OCR Text |
Show TO EXPLORE OCEAN'S DEPTHS British Government Contemplating an Expedition for the Gathering of Scientific Information. The British government is contemplating contem-plating the dispatch of a deep-sea exploring ex-ploring expedition which Is expected to gather much valuable 'scientific ln-'formation. ln-'formation. Most people imagine that the depths of the ocean have been pretty thoroughly thor-oughly explored, but this Is very far from being true. As a matter of fact, only a very small fraction of the whole area of deep sea bottom has been surveyed. Attention Is particularly particu-larly called to a vast subaqueous region re-gion around the Falkland islands and up as far as Montevideo, which is almost al-most unknown, and which, having a depth of less than 100 fathoms, may offer opportunities for the development of lucrative fisheries. The first deep-sea exploring expedition, expe-dition, that of the famous Challenger, was set on foot just 50 years ago. The ship left port in 1872, and ideas on the subject were In those days so primitive that there was dispute as to whether she should use wire or hempen rope for soundings. It took a whole day to make one sounding, or a single cast of the dredge for brlnp lug up fishes and other animals. Since then deep-sea sounding apparatus ap-paratus has been much improved by cable ships, and fishing gear has been greatly modified by steam trawlers, which use dredges. Besides, a great deal that Is of value has been learned by oceanographlc expeditions subsequent subse-quent to that of the Challenger. Hence the new exploring vessel will start out with a prospect of accomplishing a very great deal of work of real importance. |