Show aft ja aw M JN 1 J ed 01 irl n Y 61 N k I 1 va R V M drifting icebergs lee bergt marl out the labrador coast prepared by the national society washington D C Q I 1 OUGH it may be true that A ALTHOUGH the principal ship shI planes ln anost ost of the ocean are almost ns as definitely traveled and marked ns att a lincoln highway or a long irland boult vard our knowledge of the hounding bounding rouin Is only fragmentary to begin with ith tile lie area of the sea Is about three times us ai large as thu t of the land although as long ago as 1904 tile the governments of the ifie c civilized I 1 i world hal got together some observations of every kind and sort from the logs of merchantman merchantmen merchant men warships and government vessels and although the results of a single espedal mon con have filled over 50 massive quarto Yo volumes lumes what we know kivov about tile the sea Is in but tile the primer of tile the things it hns hils to reveal tile the most thing about the sea is its shallowness as compared with the size elzo of tile the earth and its depth as compared with the height of the land it if you cereto were to take a globe six els feet la in diu diameter meter and excavate the deepest trench of the ocean thereon the reou it would be tt a bare pin scratch deep about one twentieth of df an inch and yet so BO profound are the alie depths odthe of the sea that the bulk built of the water tn in it Is 15 times as great as tile tho bulk of tiro tile land that rises above its waves in its deepest trench the tallest mountain on the the tho globe could be burled and abd ships coulLe till pass over tile spot with a balf eife of water under them i the average depth of the ocean la Is more than two mites about feet the pliers estimate on the other hind hand the of the land I 1 Is less than half a mile til about mut 2250 teet feet how flow much further bene beneath beneath nth the he waves the sea bottom lies than the land crest above them tb em Is shown by the fact that ahll e only I 1 per cent of the land rises to an ulof tude tilde of feet 40 per cent of thi oceans hoor lies under more than feet of water the relative height of the land surface and the sea idea bottom la Is about in keeping with their relative areas area there being 71 acres occupied by ille sea for every 29 held field by the land if it were possible to drain oft off the upper feet of the waters of tile the sea bea and to lay bare the floor that lies under it ft the territory thus recovered added to the land now above the sea would give only a fifty fifty division between land and water broad continental shelf the oceans as we know them are larger than the true ocean basis av As ft a monument la Is always planted on oil a base so the lie continents have broad undersea under sea bases upon which to rest to tile the oceanographers there Is a line known ns the fathom line which largely parallels par allees the shore line but which chichis chIs as sometimes 0 i much as sevc ril hundred miles out to sea ahen chilt tl nt line Is reached the bottom suddenly begins to slope down toward the abysmal dept depths lis tile the floor door lying landward from this line Is known as the alie continental shelf and it ts is upon tilts tills broad shelf with no an aggregate area three times belarge n large as that of the united states that tile the continents are arc planted dy by overflowing tills tift vast aren area of slightly submerged territory the oceans gather unto to themselves square miles of tt te wilt that in elevation belongs more to the land than to tile the see bea As ae a matter of fact the continental shelf bhelt lies in port under water nud and in part above the part above being the alluvial plains of the c continents on tine rl t a where abere these plains are broad the shelf usually Is broad and where they are narrow the shelf Is usually narrow por for instance the plain on our atlantic coast Is broad und and there Is 13 a corresponding breadth to the continental tin entil shelf on the pacific const coast the alluvial plain I 1 Is very narrow find anil tile the fathom line Is correspondingly close to shore prom from a practical standpoint tte part of the sea of most immediate interest to man Is that which rests tile the continental stielf shelf lore here are situated all the sen seaboard board cities wherever the ocean lanes may meander up and down tile the briny deep they begin on the continental shelf and end there but for that shelf there here would he no buys bays or gulfs no harbors and pr havens for the boundaries of the true ocean basins are infinitely more rp gular and less es indented than tile the 1 shar ocean bound comin commerce erce would be vastly inconvenienced if it had to dispense dh with all the nd ad vau vantages lages that the continental shelt shelf brings to it sea food an important question A mutter matter that seems destined to occupy R larger place in fil 1 oceanographic research la the question of pea food the world war demonstrated boar close I 1 Is themi the margin argin between food pro and food consumption and liow how much more pressing t lie ho food question Is destined to grow in the eal years of peace and racial expansion that 11 ho e ahead the oceans teem with food I 1 the man who declared that humanity Is a race of herring catchers might have overstated the case but that tile q sea abounds in ili fo fored od fishes and fishes lit fit for food Is well known As soon a 1 as we begin to study tile the subject of 0 ocean fisheries I 1 however io wever wa fe come up x short against the fact that what wo we really know about the inhabitants of thelea lie sea Is startlingly limited another phase of oceanography that w will demand and receive close atten tl alon on in tho years to come la Is the ocean currents tho the effect of these great rivers alvera of the sea upon the welfare of i 11 the human race Is past imagination jt i atas it Is said that tile the gulf stream carries iz i enough heat toward europe every 21 hours to melt a mai mass of iron as large rt ns as mount washington 1 rear hear admiral pillsbury allsbury describing i tills this rema remarkable river of tho the sea says V that every hour there passes through gl the straits of florida the enormous enor moua total of tons of water carrying enough salt gait to load many times over every ship that rails falls tile the main through these saralta tile it stream rijs s 40 miles mile s wide it carries moro more than all tile the streams of VI the world brin down from froin the land to the sen ea 1 in ench each of the four quarters teis of tho the 91 globe there Is it a wonderful circulatory system the heavy cold waters of tile polar seas rushing and tato light warm waters of trople tropic f sweeping back giving a huge swirl not unlike the motion of water ja driven around the bottom of a basin t by the hand bond puzzle of af the ocean currents vessels and debris caught tn in these thes 9 currents often play uncanny ny tricks lu in 1905 the stanley dollar nn an american freighter went upon the r rocks ks at tile the entrance to yokohama bay per her life s preservers were washed out as she lily lay upon the beach upon which she wasi y run to prevent tier her sinking t in 1011 1911 two of tier her ilfe preservers were picked up on the shores of tile tho shetland islands north of scotland A how they reached there Is one ol of thol 3 puzzling questions that so often arise ailsa the sea ald they sweep up the const coast through gli Be firing strait f and then through gli the northwest pas paa sage and baffin bay and thence by iceland to the shetland islands or did they after floating through the S northwest passage get into the polar 41 s current and sweep down the lie atlantic lititia tic I 1 to the point where that ocean river kj r dives under the gulf str stream eoin to bo be picked up there by the latter cur car rent and carried to the shetland Is A lands t 4 44 it tins has often been urged that the if american indian came to the shores ais of the new world an unwilling vay voy ager on t the he bosom of the japan cu cur r rent certain it to la that all of cheso vat rivers of the ocean have played an incalculably important role in tile the affairs of the human humar frace race and that a more exhaustive study of them thun than lies has been made holds many revelations in store one of the questions that Is often asked Is ie whether a still ship slaking sinking in ili deep water goes to the bottom or v whether she finds finisher find sher her level in some vertical depth zone zone and drifts on for ory ever this question sprong sprang into great prominence when tile the titanic went down abild was asked frequently dur ing the world war the answer la 19 sh she e goes directly to the bottom else how could a dredge or a trawl be sent down five miles i one of the strange things tuat that naph pen when chips sink Is that implosions occur these are arie inward bur stings often with a force as tremendous As as the outward bursting caused by ex plo of gunpowder As aa the ship i sinks into deep water air chambee that do not fill up are burst inward 1 with a force proportionate to their resistance it there be corked bottled bottle 4 tu in the stores elores that are not entirely full T the corks are daiv driven C n in or the bot bottles ti e it f y burst with what force these implosions 1 occur may be gathered from an espe elpe fience of a scientific expedition A thermometer was waa let down into very deep water wrapped in fit protecting cloth when the line was drown drawn up u the cloth contained no thermometer instead it contained a lot of impalpable pl I 1 p able white stuff resembling SLOW si owr the implosion bad not shivered the th thermometer into the proverbial thou 1 sand pieces it tied had simply transformed it into dus du dust t wood sent to the bottom of the deep places of 61 the tha ocean has its very cells invaded and crushed and loses its 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