The Scottish Marine Biological Association

Abstract

The Scottish Marine Biological Association has a historical link with the Royal Society through the Challenger Expedition which took place in response to representations by the Council of the Society. Its inspirer and director was Professor Charles Wyville Thomson of Edinburgh, and the administrative centre for the working out of its results was situated in that city. After Wyville Thomson’s premature death in 1882 his place was taken by the senior naturalist of the expedition John Murray. In addition to his work as Head of the Challenger Office, Murray, with the financial aid of many personal friends, founded the small Scottish Marine Station built at the margin of a submerged quarry at Granton and having as tender a small yacht the Medusa , fully equipped with sounding and dredging apparatus, and a floating barge laboratory the Ark . The activities of the station under its superintendent J. T. Cunnings ham were directed specially towards fishery problems—the spawning grounds of the herring, the pelagic eggs and larvae of the other food fishes, and that special enemy of the line fishermen, the hagfish Myxine .