The Marine Foods of Birds in an Inland Fjord Region in West Spitsbergen: Part 1. Plankton and in Shore Benthos

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As a result of previous Oxford University Expeditions to Spitsbergen ecological accounts of the terrestrial plants and animals have been published (1). In the summer of 1933 the Oxford University Arctic Expedition established a Base Camp at the head of Klaas Billen Bay in Icefjord, West Spitsbergen and observations on the marine fauna were carried out from a small whale boat equipped with an outboard engine. Bruce City was used as a base (see Map 1). Since copious marine faunal lists for Spitsbergen waters have already been published as a result of the work of such large Expeditions as the Norwegian North Atlantic Expedition of 1876-78, the Russian Ermak Expedition of 1901, De Geer's Swedish Expedition of 1908, and the numerous Expeditions sent out from Norway in the Torvik and Amauer Hansen, no attempt was made to augment these lists in the time and with the equipment at our disposal. The main object of this paper is to give some account of the distribution and relative abundance of the marine animals in the surface plankton and shallow coastal region around Bruce City and note the chief species used as food by the large and essentially migrant bird population. My colleagues, C. H. Hartley and J. Fisher, will deal in detail with the feeding of the birds in Part 2.