The nets are put down 600 fathoms or more. There are three or four nets let out on the same cable, 150 to 200 fathoms apart. The net goes out for two hours, then begins hauling in. And of course there is excitement when it comes up for everybody wants to see, first if the nets are still on, and then what has been brought up in them. In it are tiny fish, pieces of strange unknown fish, once a black octopus with a queer umbrella-like arrangement over his mouth and head. Early in the voyage several nets were lost because they twisted off from the cable. And one was cut off by the propellers. Next we feed the animals. The mocking birds have crumbs, the lizards are forcibly fed with bits of bread and water, the two very lovely albatrosses eat fish which is kept on the ice for them. These are now at the New York Zoological Park in the Bronx. I hope they like it there. And the little fish in the aquarium are given the “crumbs” from the nightly plankton nets. The nice little penguin died although for days he came out and had a swim, then gobbled up fish. Then we have lunch. One day, the ship was stopped for half an hour, the gangway let down and we went swimming right in the ocean. It was over a mile and a half deep too. And beautifully clear water. If you even let yourself sink a few feet below the surface you could see right under our ship with the sunlight showing on the opposite side. For an hour or two in the afternoon we seemed to be in a lot of drifting stuff. We saw two turtles, some big logs with birds resting on them and hundreds of tiny fish swimming round in the shadow underneath, and two poisonous sea snakes all brown and bright yellow. We caught a small dolphin fish on a line and while pulling it in three sharks followed. All the nets were in before five o’clock for we have supper at that time. It is nice to sit up on the roof of the laboratory to watch the sunset and the moonlight later. And at eight o’clock the plankton net goes out for a short while. Plankton is very small sea life like bugs, queer fish that can’t move themselves. And then to bed for another day just like it tomorrow. DREDGING The Blake dredge has a ten-foot iron bar across the top, a handle arrangement and a long twenty-foot net at the bottom, in which things are thrown after being loosened by the top bar. The bottom of the net is fastened so that specimens cannot be dropped out. This is put way down till it is on the ocean bottom, and then trawled along slowly for an hour or more. Sometimes the whole dredge is lost when it hits an unexpected mountain peak or rock or ledge at the bottom, as it was at Abingdon Island, and once the whole thing was terribly twisted and bent out of shape because of hitting something way down in the depths. It is dragged along, the top iron bar loosening things from the floor of the sea, dumping them into the net, and then brought to the surface.