(A) Institutions on the Pacific Side of Canada and the United States: Introduction

Abstract

In connection with the Oceanographic activities on the Pacific side of Canada and the United States, some account should be taken of the oceanographic program at the fifth Pacific Science Congress which was held under the auspices of the National Research Council of Canada in Victoria and Vancouver, B. C., June 1 to 14, 1933. There are given at this Congress about one hundred and fifty papers dealing with subjects definitely oceanographic or with subjects of significance for oceanographic research. Shortly after my return from the Congress about the end of June I prepared a “Report of oceanography at the Fifth Pacific Science Congress,” had it mimeographed, and distributed it to about two hundred persons. The papers presented at the Congress were classified under six heads: (1) General status of oceanographic research in the Pacific (2) sea‐bottom configuration, hydrographic surveying, gravity‐determinations, and the structure of the Earth's crust beneath the ocean‐basins: (3) marine meteorology dynamical oceanography, and chemistry of sea‐water; (4) biology; ( 5 ) fisheries; (6) fisheries technology. One of the communications is the Report of the International Committee on the Oceanography of the Pacific, which gives a comprehensive account of the work done on the oceanography of the Pacific between May 1929 and June 1933. It contains notes on the principal expeditions, plotting sea‐surface temperatures, study of sea‐bottom configuration, submarine earthquake‐epicenters, marine bottom‐deposit oceanographic activities according to the different countries, corals and coral reefs of the Pacific, and a catalog of the marine stations of the Pacific. This report in now in type and should be ready for distribution in the very near future. The other papers will also be published in the Proceedings of the Fifth Pacific Science Congress.