ME\nr NO i .

TUMN 1&54

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WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION
WOODS HOLE , MASSACHUSETTS

EDITOR: JAN HAHN

Published quarterly ar.d distributed to (He
Associates of the Woods Hole Oceanographic In-
stitution and others interested in Oceanography.

Composed and printed by the reproduction
dtpar tmcn f *, of the Ins ti tut ion.

Henry B. Bibelot/

Chairman of the Board or Vrustees

Edward H. Smith

Oi rector

Arnoud C. Marts
President of the Corporation

Aif-ed C. Redfieid
Associate Director

Columbus O'D. i

Senior Ocecnoqropher -

NOVI ORB IS, NOVA DESCRIPTIO.

Jt is said of Richard Hakluyt, famous chronicler of
Elizabethan voyages, that he was drawn to the study of geog-
raphy upon seeing a map of the world and so 'waded farther
and farther in the sweet study of cosmographie .

Old charts make us think of perilous voyages: 'Of
another Nation of wilde men, Of their manners, living and
clothing. ' They make us think of tropical shores: 'V/hsere
wee found five Chests, that had beene carefully hidden of
the Salvages. ' The old charts were used by merchants, send-
ing out their ships: 'With God's mercie, ' to bring back
spices, tea, flaked cod and rare woods. The mingling smell
of those fragrant cargoes still lingers in the warehouses of
old por t s .

The beauty and craftsmanship displayed in the charts
of Mercator, the Blaeus, Dudley, Orelius and others made
objects of art of eminently practical works which aided in
rapidly expanding the known world and its trade.

Made without the aid of modern surveying methods, be-
fore the day of the chronometer, the accuracy of old sea
charts is amazing. Indeed, the coastlines of the world were
much better known than the land, where, as Jonathan Swift
exclaimed in 'On Poetry, A Rhapsody:'

'So geographers, in Afric maps
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o'er unhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.

EDITORIAL

We hereby resolve and faithfully promise the
shall never hold out a tidbit of "coming

that we

tions" as we did in the summer issue of OCEANUS.

readers
at t rac-

" We hope to be able
fantastic project for

to report on a most interesting

and fantastic project for which the Institution has pre-
pared the groundwork". Indeed we did. But what happened?
As soon as the summer issue was out, the "Texas Towers Pro-
ject"was on the front pages of all metropolitan newspapers.

Under the guidance of Mr. Iselin and Dr. Zeigler,
submarine geologist, the research vessel Caryn had made
many topography surveys to decide v/here the radar warning
towers could be placed off the East Coast. Predictions of
ocean wave conditions, surface and subsurface currents,
etc., had also been made. Messrs. Owen, Zeigler, Athearn
and Edwards repeatedly had donned their aqua- lung equipment
and exposure suits and during all seasons of the past year
went to the bottom in the hazardous currents of Georges
Bank off Cape Cod and in other areas. As we go to press
some of our divers are on the site of the Georges Bank
tower to place an unattended wave recorder on one of the
pilings below sea level.

Deep borings made by a DeLong Texas oil barge on
Georges Bank provided some interesting geological infor-
mation. It appears that the Bank is a drowned "Nantucket",
a series of underwater sand dunes surrounded by deeper
water where the bottom is covered with typically soft sedi-
ments. How the sand remains on the Bank is still an un-
solved puzzle. In a future issue of OCEANUS we hope to
report

CARO

Carol, Edna and, as we write
this, Hazel are not exactly
favorite names for girls in
this fall's baby crop at Woods
Hole. Although Edna merely
let us know that she was pass-
ing by, Carol hit us with all
her might at the time of high
water between 10:00 A.M. and
1:30 P.M. on August 31.

and

was

As the water rose higher
higher Woods Hole harbor
swept clear of yachts, small and lar^e. Several large
yachts were deposited on the lawns of some of our Associates
living on Penzance Point, among them the Buccaneer of our
Trustee Dr. Detlev W. Bronk. A total loss the ship was
burned to the ground a week later, a sad sight indeed for
those who love the sea and ships and sadder still if one
knows how attached Dr. Bronk was to his beautiful vessel.

The Institution's ships by contrast faired quite
well. Fortunately, Atlantis was at Bermuda while the Caryn
and the Bear rode out the storm alongside our dock. Only
minor damage was suffered by the ships, although it took
the combined efforts of Port Captain John Pike, ship's offi-
cers and crews to save the ships. First mate James Cava-
iiangh of the Caryn received a severe blow on the head from
which he has recovered. The Asterias was tied safely on
the leeside of the town dock.

During the
waist deep on Main

worst of the storm the water level rose
Street, flooding and damaging much equip-

ment in the basement of the Institution building and the
main floor of the new Laboratory of Oceanography. A heavy
beam battered the dockside walls of the Hydraulics Labora-
tory and the welding shop but the most serious damage was
that done to the docks and seawalls, necessitating exten-
sive and expensive repairs.

The hurricane also caused losses in less tangible
things, such as time lost to repairing, the enforced absence
of employees and the work loss caused by the discontinuation
of electricity and telephone service for almost a week.

As a bright point on the horizon some good may come
from the storms. Dr. Redfielc) and Mr. Miller have collected
scientific data regarding the path and the high water levels
associated with Carol. It is hoped that these data and
similar information gathered by Dr. Redfield after previous
hurricanes may aid in predicting the floods associated with
hurricanes of any given path.

CONDENSATION

EVAPORATION

RIVER

D.*C*M ,t WATER CYCLE

TAGGED

IVM i j :1

A.C.REDFIELD

THE MOVEMENT OF WATER from the air to the land, from
the land to the sea, and from there back to the atmosphere
is called the water cycle. It is one of the gr eat pro-
cesses on which the varied character of man's environment
depends. It supplies water for growing crops, energy for
electric power, rivers to float ships, and ponds for fish
and boys and girls to swim in.

Science is concerned with tracing the movements of
water across the face of the earth in its every detail.
Much is learned from measuring the quantities of water
which move as such, as we do with rain gauges, current
meters, hygrometers, and the like. But how can we tell
from whence comes the water which falls in a summer thun-
dershower, or what becomes of the water of a melting ice-
berg, or the outflow of a river into the ocean? When rain
falls on land we know quite surely that the water which
does not evaporate flows back to the sea. How much evapo-
rates, and what paths does the moisture of the air follow
before falling again as rain? And what course does the
water which falls in the sea take before passing back into
the atmosphere?

Jagged Water

To answer these questions we need to be able to tag
the parcels of water or the water molecules themselves so
that we may know them when we meet them again.

Meteorologists recognize the source of the great
parcels of air which make the weather by their temperature
and humidity. Polar air is cold and dry, air masses from
over the Gulf of Mexico are warm and moist. In this sense,
the air is tagged by its physical properties. In the same
way sea water is tagged by its temperature and salinity.
These qualities do not change rapidly as the water drifts
about. They enable us to trace its movements over great
distances and to learn where and to what extent one mass
of wuter is mingling with another. This is one of the
reasons oc eanographers are so much concerned with measure-
ments of temperature and salinity. Other properties of sea
water, such as oxygen or phosphorus content, may also be
used as tags, but these markings are not indelible, since
they may be altered by the activity of animals and plants.

Atomic physics has given us a new kind of tag --
this time a marked water molecule. About one water mole-
cule in seven thousand is heavier than the others because
one hydrogen atom in the h^O is replaced by an atom of
deuterium. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen; that is to
say, it is an atom which behaves chemically just like hy-
drogen; but actually it weighs twice as much. Water which
contains deuterium is called heavy water, and it can be
identified by its weight.

Heavy water does not evaporate as readily as HoO.
For this reason the evaporate from natural bodies of water,
1 he moisture which passes into the atmosphere, is lighter
tli a n the water from which it came. Its deuterium content
is about 6 per cent less than the natural water. It fol-
lows that the deuterium content of the water of the ocean
will increase where evaporation is heavy. Its content in
the atmospheric water will vary depending on what part of
the ocean the water vapor has come lro.m. So it is that sea
w;iter and air become tagged by their deuterium content.
V'lien rain falls on the land its deuterium should help tell
where it came from, and as it flows down a river how much
has been "lost" by evaporation.

4

The discovery of heavy water and the development of
techniques for its measurement have given oceanographers
and meteorologists a new tag for water, and a new problem
to puzzle out. The U.S. Geological Survey has started a
study of the distribution of deuterium in natural waters.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is cooperating in
this investigation by supplying samples of water from stra-
tegic places and by advice on the oceanography of the prob-
lem. The ocean is the great source of the waters of the
earth. The distribution of deuterium in the ocean will be
the starting point from which the migrations of heavy water
through the air and across the land will be traced.

ASSOCIATES NEWS

The Executive Committee of the Institution has voted
to use $5,000 from the Associates Fund to support basic
research. It will be used to advance the program reported
on pages 3-5 of this issue.

Funds from the Associates already have been applied
to institute an annual summer program of lectures for the
benefit of our staff members, students and others. Last
summer, Dr. Jule G. Charney of the Institute for Advanced
Study gave a series of six lectures on modern developments
in meteorology. Other worthy programs of great benefit to
the advancement of our basic knowledge of the sea are in
preparation and will be discussed with your Executive Com-
mittee .

Meritt-Chapman and Scott Corporation of New York
has joined the growing Corporate Associates group.

\

SEPTEMBER WAS a traveling month for our Director aim 1
several staff members. Admiral Smith flew to Rome, Italy to
attend meetings of the International Geophysical Union and
to take part in planning the oceanographic observations to
be made during the Geophysical Year 1957-58. During that
year 28 countries are co-operating in making simultaneous
observations which will give us a better understanding of
our physical world.

Dr. Mary Sears and Mr. Wm. S. von Arx
Rome. Dr. Sears attended discussions of the
Oceanography and Mr. von Arx read a paper at

also were in
Comm i 1 1 e e on
the meeting.

Following the Rome meetings, Admiral Smith visited
oceanographic and meteorological facilities in Germany, Nor-
way, Sweden and England. Dr. Sears and Mr. von Arx also
went to foreign laboratories.

Mr. Harry J. Turner read a paper on
Paris, France meet ings of the International
Exploration of the Sea.

shellfish at the
Council for the

Mr. Alfred II. Woodcock, Duncan Blanchard and Theodore
Spencer are in Havaii taking part in an international study
of natural rainfall for which Hawaii makes a perfect nature-
made laboratory. Mr. Woodcock laid the groundwork for the
present large scale undertaking during a previous visit of
about nine months.

SOUND

IN MARINE RESEARCH

. MERSEY

A

MANY AMERICANS INTERESTED IN THE OCEANS and their
effect on human life persistently associate scientific tech-
niques used in oceanography with their immediate, practical
application in human affairs. Thus, biological investi-
gations are associated strongly with fisheries, submarine
geophysics with oil exploration and underwater acoustics
with the art of war. The necessary restriction of public
knowledge about many of the details of the naval sciences
has all too frequently left the impression that underwater
acoustics is a discipline of limited scope and application
and, further, that it is never to be inquired about because
of its military classification.

This impression is partially correct in that under-
water sound is being applied to naval problems in ways and
on a scale that is not to be^publicly discussed. However,
the scope of its possible usefulness in studying the oceans
is far from limited to naval science. For example, sonic
sounding methods have been widely used since shortly after
the first World War and more recently similar techniques

Underwater Sound

have been very widely used for finding commercially impor-
tant fishes; sound transmission in the sea is used everyday
in offshore oil exploration, and in scientific study of the
structure of the Earth's crust beneath the oceans. I be-
lieve that these techniques and others in underwater acous-
tics are promising aids in the general scientific study of
the oceans and that more of them will come into everyday use
in the future. There are several of us with this belief
working in underwater acoustics at the Institution, and are
devoting some of our time to non-military studies to in-
crease our own understanding of underwater sound phenomena
and to apply its techniques to other marine science prob-
lems. We have shared some of our enthusiasms with the Woods
Hole Associates both during the past two annual cruises and
during your visits to the Institution over a longer time.
In this article I am going to sketch for you the progress
of the past few years in one application of underwater a-
coustics. If you are sufficiently interested we would be
glad to tell you about other parts of our scientific program
in future issues of OCEANUS.

Sonic sounding

The first underwater acoustic technique to be applied
in the everyday life of the sea is sonic sounding. This
technique finds the depth of water below a ship by measuring
the time required for a burst of sound generated at the ship
to echo from the bottom and return to the ship. While this
may seem somewhat "old hat" because we have all heard about
it many times before, nevertheless it is a basic technique
which has many intriguing variations that can be applied to
problems far removed from the capabilities of present day
instruments. One such variation is its use as a "fish-
finder" in commercial fishing. The scientific application
I want to tell you about parallels this application rather
closely.

The early echo sounders employed a rather low-pitched
burst of sound and because ships characteristically are very
noisy in the low frequencies it was necessary to stop the
ship whenever a sounding was taken. Several years before
the second World War sounding machines were developed em-
ploying very high frequencies, usually above the range of
human hearing. Not only are ships quieter at the high fre-
quencies but it turns out to be feasible to design a sound
source and receiver for these high frequencies that is so
strongly directional that it is largely "deaf" to the noise
of the ship but hears the echo from the bottom with great

8

efficiency. These new instruments allowed a ship to take
soundings continuously while underway. This possibility in
turn made it profitable to record the soundings automati-
cally with specially designed recorders. These are the
familiar recorders of every commercial echo sounder in which
a recording stylus moves across a long strip of recording
paper at a speed gauged to the speed of sound in water to
record the outgoing burst of sound near one edge of the
paper and the bottom echo at its appropriate depth on a
printed scale. Thus the bottom could readily be recognized
by its consistent recording on several successive soundings.
Such a record is shown in fig. 1. It represents a twenty-
four hour recording taken on the ATLANTIS in deep water off
the southern coast of New England in 1947.

FIG. 1

Scattering layers

As soon as these instruments were used observers
found that on occasion echoes appeared to make consistent
recordings which could not have come from the bottom. These
extraneous echoes were of various forms and not all of them
have been satisfactorily described. The most persistent in
deep water was an apparent layering within the water itself.
This was studied in some detail by California scientists
during the second World Viar who called a layering they con-
sistently observed the "Deep Scattering Layer". Since then
a similar layering has been observed in all but the two
polar oceans. Martin Johnson in the early California work
reasoned that the cause of the layer was related to animal
life in the sea because the commonly observed layer mi-
grated upward at sunset and downward at dawn. Fig. 1 shows
a typical scattering layer in the Atlantic performing such
a diurnal migration. The early California work was all
done prior to 1946. Since that time there has been con-
siderable speculation about the "cause" of the scattering
layer. What is i_t? Today tKts question still lacks a sat-
isfactory answer. Nevertheless this puzzle is much nearer
solution as a result of subsequent experiments all of which
are basically similar to the ordinary echo sounder.

Underwater Sound

Firstly you will see that in fig. 1 an ocean depth
greater than a mile is portrayed on a piece of paper a few
inches wide (the original recording is 8 inches wide). Fur-
thermore, the burst of sound has a length equivalent to a
depth of a tenth of a mile, or a hundred fathoms. This
amounts to painting with a rather broad brush! When one
"looks" at the ocean with a much shorter sound signal and
with a much more open depth scale a very different picture
is frequently seen, as in fig. 2.

FIG. 2

This is a record taken
of a scattering layer
with a sound signal
about 5 feet long whose
full scale depth is 210
feet. The ' layer" now
appears as isolated in-
dividuals whose repeated
echoes form crescent
shaped patterns as they drift beneath the echo sounder.
Each crescent may be caused by an individual or a group
moving together. They appear as a layer with the recorder
of fig. 1 because they are concentrated in a certain depth
range and because the long sound signal tends to average out
their individuality, recording them only as a group. The
technique illustrated in fig. 2 proves that the scattering
layer of that recording is not a single extensive reflecting
surface. It is made up of individuals or small groups which
inhabit a restricted depth range. When a long sound signal
is reflected from them and received by a ship moving rela-
tively rapidly over them the resulting record looks like a
continuous layer.

Now what happens when a layer "migrates"? Do the
individuals of a layer all swim upwards at sunset or do
they concentrate both from above and below at shallower and
shallower depths as the light intensity decreases? This
question was studied recently from the ATLANTIS by sus-
pending an echo sounder just above a layer before sunset.
Fig. 3 shows what happened. Shortly after sunset the con-
centration of crescent shaped echo sequences increases, and
further, the crescents now move consistently upward from
left to right. In due course a very dense concentration of
these individuals moves upward across the record, while

sunset

10

-VSi ->/-w-Tii 5* f~bJil..!t**- -"V'

later on the concentration decreases and marked upward mi-
gration ceases. The time of the upward motion of the indi-
viduals agrees with that of the layer recorded by the former
technique, thus we know that the upward motion of the layer
is made up of upward moving individuals. To know that indi-
viduals or small groups of them are indeed the sound scat-
terers is a very considerable help along the way to identi-
fying them.

Underwater photography

As a next observation, which we are trying hard to
make now, we are combining the acoustical apparatus that
made the records of fig. 2 and 3 with an underwater camera.
With such a combination we hope to take photographs of what-
ever is reflecting the sound only when we know it must ap-
pear in focus to the camera. This has proven to be a dif-
ficult experiment to do the first time, but we hope to do
it this fall. Although many hundreds of photographs have
been taken to study the deep scattering layer, all have been
relatively unrewarding. For example, while a few people
have photographed individuals in good enough focus for iden-
tification, we could not demonstrate that the camera was
ever focussed on a known sound scatterer. In this experi-
ment we can be certain it is focussed on one and, further,
we can know how strong a scatterer it is. The remaining
uncertainty is whether the photograph will permit us to
identify the scatterer. Other photographs in the deep scat-
tering layers have shown images, but, with the few excep-
tions they were too indistinct to be identified at all.
Thus the first successful photographs are an exciting pros-
pect. If we are fortunate we may know at least one kind of
creature making up the scattering layer and may have a use-
ful technique for discovering more. If we are not -- well,
I'll not borrow trouble, but let events speak for themselves.

While this technique has been developing we have
worked on other acoustic means of describing the sound scat-
terers, and have learned other useful methods which will
also aid in identifying small sound scatterers such as fish.
These identification methods can often be used where a
direct means such as photography is impractical. However,
this is another story.

CURRENTS a TIDES

For once the Atlantis is look-
ing for bad weather rather
than hoping to avoid it.

Testing of newly developed
wave recorders makes it nec-
essary to find waves 8 to 16
feet high. Two Navy planes
are working with the ship to
obtain stereoscopic photo-
graphs of ocean waves for the
Stereo Ocean Wave Project
sponsored by the Office of
Naval Research.

In his hotel at Rome, Italy,
Admiral Smith accidentally met
Associates Mr. & Mrs. Thomas
H. Wickenden. Mr. Wickenden
is V i c e - Pr e s i de n t of Inter-
national Nickel Corporation.

Plans are underway for a two
months winter cruise to the
Carribean Sea. The structure
of the Island Arc, its geo-
logical formation and history
will be studied with the aid
of seismic measurements, cor-
ing tubes, rock dredges, etc.

The research vessels Atlantis
and Bear will participate in
the cruise. Dr. Charles B.
Officer, Jr. is to be chief
scientist .

Following this cruise the
vessels will be taken over in
a Carribean port by Dr. J.B.
Hersey who will study the
structure of the Blake Pla-
teau and the deep water area
to the southeast of the Caro-
1 inas .

Mr. C.O'D. Iselin, Dr. A.C.
Redfield and Dr. M. Ewing
attended a Conference on
Oceanography sponsored by the
Department of Mines and the
Nova Scotia Research Foun-
dation held at the Nova Scotia
Centre for Geological Sci-
ences .

The November issue of the
"UNESCO" Courier contains a
four page article on ocean-
ography .

A white sided porpoise was
harpooned on Georges Bank
recently by Wm. J. Shields,
engineer of the R.V. Bear.

Cetologist Wm. E. Schevill and
biologist Richard H. Backus
dissected the small whale
about whose biology very lit-
tle is known.

A small relative of Moby Dick,
an albino, was also noticed
among the school of white
sided porpoises.

12

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

of the
WOODS HOLE OCEANOCRAPHIC ASSOCIATES

GERARD SWOPE, JR., President
JOHN A. CIFFORD, Secretary

WINSLOW CARLTON
RACHEL L. CARSON
GEORGE F. JEWETT
HENRY S. MORGAN

EDWARD A. NORMAN

MALCOLM S. PARK

THOMAS J. WATSON, JR.

JAMES H. WICKERSHAM

WILLIAM D. WINTER

Chairman

NOEL B. MCLEAN

Committee of Corporate Associates

EX OFFICIO: OFFICERS

of the
WOODS HOLE OCEANOCRAPHIC INSTITUTION

ARNAUD C. MARTS, President

EDWARD H. SMITH, Director

EDWIN D. BROOKS, JR., Treasurer

Publish?

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHJ
WOODS HOLE , MASSAC1