The Anton Bruun of Woods Hold, Mass., and oceanographic research vessel which once was the Presidential yacht Williamsburg, will have a group of Department of the Interior scientists aboard when it participates in a few weeks in scientific cruises of the International Indian Ocean Expedition, the Department said today. Approximately 25 Nations and 40 vessels are participating in the research project. They will conduct broad, systematic surveys and also detailed individual investigations in such field’s as biology, geology, chemistry, geophysics, bathymetry and meteorology.
Operating under the National Science Foundation. The Bruun is en route to Bombay, India, where her first cruise will start March 8, with Puket, Thailand as the first port of call. The vessel then will turn northward and collect biological and oceanographic data along the perimeter of the Bay of Bengal, ending its investigations as Madras, India. The Bruun’s second cruise out of Bombay will start May 7. It will work down past Ceylon to the island of Mauritis, not far from Madagascar. Its third cruise will being July 22 and will include the Mauritis area, the Gulf of Aden, Karachi, Pakistan and Bombay. This cruise will end December1. A fourth cruise is schedule for early 1964.
The Department’s personnel—three biologists and six long-line fishermen from the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii, and a biologist and two trawl fishing specialists from the Bureau’s exploratory fishing base at Seattle, Wash.,--will board Anton Bruun at Bombay for the cruise to which they have been assigned. Another Bureau scientist, Daniel M. Cohen, director of the Icthyological Laboratory in Washington, C.C., will join the Expedition late this summer.
Biologist from the Honolulu laboratory are: Thomas S. Hida, Evert C. hones, and Richard S. Shomura. The long-line fishermen, also from Honolulu, are Richard Y. Suzuki, Toyoichi, Taskasugi, George E. Lindsey, Charles P. Lee, Shigeru Yano, and Samuel L. Fernandez. Alonzo T. Pruter, fishery biologist, Ivar M. Fjaerstad and A.K. Larsen, trawl fishermen from the Bureau’s exploratory fishing base in Seattle, complete the Interior group.
Purpose of the International Expedition is to increase knowledge of the resources of the Indian Ocean, particularly those which will be valuable to nations bordering on the ocean. Interior scientists will be especially interested in basic oceanographic data, the flora and fauna, the productivity of the waters and an inventory of current fishery resources.
The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries has a cooperative program with the Nankai Fisheries laboratory in Japan under which the Bureau will get field statistics on the abundance of tuna and other fishes. This information can then be related to oceanographic and other data collected by the Expedition. All this will is to present knowledge of the vast food potential of south Pacific and Indian Ocean areas.
The International Indian Ocean Expedition is sponsored by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, and agency of the International Council of Scientific Unions, financed by private funds and by UNESCO. Responsibility for United States participation rests with the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, with key contributions by the Navy Department and the National Science Foundation.
