ALBERT

Description: New surveys were completed and data from the field sheets were kindly furnished by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for use in dredging and coring operations. This field work, first reported in 1936, was continued from time to time until 1941 as new soundings became available. Rock dredging and coring has been carried out in every major canyon on the slope from Corsair Canyon at the tip of Georges Bank to Norfolk Canyon off the entrance to the Chesapeake. Numerous cores have also been taken from the areas in between; and while the whole slope from Georges to the Chesapeake has not been covered, it is believed that no significant areas have been missed. In the following report the tows and cores will be described by areas from Georges Bank southwards, as the same region was revisited in successive years. The various samples, however, will be referred to by number followed by the year in which they were taken. The material is in storage in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Description: The continental shelf off the northeastern coast of the United States was the first of our offshore coastal areas to be charted in detail by the Coast and Geodetic Survey, starting on Georges Bank in 1930. The techniques responsible for this increased accuracy in offshore waters were first described by Rudé (1938) and have been constantly improved. From these soundings Veatch and Smith (1939) compiled their set of contour charts aided by a grant from the Penrose Bequest of the Geological Society of America. These soundings reopened the submarine canyon problem first commented upon by Dana (1863), which had gradually lapsed into obscurity from insuffcient data. The reader is, of course, well aware of the major controversy, with all its far reaching implications, which has been precipitated since the 1930 surveys of Georges Bank were brought to the attention of geologists by Shepard (1933). As more of the new surveys were completed, data from the field sheets were kindly furnished by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for use in dredging and coring operations. This field work, first reported in 1936, was continued from time to time until 1941 as new soundings became available. Rock dredging and coring has been carried out in every major canyon on the slope from Corsair Canyon at the tip of Georges Bank to Norfolk Canyon off the entrance to the Chesapeake (Fig. I). Numerous cores have also been taken from the areas in between; and while the whole slope from Georges to the Chesapeake has not been covered, it is believed that no significant areas have been missed. In fact, cores from the slope taken during the summers of 1940 and 1941 have yielded results that are corroborative rather than new. In 1938 on a cruise from Hudson Gorge to Norfolk Canyon, cores were taken on the slope in areas which Veatch had considered to be the most important (personal communication). In the following report the tows and cores will be described by areas from Georges Bank southwards, as the same region was revisited in successive years. The various samples, however, will be referred to by number followed by the year in which they were taken. The material is in storage in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. The late Joseph A. Cushman was kind enough to identify the Foraminifera which have been obtained in tows from the canyon walls and in cores, except for those described in Appendix A which is contributed by Fred B Phleger, Jr. Most of the type material is in storage in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, although at the present writing some is in the Cushman Laboratory in Sharon, Massachusetts. I am indebted to Lloyd W. Stephenson for identifying a molluscan fauna from one of the canyons, and to W. C. Mansfield who has reported on another formation. Numerous discussions with Percy E. Raymond have, as usual, proved most helpful, and thanks are also due to Eugenia C. Lambert for performing the mechanical analyses and to Constance French for other laboratory assistance. Phleger (1939, 1942, 1946) has previously published on the Foraminifera from the slope and deep water cores. This material is, at present, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Description: Our knowledge of clastic, shallow-water sediments over any considerable area of ocean floor is very generalized and leaves much to be desired. The notations concerning the character of the bottom found on all charts are necessarily limited to a descriptive word or two, and although suffcient for navigational purposes, are of little use to the stratigrapher. Of all the marine sediments in the geologic column, those laid down in the neritic zone bulk the largest. They grade slowly into the sediments of the bathyal zone with no sharp line of demarcation. The early oceanographers were more interested in the clays and organic oozes of the deep sea and they added but little information concerning those materials which to the geologist are the most important. From the charts one is apt to obtain the impression that bottom deposits, excepting those of the deep sea, are very patchy in their distribution, and that there is little rhyme or reason in their arrangement. On the other hand the geological text books are apt to make it appear that there is an orderly gradation of sediments from coarse to fine in an offshore direction, and that a sandstone is always an indication of shallow water deposition, with a shale the reverse. Twenhofel has called attention to the role of environment in sedimentation. Like organisms, sediments are the resultants of a long sequence of environmental factors to which they have been exposed: action by currents, wave generated and otherwise, availability of supply and its type, distance from shore, and depth of water, plus their combined effect during times of changing sea level in the past. These factors have operated in the regions of production, during the period of transportation, and at the place of deposition, and the retention of older characteristics further complicates the record. The following study was undertaken with the hope that through a detailed and systematic series of samples not only might something be learned about the characteristics and distribution of the sediments of a particular area, but something also of the environmental factors which govern conditions of sedimentation in a major ocean.

Description: In 1947 the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution organized an expedition to investigate the bottom sediments and oceanography of the northwest Gulf of Mexico. The Geological Society of America contributed to the support of this undertaking with grants in aid from the Penrose fund. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists through its Executive and Research committees offcially endorsed the expedition. The main objective was to investigate the environmental conditions of deposition of the sediments in the offshore waters more than 10 fathoms in depth in order to throw light on the oceanography of the northwest part of the Gulf of Mexico and to develop ecological criteria that would benefit geologists in their efforts to determine the conditions of deposition of ancient sediments deposited in the geologic past in adjacent areas.