in other areas very dif- fuse and gradual. Flights were made covering several hundred miles of the edge in a single day and these indi- cated a shingle-like overlap- ping structure to the surface discontinuity*. In general the edge follows a meandering pattern as indicated by the * See illustration page 13, Oceanus, Vol. IV, No. 4. ship data, and a combined aerial reconnaissance and drift experiment by the AT- LANTIS showed that the air- craft could plot the edge to within a few miles of what the ship considered to be the axis of the current. Of course the ship is capable of study- ing the current in depth and thus obtains considerably more data as to its structure. However, it requires many days for the ship to cover a few hundred miles while the aircraft can delineate the major direction and changes in directions over the same dis- tance in a few hours. Thus the two attacks are compli- mentary. In addition to the Gulf Stream work the radio- meter has been used to detect other currents. Also, because of its high sensitivity, it has been used to study small-scale fluctuations i n sea-surface temperature, particularly in the Caribbean area. In this case it has been possible to correlate warm patches on the surface with individual trade-wind cumulus clouds, thus suggesting an origin of such clouds. Incidentally, as Schools of menhaden are spotted for the fishing fleet by small planes off the North Florida coast. Through the rigging of the "Atlan- tis" the PBY is seen flying by dur- ing a Gulf Stream cruise. the radiometer was improved it soon developed such high sensitivity that none of the shipborne temperature equip- ment was capable of provid- ing data for comparison, so it served as an impetus for the development of more sensi- tive thermal recorders for the ships. Another method which per- mits the airborne oceano- grapher to make physical measurements in the water is the use of buoys. Various small expendable buoys have been used for specific prob- lems and recently larger drifting buoys tracked by the airplane have been used by Dean F. Bumpus*. The possi- bilities of buoys are almost unlimited and the present developments by Robert G. * See: Drift Bottles are Getting Bigger, Oceanus, Vol. IV, No. 4. Landed on the icepack of the Arctic Ocean, L. V. Worthington prepares to lower a Nansen bottle through a hole cut into the ice. Hot air blows through the pipe above his head to warm his bare hands. Walden and David D. Ketch- urn have shown that reason- able reliability is easily achieved. The present system is to use a buoy with a re- ceiver and a transmitter in it. The aircraft flies out to the approximate location of the buoy and sends out a radio signal which triggers the re- ceiver in the buoy and causes it to transmit. The plane then uses radio-direction finding equipment to locate the buoy, and if the buoy's transmis- sions are properly modulated the airplane can record al- most any property of the water in which the buoy is located. The buoys may be either anchored or drifting. They are economically very attractive since they can oc- cupy a station for long periods of time and the aircraft can cover a large number of them scattered over a wide area at costs small compared to com- parable ship time. The ques- tion of whether the buoys should have enough power (be big enough) to transmit directly to a shore laboratory, thus eliminating the aircraft's part, is an economic one. At present and in the foresee- able future we may expect the plane to be a very useful mobile listening station. Aircraft Operation It may be appropriate at this point to discuss briefly the economies and operation of aircraft. For a medium- sized two-engine aircraft (two engines are mandatory for safety in long over-water flights) such as the PBY or the R4D(DC-3) which will soon replace it, it costs approxi- mately one hundred dollars per hour to fly. This figure is based on 600 hours' use per 8 year. Since a large portion of the costs are fixed, the hourly rate decreases as more use is made of the plane. Maximum flight time per day is limited by human fatigue and is something like twelve to fourteen hours. For day-in, d a y - o u t operation seven hours per day is reasonable. Comparison with ship costs is not particularly valid since the function and capabilities of aircraft and ships are so different. However, we may note that our ships cost about fifty dollars per hour to operate and since the speed differential between the plane and our ships is about 15 to 1, the aircraft is about seven times cheaper per mile than the ship for operations in- volving simple search and tracking. An early attempt at using aircraft for the study of ocean waves was mentioned above. A more recent study by Wilbur Marks, Project SWOP, utilized two aircraft taking simultaneous pictures of the sea surface. These pictures were contoured by stereo- grammetric techniques and provided a very elegant three- dimensional picture of the surface. Munk and Cox of the Scripps Institution of Ocean- ography have used aerial photographs of the sun glitter pattern on the sea surface for similar measurements. The relationship of ocean waves to the sea clutter which ap- pears on aircraft radar is now under investigation by Harlow G. Farmer, Jr. This work involves wave measure- ments by ships or buoys in conjunction with radar clut- ter measurements by aircraft of the Naval Research Lab- oratory. It is conceivable that when this phenomena is bet- ter understood the process may be reversed and the clutter measurements used to study waves. These measure- ments of ocean waves and the movements of the surface layers are of vital interest to those who work in search and rescue at sea and particularly to those concerned with the landing of large seaplanes in the open ocean. To the best of the author's knowledge, Gifford C. Ewing of Scripps Institution of Oceanography is the only oceanographer who flies his own plane for physical oce- anographic research. He has been working for several years on the problem of un- derstanding the slicks and streaks which are so well known to those who fly over water. These changes in the appearance of the surface are caused by convergences and divergences in the surface layers, and his speculations and laboratory experiments on the origins of the motions have been very illuminating. The Future Looking into the future, what extensions in the use of aircraft in oceanography may we expect? In addition to sur- face temperature measure- ments we may some day be able to measure the other important variable, surface salinity. Such a determina- tion is theoretically possible by measuring the reflectivity of the surface for high fre- quency radio waves; in prac- tice this may be a very different measurement t o make. Another advance we may hope for is the measure- ment of surface water move- motion could be obtained by difference. Finally, it be- hooves the oceanographer to keep a sharp eye on other research establishments who are engineering systems for towing equipment in the water from aircraft, helicop- ters, and blimps. Their suc- cess, or the successful development of an open-ocean seaplane may provide an im- portant break-through in the use of aircraft in oceanogra- phy. In any case it appears that the airplane is in the oceanographic business to stay and we may look for- ward to its extended use in ment by Doppler radar. At present this type of radar is used for navigation of aircraft to provide a ground speed. Obviously if the "ground" is moving, the ground speed will be in error by the amount of this motion and if the air- craft can be navigated cor- rectly by other means, this The only oceanographic pilot in the world, Norman G. Gingrass has captained our PBY -* since 1952. the future. Finally, we may note that in addition to oper- ating the PBY and the smaller Stinson aircraft the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution pays annually about $25,000 for commercial airborne transportation, indi- cating that oceanographers here are indeed airborne. 10 Two species of young dol- phin fish (Coryphaena) have been identified by Dr. Robert H. Gibbs of our staff. It is not commonly known that two species of this prized game fish exist. The one shown at the top, and "at lower right, is the young of the dolphin usually taken by hook and line. The other spe- cies is the "little dolphin", rarely taken by anglers but strangely enough far more common in collections of young fish than the "common dolphin." Gifts and Grants Two grants were received from the National Science Foundation. One, in the amount of $20,000. for sup- port of research entitled "Nitrogen Cycle in Coastal Sea Waters" under the direc- tion of Dr. Bostwick H. Many people doubted the existence of two species. They are now being described by Dr. Gibbs for publication in a scientific journal with the aid of detailed drawings be- ing prepared by Mr. Gail Paisley of our staff. This is but one of the re- sults of a volunteer program on board our ships to take as much "wildfire" as possible by dipnetting while our ships are hove-to. During the day- time someone is usually look- ing over the side while at night strong lights are used to attract marine life. Ketchum for a period of ap- proximately three years. The other, in the amount of $42,000. for support of re- search entitled "Basic Pro- ductivity of the Sea" under the direction of Dr. John H. Ryther for a period of ap- proximately three years. 11 Associates News Tuna Ground Chart -A. three dimensional bathy- metric chart of Soldier's Rip off Westport, Nova Scotia was presented on behalf of the Associates to the Westport Tuna Guide's Association last fall. The mounted chart was made by Mr. R. Miller of our staff and shows in detail the bottom configuration of the famous tuna fishing grounds. Associate S. Kip Farrington who coordinated the presen- tation, handed the chart over to the Prime Minister of Nova Scotia at the Awards Dinner of the International Tuna Cup Matches. Hung in the clubhouse of the Westport Tuna Guide's Association, the chart received widespread in- terest among the international group of big game fishermen present. Gifts and Grants FOR the second time a grant of $3,500. was received from the Esso Education Founda- tion. In a letter accompanying the grant, Mr. Eugene Hoi- man, Chairman of the Foun- dation, stated that — "these companies believe that busi- ness should share with other citizens the responsibility of supporting private U. S. col- leges and universities so that they might continue to share in meeting the increasing demands of our society, which requires even higher intellec- tual standards for larger numbers of its citizens". A contribution was also received from TI-GSI Foun- dation, on behalf of the Texas Instruments Incorporated, Geophysical Service Inc., and affiliated companies. New Industrial Associates The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Michigan Freeport Sulphur Company, New York, New York Isbrandtsen Company, Inc., New York, New York Munitalp Foundation, Inc., New York, New York Sylvania Electric Products, Inc., New York, New York New Life Members \VE are also pleased to announce that Mr. and Mrs. Alan C. Bemis, Mr. and Mrs. George S. Frierson, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. J. Seward Johnson and Mr. and Mrs. John Parkinson, Jr. have be- come Life Members of the Associates of the Woods Hole Oceano- graphic Institution. 12 How cold is a whale's tail? By John Kanwisher Whales were chased off the Norwegian coast to determine how they regulate their temperatures. Wi HALES are found in all seas from the tropics to the edge of the polar ice. They belong, along with man, to that group of animals called mammals which maintain their bodies at a high and nearly uniform temperature. Unlike many of these mam- mals which have fur for insulation the whale is bare- skinned, another of its sim- ilarities to man. One might wonder then how it keeps warm in icy polar waters when it is also at home in the tropics. Some species like the humpback and grey whales migrate yearly between these extremes; thus whales must somehow be able to vary their insulation in a manner analogous to our putting on and taking off clothes. The rate of internal heat production which keeps the animals warm can also vary greatly. In a whale being chased, heat may be produced at ten times the rate in one swimming leisurely. Yet the animal cannot allow itself to become overheated any more than we can. At times the thermostatic controls in a whale must operate to con- serve heat and at other times to discard it. Because of the great range of size between the small porpoises, which 13 are accorded full recognition as true whales by biologists, and a fin whale one may expect to find some interest- ing variations in the physics of how the different species handle the problem of ther- mal regulation. The layer of blubber that covers most of the body can act as an effective barrier to heat loss, but the flippers and tail are relatively uninsulated. Yet, they must be supplied with blood the same as other parts of the body. This blood will become cooled while in these regions and might act as a serious chilling soured when it returns to the deep body of the animals. Scho- lander and Schevill found structures in the circulatory system of small whales which they think can prevent this loss of heat. The arteries and veins are arranged in such a way that they form counter- current heat exchangers, much like that in a power plant where the heat of the outgoing flue gases is trans- ferred to the incoming air. It appeared that in whales the heat of the warm blood from the deep body is used to warm the cool blood return- ing from the tail and flippers. By this means blood can be supplied to the uninsulated cold areas of the whale with- out losing large amounts of heat to the surrounding water. The circulatory system also seemed well designed for the discarding of heat, which is probably necessary to pre- vent overheating in a fast swimming animal. The same authors found vessels which by-pass the heat exchangers. The blood flowing in this path is effective in cooling the entire animal. The flip- pers and tail of these small whales seem to work in the same manner as the radiator of an automobile to prevent overheating. The whales' temperature may be thermo- statically controlled by vary- ing the fractions of the blood flowing through the heat ex- changer or the by-pass. Up to this point this is all theory based on the struc- tures found in dead animals. One would feel more con- vinced if confirmation could be had from measurements made on a live specimen. With this in mind I decided to attempt such temperature measurements on large whales. The approach was to take the data on a freshly killed animal. Because of the whale's large size these tem- peratures will be very close to those existing before death. Fortunately, an instrument for such measurements proved to be no problem. At the time I happened to be making a device for Dr. Red- field to take temperature pro- files in salt marshes. Simply by providing a sharp tip, the instrument made an excellent temperature-harpoon which could easily be pushed six feet into the flesh of a whale. Things are rarely so simple when one starts new work. Since the large whales are fished commercially they turn out to be more available than small ones. Also, one can hardly deny a certain fascin- 14 With a powerful stroke of the tail, this porpoise jumps out of the water while overtaking the "Atlantis". Whales must be able to lose heat rapidly while swimming fast. ation and adventure in an experiment involving these largest o f all animals in which the heart alone weighs as much as six average men. An elephant will fit com- fortably in the mouth of a blue whale. The Chase Off the Norwegian coast, whales are shot from small, fast boats and towed to a shore station for cutting-in and processing. This differs from the Antarctic where the entire operation is carried out at sea in large factory ships. This past fall I enjoyed the hospitality and enthusi- astic cooperation of the whal- ers at Steinshamn on the Norwegian coast, where the whales are chased for their meat and have a market value of from $6,000 to $8,000. Against a backdrop of moun- tains and fjords we spent all the daylight hours of good weather scanning the sea for the telltale burst of spray made by a breathing whale. Although I spent six weeks on the boat, due to bad wea- ther and a poor season we were only able to make meas- urements on one animal, a 54-foot fin whale. It was not chased and was apparently killed immediately by the harpoon. Thus, the tempera- tures measured probably are close to those of a resting live animal. We were able to make measurements in the abdo- minal cavity and surrounding body wall, along the peduncle or narrow part of the animal leading to the tail, and also in the tail itself. In addition we obtained the temperature in the abdominal cavity and muscle for twenty hours while the whale was towed to the shore station. From these measurements we hoped to get information on the effectiveness of splitting open the belly. This is done 15 to cool the animals and thus slow down putrefaction. The deep muscle and body cavity of the whale had a uni- form temperature of 35.6°C. This is within the range of variation found for other mammals and only one degree AGUTUS A section near the base of the fin of a porpoise shows how each art- ery is surrounded by a channel of veins. Simple veins are located near the skin. (After: Scholander and Schevill, 1955). Centigrade below that of man. There was very little temperature drop along the peduncle. At the base of the tail it was still 34.2°C one and a half hours after death, in spite of a sea temperature of 12°C. The countercurrent sys- tem in the fin whale exists through the latter three meters of its body. Since there was only about a one degree temperature drop along this system, it does not seem to function as a heat exchanger in a large whale, and yet a quiet animal such as this one was should have the most need to conserve heat. There was a surpris- ingly high temperature well out in the fluke of the tail. Apparently even under con- ditions of minimal heat pro- duction a large whale can afford to waste the heat to keep its uninsulated tail warm. Probably equally important was the information picked up in the galley over a cup of coffee. Men who make their living on the sea are generally shrewd observers and these were no exceptions. The Steinshamn whalers had noted that the tail fluke showed very little bleeding when an animal was killed quietly in the same manner &TRUNK ARTERY-^-IO° 20 TRUNK Fl N This diagram indicates the heat exchange system whereby the re- turning venous blood is warmed by the blood in the artery. (After: Scholander and Schevill, 1955). as this one. However, if the whale had been chased for some distance and had strug- gled after harpooning they found profuse bleeding. This suggests that the whale in- creased its circulation through the tail, and probably also 16 the flippers, during the per- iods of greater heat produc- tion. This would allow larger amounts of heat to be dissi- pated from these surfaces. It is unfortunate that measure- ments could not be made on such an animal to see if one finds the expected warmer body and, in particular, higher temperatures in the tail and maybe in the flip- pers. After death the bacteria in the whale start to multiply rapidly and if allowed to con- tinue will putrefy the flesh, making it inedible. Since this process goes faster at a higher temperature an effort is sometimes made to provide cooling by cutting open the belly and allowing the cold sea water to circulate into the abdominal cavity. Thus it seemed worth while to see what effect this has on the temperature in the rest of the animal. The temperature in various parts of the whale was followed during the 24 hours necessary to tow it to shore. The heat in the body of the dead whale showed two fea- tures. First, the temperature in the body cavity rose at a constant rate of one-half de- gree Centigrade per hour. Since no, or very little, ox- ygen was available we can be fairly certain that this Dr. John Kanwisher has been at the Institution since 1953. He has been to the Arctic several times and has made studies concerning the survival of seashore animals which are exposed to freez- ing temperatures and ice during low tides. He has also tried to determine whether fish are important sound scatterers in the ocean. heat production was due to the growth of bacteria which are always present in large numbers in the digestive sys- tem. With the blood no longer circulating in the dead ani- mal the heat cannot be car- ried away and the tempera- ture rises. A thermometer-harpoon left imbedded deep in the back muscle, which forms most of the edible meat, showed a temperature drop of less than one degree in 24 hours. There is apparently no additional heat produced here. This em- phasizes how slow a process conduction is for losing heat, once circulation has stopped. Opening up the body turns out to be little help in pre- venting spoiling while the whale is towed to shore. Their large size, which is what makes them so valuable, precludes any simple way of cooling them at sea to pre- serve the meat. I am placed in the position of generalizing heavily from 17 the data on one animal, al- ways a bad scientific policy. Within this limitation, though, I feel that mammals originally evolved into ocean dwellers as small animals, probably like present-day porpoises. The problem of keeping warm would then be much more severe and the unique anatomical structures of arteries within veins might be of more value to the an- imal. Then, I like to think that as whales evolved in the direction of an animal one thousand times larger the difficulty of keeping warm disappeared and these struc- tures have remained as ev- olutionary relics. Such a hy- pothesis obviously calls for similar measurements o n small porpoises. Also some- one, I hope myself, should probe some more tempera- tures in large whales where much remains to be learned. As is usually the case, this investigation i s producing more new problems than final answers. Endowment Gift The first addition to the Institution's endowment fund in twenty-five years was received in January. The donors, Winifred L. Parkinson and John Parkinson, Jr., presented ten shares of stock. It should not be overlooked, however, that certain Associates, industries, and foundations have added to the Associates' Funds, as distinguished from the endowment fund. 18 Currents and Tides A series of eleven lectures in Tropical Meteorology was given last fall at the Institu- tion by Dr. Erik Palmen, Institute of Meteorology, Fin- land; Dr. Herbert Riehl, De- partment o f Meteorology, University of Chicago, and Dr. Joanne S. Malkus of our staff. Among distinguished visi- tors in recent months were: Dr. E. G. Pringsheim, Pflan- zenphysiologisches Institut, Gottingen, Germany; Mr. S. Wennerberg, Research Insti- tute of National Defence, Stockholm, Sweden; Dr. George O. Curme, Jr., Union Carbide and Carbon Corp., New York City; Dr. Ken Sugawara, Nagoya Universi- ty, Japan; Dr. Wolfgang Wieser, University of Wash- ington; and Dr. F. D. Carlson of Johns Hopkins University. A joint seminar is being held this winter between this Institution and the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology. Held twice a month and alter- nating between Woods Hole and Cambridge, some twenty to thirty scientists, including some from Harvard Uni- versity, hold informal gather- ings on the general subject of thermal circulation, the basic problem of the ocean and the atmosphere. Further discussions are held during a dinner after each meeting. The bottom of Vineyard Sound, Buzzards Bay, and other areas was well observed this winter. Dr. Harold Barnes and Arthur G. Randall of the Marine Station, Millport, Scotland, were at Woods Hole for six months to use their underwater television appa- ratus in conjunction with echo sounding devices of the Insitution's underwater sound group. The PBY (Captain Norman G. Gingrass) made a second photographic beach study along the entire Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U.S.A. Us- ing continuously operating time-lapse motion pictures, geologist Dr. John M. Zeigler and photographer F. Claude Ronne have flown thousands of miles to study seasonal and permanent changes of the coast lines. The work, sup- ported by the Office of Naval Research, calls for quarterly flights from Maine to Mexico. Three of our staff members are Visiting Lecturers at the Massachusetts Institute o f Technology this winter. Dr. Williams S. von Arx taught during the Fall semester, while Drs. Joanne S. Malkus and J. B. Hersey are teaching during the Spring semester. 19 CO o 500 i t- A sea mount in the western Carib- bean Sea rises 5,400 feet above the ocean bottom. A remarkable fea- ture are the foothills to one side of the mount and the level plain on the other side. Steepness of the mount is greatly exaggerated. The distance between the times 0740 and 0840 represents about ten miles. X h- ujiOOO Q cecmus goes to the bottom J_ HE ocean bottom has a peculiar fascination; what does it look like? what is its topography? how does it form? are but a few questions arising as we think of that surface lying miles below a ship. To watch the profile of the ocean bottom unrolling on the paper of a recording echo sounder is as fascinating as observing the heavens through a powerful telescope. Moving the ship or moving the field of view of the tele- scope may, at any moment, reveal a hitherto unknown feature. More so in the case 20 e sea. of echo sounding, as the ocean bed still is inadequately charted. Two years ago we des- cribed the precision echo sounder recording system de- veloped at the Institution by S. T. Knott and others of Dr. J. B. Hersey's geophysics group*. Able to measure the sound pulse's travel time with great accuracy, this versatile system has been used extensively on many cruises of our ships and now has been developed to the * See: New Instruments, Oceanus, Vol, III, No. 2 21 m " "*r ^y ! • \ 1200 800 Four hundred fathom interval recording shows how correct depth has to be marked on the paper. The precision echo-sounder recording system has some 16 speeds available, ranging through a wide selection of depth intervals from a 20-fathom sweep to a 4,000-fathom sweep. extent that the rather alarm- ing appearing apparatus can be operated by someone who is not an electronic wizard. Spewing out reams of paper, the apparatus cannot be left alone very long. Times and positions must be marked, as well as ship's heading, cruise number, date, etc. No amount of trouble, however, can take away from the utter enchant- ment of watching an un- known moutain arise before one's eyes. Although the echo sounding trace does not show us the actual contours, the colors and the full view, this is what the pathfinders of the West must have felt as they encountered new mountains. Oceanographers are lucky in that they do not have to scale theirs. A paper on the Woods Hole recording system has just been published, see: S. T. Knott and J. B. Hersey, 1956, "High-resolution echo-sounding techniques and their uses in bathymetry, marine geophysics, and biology", Deep-Sea Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 36 to 44. Up, down or level, the sea bottom is recorded, 22 CO 500 o X h- 600 700 Q. LU Q 4000 4500 Vast areas of the sea bottom form smooth, level plains, generally at depths from 2,800 to 3,200 fathoms (16,800 to 19,200 feet). For instance five million square miles of the Pacific Basin, equivalent to the areas of China and India, is smooth. Geophysicists, first enthusiastic about the newly discovered roughness of the ocean bottom, now have become intensely interested in these great level areas. 400 CO 5 O .500- h- CL UJ Q Dashed lines may rep- resent canyon walls. 600L This recording of a submarine canyon, at a depth of 470 fathoms, shows clearly how the broad sound cone may be reflected from some distance up or down the slope or from the sides. The heavy line in the middle represents the flat bottom of the canyon, hence the shape of the canyon is more like a wide-bottomed V. The inverted A under the flat bottom is caused by highlights from the corners of the canyon bottom as the ship approached and passed. t 23 — CO s o X 100 Q_ LJ Q 1200- These crescent shapes do not represent the true shape of the bottom. Because of the wide angle of the sound beam, sound is reflected from points on the sides of rugged terrain. These reflections may arrive at the echo sounder before the Flat bottom of the Oriente Deep south of Cuba, at a depth of 3,535 fathoms (21,150 feet). Many of the deeps and trenches which have been charted by modern methods shew a flat bottom surrounded by extremely rugged topography. The diagonal lines are timing lines made by a chronometer attached to the precision echo-sounding recorder. 3300 -3400 3500 3600 24 •1100 echoes from, the bottom directly below the ship. The multiple echoes received from the bottom sometimes make interpretation of the records difficult. Small bumps about six to fifty feet high on the bottom of the Florida Straits have been found under the Florida Current on various cross sections. It is not yet known what they are and what they signify. The second bottom reflection is shown at about 100 fathoms on this trace. Horizontal lines represent 20-fathom intervals. A timing device breaks the lines every five minutes. 0 100 en 2 o X 200 LU Q 300 25 Echo sounding has been used for more than twenty- five years as an aid to naviga- tion in shallow water. As the commercial echo sounders were developed it became possible to obtain deeper and deeper soundings while the old system of depth indica- tion by light flashes on a graduated scale evolved into continuous recording on paper. Some notable investigations were made in the early 1930's by the U. S. Coast and Geo- detic Survey while charting the New England canyons, but it was not until after World War II that our ships and other oceanographic ves- sels were fitted with continu- ously recording sounders, able to record the bottom at thousands of fathoms below the sea surface. This resulted in changing the concept of the ocean botom as a gener- ally level plain broken only by occasional mountain ridges, deeps and trenches. New sea mounts, canyons, deeps, faults, even mountain chains in the Pacific Ocean, were discovered, while inad- equately known features were charted in detail. Geo- physicists soon found that the recording of commercial echo sounders was not suf- ficiently precise for their sci- entific requirements. Both at Columbia University's La- morit Geological Observatory and at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution pre- cision recording equipment was developed to obtain a better knowledge of the hid- den sea floor. Echo sounding together with seismic refrac- tion and reflection "shooting" now have evolved to the point where the presence of the water column makes cer- tain observations easier to obtain than similar ones on land. Deep underwater photog- raphy developed also into a practical art and soon will be more and more useful to ma- rine geophysics and marine biology. On the following pages we have included some examples of the use of self- contained undersea cameras. The Woods Hole precision record- ing system uses Alden facsimile recorders and can be connected to Edo, Raytheon, or other echo sounders. The array of switches, buttons, and dials are viewed with equanimity by summer student Conrad Mali- coat on board the R. V. "Crawford". 26 • D. M. Owen A deep-sea camera lowered from the "Atlantis provided this view of a steep cliff rising 7,200 feet from the sea bottom off the west coast of Florida. Taken at a depth of 6,600 feet, the photograph shows in the foreground a crinoid or sea lily. Several gorgonians are also shown (crinoids and gorgonians are animals, not plants). 27 -100 200 -300 400 460 A "view" of Hudson Canyon illustrates continuous operation on the 500-fathom sweep. As the canyon deepens the bottom is recorded on the next sweep and the correct depth interval has to be assigned by the operator on watch; how- ever, note that a scattering layer occurs at about 100 fathoms and remains in the 0 to 500 fathom interval. Arrows on vertical time-marking lines indicate exact moments in which Loran positions were obtained for accurate plotting of the data on a bathymetric chart. Scattering Layers* During underwater sound experiments made off Cali- fornia during World War II it was discovered that echoes were received from unidenti- fiable targets at mid-depths. Named the scattering layer it was soon determined that such a layer could be re- corded on echo sounders. This can be seen on many of the records reproduced here. Many investigators at many laboratories since have stud- ied this phenomenon which is not yet satisfactorily ex- plained. Early in the inves- tigation it was found that the layer moved down at sunrise and toward the surface at sunset. Other layers at var- ious depths were discovered, some of which remained at one level or went down in- stead of up at sunset. What are they? Numerous hypotheses were formed; the movement of the layers pointed to a biological origin, apart from the fact that no evidence of physical or chem- ical anomalies, which also might scatter sound, was found. Euphausiids — tiny shrimplike animals • squid, larval fishes, and deep-sea fishes v/ere all considered as likely causes for the scatter- ing. Many studies have been made, both by using under- water sound of varying fre- quencies and by mid-water trawls, whose content do not necessarily show which ani- mals were scatterers. By combining an underwater camera with acoustical ap- paratus our scientists have been able to nab some of the culprits. * See: Sound in Marine Research, Oceanus, Vol. Ill, No. 1. 28 105 nw en 5 O I £120 O H CL UJ Q * • .- fc OUTGOING PULSE : > ECHO SEQUENCES FROM INDIVIDUALS 130- co 140 Sound scatterers in the sea appear as a mass of individual crescents when an echo sounder is close to the scatterers. The crescent shape is due to the relative movement between the ship and the scatterers. Photograph and simultaneous acoustic record of eight unidenti- fied fishes at a depth of 100 feet in 6,000 feet of water (After: Johnson, Backus, Hersey, and Owen). 0 ~ ECHO SEQUENCE OF SCATTERER ECHO SEQUENCE OF CALIBRATION BALL 29 Working up the data takes time. After many cruises to help col- lect the data, Charles S. Innis and William M. Dunkle are plotting ship's tracks and sound- ings on an overlay prior to the drawing of a bathymetric chart. What happens to the hun- dreds of feet of recording paper representing thousands of miles of ocean bottom? Some of the records, depicting new features or detailed sur- veys, are published directly in scientific papers. For the making of bathymetric charts many steps are necessary since the records do not repre- sent the true depth. The veloc- ity of underwater sound, about 4,900 feet per second, is in- fluenced by temperature, sa- linity, and pressure changes. Hence, tables have been de- veloped to make the neces- sary corrections, depending on locality and availability of hydrographic observations. To obtain true depths in areas of rugged topography, such as the Peru-Chile Trench where echoes are received from a wide area thereby confusing the record, slope correction techniques may be applied. The vertical exag- geration of the original sounding records is indicated by the illustrations on the next page prepared by H. Small of our staff for a paper on the work done by the "Atlantis" on the South Pacific cruise made in 1955-56. Accurate plots are being made on chart overlays with the aid of Loran or celestial observations and, finally, after much plotting of many over- lapping tracks, a bathymetric chart may be produced. 30 2000 •- • '- 500 4000 4500 Actual soundings. Note multiple echo surfaces. 2000- 3000- 4000- Corrected soundings (solid line) Vertical exaggeration 5 X Corrected soundings Vertical and horizontal scales equalled. 5000 31 The "Meteor" on station in the South Atlantic in 1926. Many of the "Meteor" observations will be repeated during the IGY. Oceanographer L. V. Worthington tak- ing one of a series of Nansen bottles off the wire. 32 Deep Water D 'URING recent years the deep circulation of ocean water has aroused more and more interest among oceanog- raphers. A knowledge of the "turnover" rate of the vast masses of deep ocean water is of vital importance for the study of climatic trends. An understanding of this circula- tion might lead to a knowl- edge of the mild or severe climatic fluctuations which have taken place since the last glacial age, while it would, of course, be of great importance to have a fore- knowledge of climatic changes. Also, there is but a short time left to decide whether the ocean or parts of the ocean can be used safely for the disposal of atomic wastes. Measurements of the decay of radiocarbon14 and of the consumption of oxygen in deep water have led to radi- cally different estimates on the age of deep water. A time difference of roughly 1,500 versus 150 years has to be reconciled. Oceanographer L. V. Worth- ington of our staff has made many cruises for this purpose during the last few years and just before Christmas re- turned on board the "Atlan- tis" from a seven weeks' cruise between Newfound- land and the West Indies. He remains convinced that the deep North Atlantic Water, as well as the water in the Caribbean Sea, was formed during the cold period of "winter without summer" be- tween 1810 to 1830. The interest in deep ocean water was emphasized at a Symposium on Aspects cf Deep-Sea Research held at Washington last February. The papers read there are to be published together and are edited by Dr. Wm. S. von Arx of our staff. Another symposium will be held at Toronto in September 1957 for the International Associ- ation of Physical Oceanog- r a p h e r s . Oceanographer Henry Stommel of our staff was honored by being asked to plan this symposium. The Meteor In the years 1925-1927 the German Navy vessel "Me- teor" made a classic survey of the South Atlantic Ocean. A recent re-evaluation of the observations showed that South Atlantic bottom cur- rents are not insignificant. This Institution invited Dr. Georg Wiist of the Institu- tion fur Meereskunde of Kiel University, Germany, to come to Woods Hole last October. Dr. Wiist, who be- came the leader of the "Me- teor" expedition after the death of Dr. A. Merz, pre- sented a series of three lec- tures concerning the current velocities in the Atlantic deep 33 sea and the mass transport of water on both sides of the South Atlantic Ridge. Many of the hydrographic observations made by the "Meteor" will be repeated during the IGY. On January 28th the Research Vessel "Crawford" (Captain David Casiles) departed Woods Hole for a four months' cruise in the South Atlantic Ocean under the leadership of ocean- ographer F. C. Fuglister. The cruise was planned both as a start for work to be per- formed during the IGY and also to determine if the small 125-foot "Crawford" is able to perform the work hitherto made from larger vessels. We would like to mention that Dr. Wust, during his stay at Woods Hole, obtained a reputation as a raconteur. He told many wonderful an- ecdotes obtained in a lifetime of oceanographic acquaint- anceships. One of the most wonderful stories, according to Milton Rutstein who col- lected them, concerned Dr. Anton Fr. Bruun, leader of the Danish "Galathea" expe- dition. Dr. Bruun, who, with others, firmly believes there are very large animals in the sea never taken by man, an- nounced that one of the pur- poses of the "Galathea" expedition was the collection of sea monsters. One day a seaman saw a monster and ran to Bruun asking him to come quickly on deck. Bruun hardly moved at his desk — slowly reached for his glasses, looked up to the seaman and said, "Do you think that I will go on deck to see this sea serpent and be called a liar for the rest of my life? No sir! I will stay right here in my cabin." y. — . Captured shark (Carcharhinus leu- cas, cub or whale shark) biting line. We hope none of our readers was this angry while anxiously awaiting the autumn 1956 issue of "Oceanus". The editor was at sea on the "Crawford" and decided to combine the autumn and winter issues. 34 The Sounds of Fishes By James M. Moulton Sound is so well transmitted through, sea water that it is not surprising that nature should have provided many fishes with elaborate sound producing and receiving devices. T HE long debated question: whether or not fishes hear, was finally settled in 1904 by Dr. H. B. Bigelow when he demonstrated that severing of the auditory nerves in the goldfish eliminated responses to sound. Since that time, by a variety of methods, the hearing ability of several species of fishes has been verified and at least partially measured. While there are still many questions to be an- swered, it seems clear from the work of G. H. Parker, of Karl von Frisch and his school, of Vilstrup and others that the inner ear is respon- sible for most of a fish's abil- ity to hear. However, it is quite possible that lower fre- quencies are "received" by fishes through the sensitivity to vibrations of their laterial line organs, and perhaps of isolated skin receptors. There is no longer any doubt that fishes do hear, and that their hearing capacity is centered in the inner ear. What is there to hear in the sea? It has been known for more than two thousand years that various kinds of fishes are capable of produc- ing sounds. Aristotle, Pliny, Pherecrates, Athenaeus and the Greek Anthology all con- tain references to the sounds of fishes, Aristotle having pointed out that the sounds of fishes could not be likened to the voices of animals pos- sessing a larynx because of the basic differences in the means of sound production. The matter of fish sound production received relative- ly little attention from biolo- gists until the time of World War II, although as long ago as 1888, G. G. Goode had sug- gested that the calls of the drums were doubtless a means of communication be- tween the sexes. By 1910, C. F. Holder and David Starr Jordan had predicted that some day the calls of fishes would be recorded "into a phonograph for the benefit of 35 posterity." Some important studies on the mechanisms of fish sound production had been made, but the field was largely unexplored when ear- ly in World War II the sounds of fishes, as well as those of marine mammals and crus- taceans, became a real prob- lem. Underwater listening for enemy ships, made pos- sible by rapid advances in electronics, demonstrated abruptly that the oceans were not the silent places they had been assumed to be. Sound Production Information on sound pro- ducing marine species has ac- cumulated rapidly here and abroad since World War II, especially in the United States through the efforts of Dr. Marie Poland Fish of the Narragansett Marine Labora- tory of the University of Rhode Island. It is evident that the species of fishes who have the anatomical adapta- tions apparently specialized for sound production must be numbered at least by hun- dreds, and among and beyond these lie many kinds which through noisy habits of eat- ing or other behavior con- tribute to underwater sound. In addition to fish sounds now recognized, many sounds have been recorded at con- siderable depths in the ocean, notably by Dr. J. B. Hersey and his group at the Institu- tion, and have been tenta- tively ascribed to fishes simply because it is difficult to imagine other kinds of organisms that might be making them. Specializations for produc- ing underwater sounds are as numerous as one might expect from the highly varied adaptations of fishes general- ly. Some fishes, the sea robins, for example, produce sounds by drumming on the sides of an internal air bladder with special drumming muscles built into the bladder walls. Other species use rapid vibra- tions of body wall muscles to create a resonated sound within the air chamber. Many of the trigger fishes have a small area just above the base of each pectoral fin where the air bladder, else- where lying deep within the body, comes close to the skin; at times of distress the fins thump on this small, taut drumhead. Still other species such as the jacks have spec- ial adaptations of the intern- al skeleton which allow for stridulation noises, while other forms may articulate more superficial parts — the head plates in sea horses, and pharyngeal or maxillary and mandibular teeth, for exam- ple. In several cases where sound production is by strid- ulation, the shrill creaking noise occurs in such a pos- ition that the resultant sound is resonated by the air blad- der; the stridulation of the pharyngeal teeth in the grunts furnishes a good ex- ample. Hearing The fact that so many spe- cies of fish produce sound seems to imply that sound is an important factor in their way of living. Also suggestive are the hearing arrangements 36 in many species. While in many kinds of fishes the in- ner ears are isolated within the skull, others possess such intricate anatomical adapta- tions between the air blad- der in its capacity as a reson- ating chamber and the inner ear that it is inferred that such elaborate equipment must be of some use. The cat- fishes and their relatives, the squirrel or soldier fishes and the elephant fishes of Africa, are among the latter group. Despite anatomical and physiological evidence that fishes are sensitive to sound, despite the wide distribution of sound production among fishes, and despite the fact that all species of fishes thus far tested can be conditioned to respond to sounds within their respective hearing ranges, it has not been clearly demonstrated that sounds play an important role in the lives of fishes in nature. At- tempts to make consistent alterations in the movements of fishes in nature by man- made sounds have resulted in little more than initial startle reactions or quickened swim- ming. Fishes are highly adap- tive animals and stimuli such as sounds, odors, electric shock, pressure and salinity changes which initially cause some change in behavior may during subsequent trials have no obvious effect. Sound Reasons During recent years some evidence has accumulated, mainly from observations on free fishes, that certain pat- terns of fish behavior char- acteristically include the pro- Dr. James M. Moulton, Assistant Professor of Biol- ogy at Bowdoin College, is Associate in Marine Biology on our staff. He is especially interested in the sounds of fishes and their relation to fish behavior and is making pioneering studies in this field. duction of sound, that some fish sounds may be responses to other sounds, and that fishes may orient to sounds in more subtle ways than most of us had anticipated. A recent publication by the author and Richard H. Backus on the effects of man-made sounds on fish movements pointed out the lack of evi- dence for the consistent in- fluencing of fish movements by sound, other than in con- ditioning experiments. There are exceptions. During 1954 and 1955, I discovered acci- dently at Woods Hole that it is possible to initiate and suppress the calling of sea robins with artificial sounds during the breeding season of those fishes. Experiments with menhaden and butter- fish have indicated that it may be possible to predict the paths or behavior of fishes within sound fields, that the behavior of different species may vary consider- ably, and that some of the observable movements of fishes within sound fields may be more than simple startle reactions. Kleerekoper has observed that conditioned creek chub follow definite paths in approaching a sound source, paths which are re- lated to sound intensities. 37 Many different species of fishes, notably croakers, drums and sea robins, de- velop calls during the breed- ing season and, among the croakers and drums, sexual differences in the calls are apparent. Many species of fishes produce characteristic sounds under certain condi- tions, such as duress, that are probably not produced at other times — the grunt of the sea robin, the fin flutter of the trigger fishes, the bark- ing of the squirrel fish and groupers, the whine of the angelfish. It is unfortunate that for any observations of fishes at sea an unnatural factor is introduced into the environment in the person of tion. Last summer at the American Museum of Natural History's Lerner Marine Lab- oratory at Bimini in the Ba- hamas, I watched the behav- ior of grouper and squirrel fish through a face plate and from glass-bottom boats over the reefs, as these fishes eyed an approaching hydrophone, barked sharply in its direc- tion and then turned to dart into holes in the reef. I also watched a twelve-inch black angelfish nibbling at the hy- • V • ' Making a picture of sound. The noise of this sea robin and other animals are made visual by summer student Diane Pardoe working the frequency vibration analyzer. the observer and his convey- ance; however, some obser- vations of interest have been obtained at sea. Thus Griffin has analyzed a call and its echo, tentatively ascribed to a fish, recorded from the CARYN in deep water one hundred miles north of Puer- to Rico, and has suggested the possibility that a fish might have been using an echo-location device at a level below that of light penetra- drophone, suddenly give vent to its whining cry and swim away to an approaching fish of the same species, continu- ing to call as the two fish faced each other for a few seconds. Finally, both came quietly to the hydrophone as if to examine it. Sound Fishing Unaware of the scarcity of experimental evidence that the activities of fishes are in- 38 fluenced by sound, several fisheries, especially in Asia, have long utilized sound to improve the catch. Ryukyuan fisherman use 'scare ropes' in dragging metal rings over the bottom, and 'sound tubs' to create a pounding on the surface. These, in conjunction with swimming fishermen, are thought to scare fishes from crevices and toward the nets. In Bontang, Mahakam, East Borneo, a limited fishery uses a 'kuruck-kuruck' — a triangu- lar bamboo frame with coco- nut half shells strung along one side of the triangle. The fishermen are convinced that when this is shaken under water by means of a short handle, certain kinds of fishes are attracted to hooks hung from the boat. On our own west and east coasts, herring fishermen, pounding with a heavy wood- en mallet on the deck of the fishing boat at night, can spot the location of herring schools as the startled fish cause myri- ad small luminescent animals to glow. The habit of menhad- en and herring fishermen of striking the water or boat with oars during the closing of a seine to frighten the en- circled fish from the still open gap, has its counterpart in a Malayan fishery in the thrashing of an ornamented pole stuck into the water in front of a large seine, the noise being believed to fright- en fishes into the pocket. The method is also reflected in 'blashing' — a restricted sal- mon and sea trout fishery of Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire, England, of which I am in- formed by Dr. John S. Col- man. Here, fishermen create a loud noise while rowing parallel to the shore at night, afterward placing a seine around the area between shore and their course, the ends of the seine being hauled in from shore. "The point is," writes Dr. Colman, "that the men believe that the noise of blashing scares the fish and that any fish between the boat's course and the sand rush into the shallow water away from the noise, where they are rounded up in the subsequent haul of the seine net." Sounds made by the fish also are utilized in some fish- eries. In India and in Indo- nesia the presence of edible sound producing species is detected by listening at one end of a pole running from the water to the ear in the nature of a stethoscope. In- deed, around the shores of the warmer areas of the world, fish sounds are a fa- miliar component of the fish- erman's experience and these sounds are used as an indica- tion of good fishing as far north as Japan. The art of fish listening reaches its high- est refinement in Malaya in the net leader fish listener, or juru selam. Although in modern times these fish de- tecting specialists have taken to the wearing of goggles as a visual aid, in years gone by the placing of the net was guided through listening only. Mr. E. R. A. de Zylva has written me of a conversation with a Malayan fish listener who not only affirmed that while swimming he could 39 recognize by ear the species and number of fishes present, but that he derived much additional information as to the activity of nearby fishes through listening, explaining his power as follows: "When you are walking in the sun and pass into the shade of the forest you feel a differ- ence on your skin." Other na- tives regard the experienced Malayan fish listener with awe and he is reputed to be immune to shark bite. Interest to Man Fish sounds are part of the normal behavior of many fishes, and it is likely that they play an important part in their lives. The sounds are of interest to man for many reasons; through laboratory analysis of recordings they provide a means of identifica- tion of fishes at sea which may not be seen, they provide a means of charting the dis- tribution of sound producing species, and they may provide new insight into orientation mechanisms of which as yet v/e are ignorant. Most excit- ing of all, they suggest the possibility that eventually it may be possible to use sound to some extent to direct the movements and activities of fishes. Track of the R. V. "Crawford" during present cruise. The ship will return about June 1st. 40 MBL/WHOI LIBRARY UH 17YU Z ASSOCIATES OF THE WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION GERARD SWOPE, JR., Chairman N. B. McLEAN, President JOHN A. GIFFORD, Secretary RONALD A. VEEDER, Executive Assistant EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CHARLES F. ADAMS, JR. BENJAMIN H. ALTON WINSLOW CARLTON RACHEL L. CARSON PRINCE S. CROWELL F. HAROLD DANIELS POMEROY DAY JOHN A. GIFFORD CAPTAIN PAUL HAMMOND N. B. McLEAN HENRY S. MORGAN MALCOLM S. PARK GERARD SWOPE, JR. THOMAS J. WATSON, JR. JAMES H. WICKERSHAM INDUSTRIAL COMMITTEE Chairman: CHARLES F. ADAMS, JR. President, Raytheon Manufacturing Company ROBERT M. AKIN, JR. F. M. BUNDY W. VAN ALAN CLARK POMEROY DAY M. C. GALE M1LLARD G. GAMBLE F. L. LaQUE LOUIS E. MARRON T. V. MOORE WILLIAM T. SCHWENDLER D. D. STROHMEIER MILES F. YORK President, Hudson Wire Company President, Gorton Pew Fisheries Chairman, Avon Products, Inc. Partner, Robinson, Robinson and Cole President, Monarch Buick Company President, Esso Shipping Company Vice President, International Nickel Company Chairman, Coastal Oil Company Esso Research and Engineering Company Executive Vice President, Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation Vice President, Bethlehem Steel Company President, Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company Ix RAYMOND STEVENS, President COLUMBUS O'D. ISELIN, Director EDWIN D. BROOKS, JR., Treasurer Contents Articles THE RECENT GOTEBORG MEETINGS 2 Columbus O'D. helm AIRBORNE OCEANOGRAPHY 5 William J. Richardson HOW COLD IS A WHALE'S TAIL? 13 John W. Kanivishtr THE SOUNDS OF FISHES 35 James M. Moulton Features ASSOCIATES NEWS 12 CURRENTS AND TIDES 19 OCEANUS GOES TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA 2O DEEP WATER 33 Published by WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS