Marines

Drift Voyages for Marines

ISLANDERS may expect American marine landings on their beaches in the latter part of this year, but they will all be dead!

Scripps Institute of Oceanography will launch 1,000 4-oz bottles per month from points off the Cali fornia coast —and where they will make th ei r landings is highly

problematical.

On past experience the Institute estimates that co-operative beach combers will eventually find about 300 of the 12,000, returning the en closed card with requisite details.

The Institute was pleased to re ceive one card back from Fiji some time ago, after it had travelled at least 2,170 miles. What it really travelled no one will ever know.

Charts of known ocean currents show that a bottle launched well off the Californian coast might curve south-west between Hawaii and Palmyra, travel west through Micro nesia, and if not stranded there, reach a critical position north of Dutch New Guinea and east of the Philippines. It may take the nor thern branch of the divided current, end somewhere in the enclosed Sea of Japan, or, passing Japan’s south east coast, return across the Pacific to California—and keep on doing that for some time.

But if the north-east Trades are blowing strongly when the bottle drifts south of Hawaii it may be set south into the strong, east-flow ing Counter Equatorial Current, which might dump it in the Gala pagos—or via the Galapagos to the South Equatorial Current and back westward again along the Kon-Tiki- Seven Little Sisters trail.

Or, depending on winds and weather it might shuttle for months between that 300-mile-wide band of east-flowing water, and the west flowing streams to north and south, causing the drifter to zigzag over a, great stretch of equatorial ocean, until finally it breaks completely flear. What is certain is that a Dottle picked up in Fiji will have travelled far from the proverbial :row’s-flight course on its journey.