Gadgets Aid Woods Hole Scientists In Mapping World's Ocean Currents

Several weeks ago August Piccard's Bathyscaphe again made headlines when it dropped its magnetically-held ballast eggs some two land one half miles beneath the Atlantic's waves and bobbed up for air, thus completing the deepest dive in history. If any group was unimpressed it was the scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute of most descents (Piccard fell asleep on one) the Institute has generally eschewed the dramatic single man exploits and worked instead with teams of scientists in a matter-of-fact litter of colorful instruments. In place of the squat and formidible Bathyscaphe most of the material gathering for the institute is done by the unique Atlantis, a graceful one hundred and forty-two foot steel ketch.

Stalking the elusive current patterns of the Gulf Stream and mapping the bottom of the Atlantic, the Atlantis has made voyages totalling almost a million miles, which when mapped on a chart look, like a huge spiderweb across the ocean with its focus at Woods Hole. Assisted by the Caryn, a ninety-seven foot ketch that goes on the shorter cruises, the boats often spend 250 days each year at sea.

Unlike the Bathyscaphe explorer who faces a more insidious danger. For on getting together, the Atlantic and Atlantis, can deliver a stomach torturing roll designed to reduce even the hardiest scientist to a pale, seasick green. In the cramped quarters of the best, the dining table is set on a pivot to allow for a roll that often nears fifty degrees.

Current Charting

Despite this real problem, the instrument-packed boat has contributed a vast amount in an almost unknown field--the science of currents. Working mainly around the Gulf Stream, the boat has charted and recharted its shifting course in an efforts to get at the forces that underlie all currents. The traditional problem of charting the Gulf Stream from a moving boat at sea is slowly being solved by some new, and fanciful instruments. One, the bathythermograph, measures the temperature continuously as it is towed behind the ship. The sharp temperature variation between the Gulf Stream and the surrounding water supplies the club to the Stream, while LORAN (Long Range Radar Navigation) solves the difficult problem of giving the ship's exact location on the map.

Another instrument which crowds the cabin of the Atlantis bears the unprepossessing name of Geomagneticelectro-kinetograph (affectionately known as the "geek") and measures temperatures difference in the water by exploiting changes in the earth's magnetic field in a long wire loop dragged behind the boat. Using the principles of this instrument, the Institute experimented last fall on the current that runs through the Florida straits by hitching up electrodes on either end of the Western Union cable that runs to Havana and measuring the potential between the ends. Calculation with the potential gave the amount of water that flows through the entire straits--about equal to a hundred million bathtubs per second.

The Atlantis' exploration of the Gulf Stream, while solving some puzzling questions has raised others almost equally difficult. Perhaps the most curious phenomena yet observed are the great eddies of the Stream. These are huge loops in the twisting Stream that have broken off and floated away--still circulating. Sometimes these eddies reach remarkable size--the Atlantis tracked one in 1947 that was 200 mile long and some 60 miles wide.

Although most of the observation of currents have been made at sea, the Institute has developed one remarkable instrument to predict ocean currents right in the laboratory. This apparatus consists of a large parabaloid bowl on which the outlines of the continents are raised. The bowl is set on a drive shaft that rotates it rapidly and evenly, while from four sides a battery of Kenmore vacuum cleaners blows a steady supply of "trade winds" late the hemisphere. The procedure into pour water into the bottom of the rotating parabaloid while centrifical force spreads it into an even sheet that covers the whole surface, forming the oceans. Dye is then poured into the water to make any water motion visible. As the dye spreads, a remarkable pattern begins to form. Soon a complex of currents spread over the surface of the bowl; in some places there are tangled knots of dye, while in others, such as up the Atlantic Coast, the broad smooth flow of the Gulf Stream appears. This unusual instrument has apparently succeeded in duplicating the major flow patterns of the world's oceans. It has not only already confirmed observed patterns, but has shown other patterns which are as yet only beginning to come under observation. Compared with the sophisticated tools of modern physics this instrument seems almost a toy--but it represents a first attempt at an overall attack on an extremely complex problem of current flow.

Other Research

Besides the study of ocean currents, the Institute deals with many allied oceanographic problems, from the study of submarine geology to the problem of wave formation on beaches. It was this interest in waves that gave oceanography its present large scale status.

The Institute was founded in 1930 with an endowment from the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundation. Henry B. Bigelow, then a Professor at Harvard, became first director and head of the Board of trustees. Also interested at this early stage was Columbus D. Iselin, also a Harvard man, who later became director of the Institute when Bigelow retired. Up to this time, although Bigelow and Iselin had made exploratory trips to Labrador, there had been no systematic study of Oceanography in the United States.

Throughout the thirties the Wood's Hole laboratories nursed themselves along on grants from the Carnegie foundation, staffed themselves with college faculty in the summer and closed down in the winter. Then, in 1946, as the fruit of Iselin's door knocking campaign in Washington, the Navy became interested in woods Hole. The Navy wanted to know how to forecast the waves on a beach. For this knowledge they turned to the contracts have turned the institute into a year round operation and cast a net of security over some of the research.

The work of the Institute has been to some extent moulded by its contact, with the Navy. The problems the oceanographers now face are as practical as the ends they hope to achieve. Scientific wrangling over what makes a current--the varying density of the water, or the winds, or a combination, is now no more academic palaver. The oceanographers regard the sea as the fly wheel in the metrological system. Effective weather predictions seems to depend on understanding the interchange between the ocean and the air.

The "Puddle"

Similarly, the ocean is the key to the secret of the land, for undisturbed on its bottoms the recording silt of cons has settled in layers often hundreds of feet thick. Coring samples taken from the ocean bottom by specially designed cutting tubes promise revelations for the geologist.

In almost all these fields the Institute has been on new ground. It has developed new types of map projections to make the charting of the ocean more accurate; specialists have designed and redesigned the Nansen bottles--metal cases that close automatically at a specified depth trapping a sample of water that is later tested for salinity. Similar experiments with underwater cameras and offshore diving gear have led to a constant revision and improvement of equipment.

Despite oceanography's large aims, most of the work at Woods Hole proceeds on a practical level, and final solutions can merely be nibbled at. For working in an age when the Atlantic is becoming in the eyes of some Airlines a "glorified puddle" the oceanographers have turned back to this "puddle" to seek in its depths some of the closest secrets of the earth.George A. HermannScientist (upper left) surveys small accurate scale currents formed in spinning parabaloid bowl as nozzle at right blows air into water. Workman (above) is shown adjusting a newly designed Nansen bottle for gathering selected samples of water from the depths. Observers (lower left) watch special experiment in bowl and (below) watch growing micro organisms in multicolored tanks.