Abstract
THE Mediterranean Sea has always been an attractive field for oceanographical investigation, since it presents many features which contrast strongly with those of the other enclosed seas. Italy, Sicily, and a submarine ridge over which the greatest depth of water is about 400 metres, separate the whole area into two sea-basins. The western one, comprising the Balearic and Tyrrhenian Seas, is, for the most part, about 2000–3000 metres in depth; while the eastern basin, which includes all the seas to the east of Italy and Sicily, is rather deeper on the average, and soundings of more than 4000 metres have been made. Large coastal areas, like the North Sea, with depths of less than 200 metres do not exist, and because of this absence of extensive tracts of sea-bottom of moderate depth, fisheries on the scale of those of the North Atlantic enclosed seas are non-existent. Because of this relative unimportance of the sea-fisheries, the fauna of the Mediterranean is not nearly so well known as, for instance, that of the North Sea and Baltic; and the remainder of the reports of the Danish expeditions, dealing with the biological investigations, promise to be of exceptional interest on this account.
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J., J. Oceanography of the Mediterranean 1 . Nature 92, 10–12 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/092010a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/092010a0