About Department :

Oceanography Department (AUDO)
Faculty of Science, Alexandria University
Alexandria, Egypt

Presents

I. Education

I.1 Under-graduate:

B. Sc. In Marine Sciences: Geological Oceanography, Chemical Oceanography, Biological Oceanography, Physical Oceanography and Fishery Biology.

I.2 Post-graduate:

I.2.1 Diploma (one year):

1- Coastal management and Pollution.
2- Fisheries and fish culture.

I.2.2 M. Sc.: Study and research in : Geological Oceanography, Chemical Oceanography, Biological Oceanography, Physical Oceanography and Fishery Biology.

I.2.3 Ph. D.:

Research.

II. Current activities:

1. Education, Research, Training and Awareness
2. Marine survey, Monitoring and Assessment
3. Coastal Processes
4. Eutrophication
5. Biodiversity
6. Modeling
7. Capacity building

III. International Projects & Co-operation:

• Typology, nutrients budget and Nile-Mediterranean Interaction (AUDO / LOICZ) Ongoing;
• Mussel Watch (AUDO / UNEP);
• OngoingMeteorological & Hydrological Observation of Submerged archaeological sites in Alexandria (AUDO / PACA-France) Projected;
• Long-term observation time series of the Mediterranean coastal environment (AUDO / COM-CNRS-France) Projected;
  
• International Cooperation for the Protection of Coastal Zones and Large River Basins of the Mediterranean Basin (CORIMED) (AUDO / CNR-Italy) Projected.
• 
  

IV. Marine Survey, Monitoring & Assessment:

- AUDO / UNEP / MAP – Focal point in Alexandria:
(PAH’s, TM, Nutrients & physico-chemical characteristics);

- AUDO / CSI-UNESCO:
(Marine environment status and socio-economic problems related to the underwater archaeological museum Project in the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria);

- AUDO / EEAA / IAEA:
(Inter-calibration program on PAH’s and TM);

- Coastal lagoons productivity;

- Eutrophication, Red tide and toxic algal blooms;

- Nutrients;

- Organic and inorganic pollutants in marine environment (water, sediments and organisms);

- Hydrographic parameters (S, pH, O2, chl-a, turbidity, temp, etc.) ;

- Atmospheric precipitation ;

- Seagrass communities ;

- Living and non-living resources.

V. Observation activities :

- Hydrobiological Observation :

Weekly observation at fixed stations of land-sea connection at Naubaria Canal (Since 2002);

Weekly observation at fixed point in the Eastern Harbour near Bughaz area (Since 2002);

Monthly observation at 3 fixed stations along the central axis in the Eastern Harbour.

- In-Situ Automated Hydrochemical Observation :

Large and meso-scales time-series continuous acquisition:
Along Alexandria costal water:
Eastern Harbour, Abu-Qir Bay and the Nile River branch at Rosetta.

- Meteorological Observation :

Fixed station for meteorological observation for
Hourly records for wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure.

VI. Research on coastal processes:

- Current, waves and tide measurements;

- Sediment transport, erosion and accretion.

- Sea level data at different stations along the Mediterranean Egyptian coast and their analysis for application of shore processes and navigation.

VII. Environmental Modeling:

- Input / output models for coastal waters;

- Dispersion models for major pollutants;

- Numerical modeling for the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

- Biogeochemical modeling.

VIII. Training activities:

- Application of Remote Sensing in Oceanography
AUDO / NARSS (Cairo-Alexandria, Sep. 2001);

- Management of Water Quality in Fish Farms
AUDO / GAFRD (Alexandria, May 2001);

- Micro-algae Culture for Fish Ponds
AUDO / GAFRD (Alexandria, Mar. 2002);

- Modeling of Marine Pollution
AUDO (Alexandria, Mar. 2002).

VIIII.Capacity building approaches:

- Upgrading monitoring capacity program (AUDO / EEAA);

- Knowledge upgrading of environmental laws and legislations for regional environmental officers;

- Upgrading capacity for EIA procedure.

Awareness aspects:

- Organizing workshops, symposia, seminars and conferences on different environmental issues;

- Annual celebration for the international day of the environment;

- Gathering stakeholders , investors, users and decision makers for the mitigation environmental

interest conflicts.


Historical :

The Founders of the Department of Oceanography

Hussein Faouzi

Hussein Faouzi was born in Cairo in 1900 and initially pursued a medical career, obtaining his M.B. and B.Ch. degrees from the Egyptian School of Medicine at Kasr-el-Aini in 1923. For two years he worked as an ophthalmic surgeon in the Egyptian Department of Health, but in 1925 he abandoned medicine for the study of natural history, a decision which completely changed the direction of his life.
Faouzi traveled to France where he studied zoology, botany, geology and general physiology in Paris, and took specialist courses in applied zoology and hydrobiology and fish culture in Toulouse, obtaining his Licence-es-science in 1928. During the summer of that year he visited the marine laboratory at Roscoff and received his first real introduction to marine biology for, on the suggestion of the head of the laboratory, Professor Prenant, he undertook a short research project on the formation of the calcareous tubes of serpulid worms.
Back in Paris, Faouzi registered as a research student in the Department of Comparative Anatomy at the Sorbonne where, for two years, he worked under Professor Wintrebert on the female gonad of the sole. He was now firmly set on an oceanographic career; during his time in Paris he attended lectures at the Institut Oceanographique on biological and physical oceanography and, before returning home, he made an extensive tour of European marine institutes, visiting laboratories in Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Italy and Monaco, and making valuable contacts with established oceanographers.
These efforts were rewarded when he returned to Egypt in 1931, for on the departure of R. S. Wimpenny he was appointed Director of Fisheries Research within the Coast-guard and Fisheries Administration and was based in Alexandria. Two years later he was the natural choice as the Egyptian Biologist on the John Murray Expedition, particularly since the ship used was from his own organization.
The Expedition was a major influence in Faouzi's life for it gave him the opportunity, in his own words, for a 'full ad wonderful familiarity with oceanography, and fine colleagues, under the direction of the master of marine research in the Indian seas'.
In December 1934, only six months after her return from the John Murray Expedition, the Mabahiss left Alexandria once more, this time for a three-month expedition to the Red Sea under the leadership of Dr Cyril Crossland, the Director of the Ghardaqa biological station. This was intended to be a preliminary preparation for a much grander expedition to the Red Sea in 1935/36, and although three of Faouzi's Egyptian colleagues from the John Murray Expedition participated in it, he did not take part himself, perhaps to allow his second-in-command in the Fisheries Research Directorate, Dr Abou Samra, the chance of joining the expedition. Faouzi was, however, a member of the committee established to plan the main Red Sea expedition; in the event this expedition never took plac3e, initially because of the Italo-Abyssinian conflict, then financial problems and, ultimately, the outbreak of the Second World War.

Faouzi continued as Director of Fisheries Research until 1941 when he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science and Professor of Zoology in the newly established University of Alexandria. From 1948to 1952 he was given the task of building up the University's Department of Oceanography with his old John Murray Expedition colleague Abdel Fattah Mohamed as Professor of Physical Oceanography. In 1952 Faouzi was appointed Vice-Rector of the University but continued to teach postgraduate students until his final appointment as Permanent Under-Secretary of State in the new Ministry of Culture took him to Cairo and therefore away from the University for good.
In 1960 Faouzi retired from his official position and entered, as he says, his final career as a humanist! He had already written several books based on his own travels, the first, Un Sindbad moderne (1938), being based on his experiences during the John Murray Expedition. From 1961 his writings for a non-scientific readership assumed much greater importance for he began, and continues, to contribute to the weekly supplement of Al Abram on letters, art and humanistic culture. In recent years, years, selections from these articles have been brought together and republished as five separate books on such diverse topics as 'Great Music' and 'In the Freedom of thought'. Finally, in further confirmation of Faouzi's breadth of Knowledge and interests, he has published a volume on 'the Florentine Renaissnce', probably the first of its kind in Arabic.
In his earlier research and teaching careers Hussein Faouzi earned the respect of generations of scientists and students with whom he came into contact. Through his newspaper articles he is known to millions more as a traveler, historian and man of letters.

Abdel Fattah Mohamed

Abdel Fattah Mohamed Ibrahim El-Fiky was born at Mansoura on 28 January 1905. He never used his surname and was always known as Abdel Fatth Mohamed. He received his primary and secondary education at Mansoura, a trading and farming center which was at the heart of the national movement that led to the 1919 Egyptian revolution and subsequent independence. Like many of his generation, Mohamed was influenced by the social and political revival that took place before and after his entry into the newly established Faculty of Science of the Egyptian University in 1925. Four years later he was among the first batch of graduates, a fact of which he was always proud. These pioneering graduates played a dominant role in developing science in Egypt and filled many of the senior posts in scientific and educational institutions.
Mohamed graduated with a B.Sc. honours degree in chemistry and was soon offered the post of demonstrator in the new Faculty in October 1929,where he obtained his M.Sc. in 1932 s a result of research in physical chemistry.
In 1933 Mohamed was chosen to be the participant representing the Egyptian University on t he John Murray Expedition to the Indian Ocean. In preparation for his duties on the Mabahiss he was sent during the summer on a mission to Norway to study physical oceanography and to the Mrine Laboratory at Plymouth, United Kingdom, where he studied the newly introduced methods of colorimetric determination of nutrient salts in sea-water. There, he also prepared the buffer sets necessary for the colorimetric determination of hydrogen-ion concentration in the Indian Ocean, under L. H. N. Cooper who, during a visit of the writer to Plymouth in 1965, talked of his high esteem for Mohamed's skill in laboratory work, his meticulous precision and scientific honesty.
Mohamed returned to Egypt to board the Mabahiss on 3 September 1933 on her way to the Indian Ocean. In this melting pot, Mohamed proved to be a charming companion and a studious worker. Professor Gardiner, FRS, Secretary of the John Murray Expedition, Reported that Mohamed 'is a very able man and on the recent cruises in the Mabahiss has been a mot efficient leader of his section' (Annual Report of the Director of the Egyptian Education Office, London, 15 June 1935). In his memoirs Sewell makes special reference to Mohamed, who acted as his companion and guide during his stay in Egypt following the return of the Expedition.
Hussein Faouzi, another Egyptian scientist on board, formed a solid friendship with Mohamed, based on a mutual respect that continued throughout their lives.
Mohamed made news in the Egypt in press and is mentioned in the Sewell and Faouzi memoirs when he fell from the ship into shark-infested sea; he remembers in his Ph.D. thesis 'the gallant crew of HEMS Mabahiss who saved my life when I fell overboard in the early hours of a tropical May morning in 1934'.
Mohamed returned to the University in Cairo after the ship arrived in Alexandria on 25 May 1934, but he was soon sent on a short mission to England in the summer of 1934. He returned to take part in the planning and execution of the Egyptian Expedition to the Red Sea, from December 19334 to February 1935, on which he was the senior Physical and Chemical Oceanographer, and Expedition Leader for two of the four cruises.
Armed with the raw material from these two important expeditions Mohamed went to Europe on a long mission, 1935-39. Here he benefited from one of the Egyptian education system's excellent traditions, which had existed since the nineteenth century, whereby missions broad were used to gain experience in new branches of science and human knowledge. Under this generous scheme, in addition to obtaining his academic degree, the candidate is offered the chance to fain more theoretical and practical experience. Mohamed's mission led him to the University of Cambridge where he met Professor J. S. Gardiner, FRS, and renewed his cquaintance with his Mabahiss colleagues Sewell, Thompson, Gilson and Macan. After Cambridge, Mohamed was sent to work for his Ph.D. at Liverpool University with J. Proudman, FRS, Professor of Physical Oceanography, to whom Mohamed was recommended by Gardiner. In Liverpool Mohamed wrote the three volumes of his Ph.D. thesis and participated in cruises in the Irish Sea during the summers of 1936 and 1937.
Returned to Egypt from the tense political climate of Europe in 1939, having spent two years in the Oceanography Department at Liverpool, nine months in Cambridge, six months at the Tidal Institute in Bidston, United Kingdom, six months at the Institut fur Meereskunde of Berlin University, four months at the Mrine Laboratory of Plymouth the another four months at the Deutsche Seewarte in Hmburg. Thanks to the generous mission scheme Mohamed had become acquainted with most of the main schools of oceanography in existence in Europe before the war and had forged strong links with these institutions which helped him later to introduce his new Department of Oceanography and its young staff to foreign institutions, particularly the universities of Liverpool and Kiel.
After returning from Europe with his Ph.D., Mohamed was appointed as lecturer in physical chemistry at Cairo University in March 1940.
The war distanced Mohamed still further from oceanography and the oceanographic community abroad. He was seconded as Professor and Head of the Chemistry Department at the Higher Teacher's College in Baghdad, Iraq, From August 1941 to August 1943. His interest in publishing in Arabic encouraged him to write two books on chemistry for secondary schools which were published in 1945 and remained the textbooks selected by the government for secondary schools in Egypt for some years.
After his return from Baghdad, Mohamed was elected Cahirman of the Association of Graduated of the Faculty of Science and became the editor-in-chief of its monthly magazine Risalet Al-Elm published in Arabic. He resigned as Chairman of the Association in February 1946 but his resignation was not accepted and he was returned by an Extraordinary Assembly on 22 March 1946.
In May 1946 he left Cairo to go to Alexandria University where he was appointed Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry. There he met his senior colleague on the Mabahiss, Hussein Faouzi, who was the First Dean of the Faculty of Science and Professor of Zoology at the new University. There they planned to start the Department of Oceanography, a goal which was achieved in 1948, becoming the first such department in any Arab or African university.
In establishing this department in 1948, Mohamed returned to oceanography after an absence of about ten years. He enjoyed lecturing in physical and chemical oceanography and spent his time developing the postgraduate department, which had an average annual enrolment of five students. The writer, who knew Professor Mohamed from his years at Cairo University, was invited by him in 1950 to join the department for what proved to be a long association. Mohamed was appointed Professor of Physical and Chemical Oceanography in 1950 and received a Fulbright Fellowship that enabled him to work at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from January to June 1951.
Mohamed was Dean of the Faculty of Science from February 1953 to March 1957, when he was pointed Vice-Rector of the University. He continued to occupy this post for eight years until he retired in January 1965 at the age of 60. One of the slogans current in Egypt at that time compared 'men of confidence' with men 'men of experience', reference to the ruler's reliance on those he considered worthy of his trust, as opposed to technocrats. Mohamed was considered to be an efficient and capable technocrat. Although he as Acting Rector of the University from December 1958 to May 1959 and again in 1963/64 owing to the vacancy of the Rector's post, he was not elevated to the rank of University Rector. Twice he had to experience the unpleasant duty of receiving a new University Rector for whom he continued to act as Vice-Rector.
Mohamed occupied a pioneering position and achieved many firsts in the new science of oceanography. He went with the Mabahiss to the Gulf of Aqaba forty years after the first Austrian Expedition on Pola. There he observed the adiabatic increase of temperature in the deep water of the Gulf for the first time. He also measured phosphate, hydrogen-ion concentration and oxygen and noted, for the first time, the presence of an intermediate layer of minimum oxygen and an intermediate maximum phosphate in the northern Red Sea and its absence in the Gulf. Mohamed described for the first time the exchange of water in the Strait of Tiran between the Gulf and the Red Sea, as well as the circulation of water and origin of bottom water in the northern Red Sea. His cross-sections in the northern Red Sea are among the first, and some of the few available, for this region. His nine-month work in the Indian Ocean contributed significantly to the physical and chemical investigations of the John Murray Expedition. Thompson and Gilson published part of these results, leaving the observations on hydrogen-ion concentration to Mohamed. His studies revealed the conditions which limit the depth of the layers of phytoplanktonic activity in the tropical regions, as well as the origin, character and movement of the Antarctic Intermediate Current and the North Indian Intermediate Current.
When Mohamed finished his thesis in Liverpool, Professor J. Proudman wrote (December 1938): 'When account is taken of Mr. Mohamed's practical and theoretical competence and the extent of his knowledge of oceanography, his position in this science is seen to be a very unusual one'. These great expectations were cut short since Mohamed's career, like that of many scientists in developing countries, was the victim of unfacourable conditions. First came his ten years (1939-48) of teaching chemistry in Cairo, Baghdad and Alexandria and his occupation of the chairmanship of the Graduate's Association. His full-time work in the new Department of Oceanography was relatively brief, 1948-53, and was taken up by the activities related to the founding of a new department. From 1953 to his retirement in 1965, Mohamed continued to teach oceanography, but his heavy workload as Dean and Vice-Rector left this accomplished oceanographer little time for research, a fact which he often mentioned with regret.
Immediately after his retirement from Alexandria, Mohamed went to the University of Tipoli, Libya, where he was the Professor of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science. He continued to serve in Libya until his sudden death in Tripoli on 23 September 1967.
Mohamed was survived by his sife mMe Memat Massar, who is now working as Director of a secondary Technical Girls' School in Alexandria, and his daughter Dr Sawsan A. F. Mohamed, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Alexandria.
h. C. Gilson
Hugh Cary Gilson was bornin 1910 in Birmingham where his father was Headmaster of King Edward's School. He was educated at Winchester College from 1924 to 1929 when he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, to read Natural Sciences, graduating with First Class Honours in the summer of 1933, shortly before the Mabahiss sailed.
At Cmbridge Gilson was particularly influenced by C. F. A. Pantin, his Director of Studies, who was probably responsible for his taking up the study of the distribution of nitrogenous compounds and their relationship with plnkton during the John Murray Expedition.
But it was through the Professor of Zoology, John Stanley Gardiner, that Gilson (and Macan) koriginally came to be invited to take part in the Expedition. Afterwards, Gilson did some experimental work at the Plymouth laboratory and then returned to Cambridge where,in 1935,he was elected to a three-year Research Fellowship to work up the results obtained from the Mabahiss.
Again under the influence of Stanley Gardiner, Geilson led the Percy Sladen Expedition to Lake Titicaca in Peru to investigate the Lake's fauna, flora and chemistry. During his absence in South America he was appointed Demonstrator in Zoology at Cambridge, a post which he held until after the outbreak of the war.
From 1940 to 1944 Gilson was seconded to the Medical Research Council to help operate, within the Department of Zoology, a freeze-drying plant designed and directed by Dr. R. I. N. Greaves to produce dried blood plasma for use in blood transfusions by the Royal Navy.
At the end of the war Gilson was looking for a change from Cambridge and from a department where neither ecology nor field work in general were particularly highly regarded. He was offered the Chair of Zoology at the newly independent Jniversity of Southampton, but the Directorship of the Freshwater Biological Association fell vacant in 1946 and Gilson chose the latter, with its opportunities to organize ecological research and field work rather than teaching zoology.
Gilson's interest in freshwater biology had been initially aroused in Cambridge by J. T. Saunders who had, incidentally, a major influence also on Macan. Saunders, long with F. E. Fritsch and W. H. Pearsall, had been a founder of the freshwater Biological Association, and had run a summer course on hydrobiology which Gilson took over when Saunders left t6he department to become an administrative officer within the University.
T. T. Macan
Assistant Naturalist
T. T. (Kit) Macan was born in 1910 and passed his youth happily in a world that revolved round dogs, horses and the country sport; the academic world was far away. He was educated t Wellington, from where it was hoped that he would follow in his father's footsteps and join the army but where he realized that he realized that he was not cut out to be a military man. A lecture on mosquitoes by J. F. Marshall, founder of the British Mosquito Control Institute, aroused his interest in these insects, and later he discovered that it was possible to make a living studying such creatures. Accordingly, it was at Cambridge, rather than Sandhurst, that his education continued. Christ's College was chosen because the Master had written a book which Macan had been given by his biology master to read during the holidays. They choice was a happy one, for the science tutor at Christ's was J. T. Saunders, one of the founders of the Freshwater Biological Association.

Significance of the scientific results of the Mabahiss / John Murray Expedition ( 1933 - 34 )

Topography and seafloor geology:
At the time the Mabahiss sailed form Alexandria the Arabian Sea was certainly, as Stanley Gardiner (1933) wrote, "one of the least known 9f oceanic areas. While the continental coastal waters and the shallow regions round the major island groups had been reasonably well surveyed because of their navigational importance, very few soundings were available in the deeper, mid-ocean regions. This is not surprising, since the area had been missed by most previous oceanographic expeditions which might have been expected to devote the necessary time and effort to obtaining vertical wire soundings, while the comparatively new technique of echo-sounding was only just becoming routinely used by survey vessels. By far the mot important of the very few echo-sounding runs in the region was that of the Dana between Colombo and the Seychelles in 1930. In the region of 1 N. the Dana had crossed a major ridge, named the Carlsberg Ridge by Schmidt (1933), who suggested that it might run from the Chagos group to Socotra. Otherwise, apart from some indications of major irre3guylarities in the northern parts, virtually nothing was known of the sea-bed topography.
By the time the Mabahiss returned she had obtained continuous echo-sounder records for the greater part of her 22.000-mile track, so that Farquharson's(1936) bathymetric charts contain all the major topographical features of the region.
This was no mean achievement, for the "Acadia" Admiralty Recording Echo-Sounder, Manufactured by Henry Hughes & Son Ltd, was a very crude machine by modern standards and it was remarkable that first Tyler, the Hughes engineer who accompanied the ship as far as Aden, and then Farquharson alone, were able to keep it going for 90 percent of the time. The hammer and its valves and the hydrophone were necessarily fitted in cramped working spaces near the bottom of the ship, while the water tank and wick which moistened the starch moistened the starch iodide paper in the recorder, and the heater which afterwards dried it, were not ideal adjuncts to a box of what would now seem to be very primitive electronics. In fact, the sounder gave very little trouble, the loss of time being mainly due to failure of the transmitter solenoids because of damage to the insulation of the leads caused by vibration from the hammer. The solenoids were repaired by the Eastern Telegraph Company in the Seychelles, while the same company replaced some damaged resistances in Aden. Otherwise, most of the system worked very well, although a spare transmitter had to be fitted when the original cracked due to metal fatigue, and the amplifier caused some problems towards the end of the cruise. Farquharson's efforts were well worth the trouble, for apart from the general improvement in knowledge of the bathymetry of the Arabian Sea and the Gulfs of Aden and Oman, the echo-sounder records produced three major discoveries of which the significance has become apparent only since the development of the theory of platetectonics and sea-floor spreading in the 1960s (see Girdler, 1984).

The first of these was the discovery of a series of north-east to southwest treading ridges in the Gulf of Aden which are now recognized as transform faults between the African and Arabian plates.
The second major advance was the further mapping of the Carlsberg Ridge, confirming Schmidt's guess that it extended towards Socotra and demonstrating its double nature with an axial valley now known to be typical of divergent plate boundaries.
Finally, during Cruise 4 from Karachi to Bombay, a zig-zag track along the Makran coast revealed a series of gullies and ridges parallel to the coastline which are now recognized as resulting from tectonic folding of sediments as they are scraped off a sub-ducting oceanic plate (White, 1984).
None of these discoveries, of course, received the modern interpretation at the time for, as Girdler points out, in the 1930s the idea of Continental Drift and horizont6al movements generally were very unfashionable among most geologists. Instead, the earth was thought to be contracting and all surface features were considered to have been produced by the resulting compression and vertical movements. In the first public announcement of the Expedition in Tbe Times on 2 August 1932, a mention of the hypothetical continent of Lemuria, supposed to like submerged to the west of India, resulted in several subsequent newspaper articles stressing that the Expedition was searching for a lost continent. This was not too far from the truth, for Sewell (1934a) suggested that the gully along the Makran coast might represent the sunken bed of a river, perhaps the Indus, and when basalt rock fragments were obtained from the Carlsberg Ridge and from the basin to the north-east of it, he expected them to resemble the basalts of the Decca Trap in India and to represent a submerged outflow from it. However, Wiseman's (1937) subsequent analysis of these rocks, the first comprehensive one of a basalt from a mid-coceanic ridge, regealed that they were quite different from Decca Trap samples, the oceanic basalts having a much higher sodium content and lower levels of iron and potassium. In attempting to summarize the implications of the John Murray results, together with the available seismological and gravity data, Wiseman and Sewell (1937) concluded: "There is little or no indication that any older continental mass or land isthmus such as the hypothetical continent of Gondwanaland or the isthmus of Lemuria, ever existed except in the granite mass of the Seychelles and perhaps the corresponding granites of Socotra and the Kuria Muria Islands…."
Of much greater interest, however, are the remarkable insights shown by Wiseman and
Sewell (see also Girdler, 1984), particularly in pointing out the similarities and connection between the ridges in the Arabian Sea and the East African Rift system based on topography and also on the seismicity maps that had recently been published by Heck (1935). Their discussion consequently contains the germ of the concept of a world rift system which was eventually developed in the 1950s and which is fundamental to modern ideas of sea-floor spreading and plate tectonics.
Physical and chemical oceanography:
The main physical oceanographic results of the Expedition addressed two very different types of problem: first, the very specific question of the pattern of water flow between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandab; and second, the much more diffuse question of the general circulation within the Arabian Sea.
A series of five stations in the neighborhood of the Straits were occupied by the Mabahiss in September 1933, that is at the end of the summer period when the wind blows from the north-north-west, and again in May 1934, at the end of the winter during which the wind blows from the south-south-east.
Mot of the earlier observations of the currents in the Straits, made during the winter period, had indicated a surface flow into Red Sea and a deep current into the Gulf of Aden. The Mabahiss observations in May agreed with these, but those made in September revealed a quite different three-tier system with a very warm surface current and a highly saline near bottom current flowing into the Gulf and an intermediate low-temperature flow in the opposite direction. In reporting these results both Sewell(1934a , 1934b ) and Thompson(1939) seem to have been unwire that a similar three-layer situation had been reported in 1931 by Vercelli from Italian observations made in July 1929 (see Mohamed, 1940). Thus, although the Mabahiss observations were not so novel as was at first thought, they added significantly to knowledge of the water masses on either side of the straits and indicted the most fruitful timing of future observations, including the need to investigate the tidal effects. They also clearly demonstrated that the seasonal changes in wind strength and direction are the main factors determining the current regime within the Straits . Prior to the John Murray Expedition the available data on the general circulation in the Indian Ocean had been reviewed by Moller (1929) who recognized four main layers--- the nomenclature for which was based on that used for the Atlantic circulation, with which Schott (1926) had demonstrated that the
Indian Ocean circulation was closely analogous . according to Moller a warm, saline upper layer, generally few hundreds of meters thick, was underlain by an intermediate layer of cooler and less saline water of Antarctic origin. Beneath this was a warm and highly saline layer, the north Indian deep water, which was formed in the Arabian Sea and contributed to by the high salinity mid-depth outflows from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Finally, a cold and low-salinity water mass, the Antarctic bottom water, crept northward but was hardly distinguishable north of the equator.
Subsequent data from the Dana (1929/30) and from the Smelliest (1929) led Thomsen (1933) to challenge Moller's claim that deep high-salinity water in the southern Indian Ocean was continuous with the north Indian deep water. From observations from Discovery II in 1935, Clowes and Deacon (1935) suggested that the north Indian deep water could be detected by its high salinity as far as 20 S., and that it could be found farther south as a tongue of poorly oxygenated water sandwiched between the Antarctic intermediate water and eastward-flowing Atlantic deep water which has a much higher oxygen content and which had not figured in Moller's scheme.
This is roughly the situation as accepted today for the deep circulation of the Indian Ocean as summarized by Wyrtki (1973) although he terms the high-salinity, low-oxygen water originating in the Arabian Sea the North Indian intermediate water. The observations made during the John Murray Expedition added greatly to the available data from the north-western Indian Ocean, but made little difference to the interpretations of the time. Mohamed's (1940) study of the Mabahiss pH observations generally substantiated earlier conclusions about the nature and origin of the Antarctic intermediate and bottom waters, but led him to suggest that Red Sea water contributed little to the North Indian intermediate water (Moller's 'deep' water), a conclusion which would not be accepted today (see Wyrtki, 1973; Swallow, 1984).
Sewell (1934a, 1934b) summarized the results of the Expedition, including those from the hydrographic observations, in two brief articles published in Nature. The pH observations were the subject of the extensive report by Mohamed referred to above, while the chemical determinations, and particularly those relevant to the nitrogen cycle, were dealt with by Gilson (1937). However, apart from Thompson's report (1939) on the general hydrography of the Red Sea, the salinity and temperature observations were never adequately worked up. This was apparently due to Thompson's great reluctance to 'put pen to paper' (see biographical note, page 278). It is intriguing
to speculate on whether the John Murray Expedition would have had a greater impact on the development of knowledge of the physical oceanography of the Arabian Sea if Sewell had managed to encourage Thompson to write up the results!
Biological oceanography:
There is no doubt that the main objective of the John Murray Expedition was the study of the biology of the Arabian Sea, and particularly of the bottom-living animals which could be collected in trawls and dredges. Al-though the Expedition's hydrographic work had the independent objective of characterizing the water masses and their circulation, it was also expected that these observations would be correlated with the biological conditions encountered (see Thompson and Gilson, 1937).
Papers based on the biological collections occupy eight of the eleven volumes of the Expedition Scientific Reports, and 85 per cent of the 8.500 pages. These statistics, however, should not be taken as an indication of the relative significance of the biological and non-biological findings of the Expedition, for many of these Reports contain a great deal of necessary, but rather tedious, taxonomic detail. This was inevitable since, apart from the samples obtained by the Indian Marine Survey vessels Investigator I and Investigator II between 1885 and 1925, no extensive collections of the deep sea fauna of the Arabian Sea had been made prior to the John Murray Expedition. Consequently, many of the specimens retrieved in the Mabahiss deep-sea samples were of undescribed species (see Sewell, 1952) and the collection as a whole, housed mainly in the British Museum (Natural History) in London, is still one of the most important from the region from a taxonomic and zoogeographic point of view. Moreover, several of the biological reports deal with material other than that collected from the Mabahiss and include discussions of taxonomy, comparative functional morphology and zoogeography which give them a much more general significance than would have been the case if they had been straightforward taxonomic catalogues of the John Murray Expedition samples alone. For example, Sewell's reports (1947a, 1947b) on the taxonomy and zoogeography of the plank tonic copepods, based mainly on the relatively small number of mid-water samples taken during Expedition, are classics of their kind. Similarly, the review of the sepiid cephalopods by Adam and Rees (1966) is a comprehensive taxonomic treatment of the whole family, while the final volume published, Knudsen's account (1967) of the deep-sea bivalves, is an important summary of knowledge of this group in the region and includes the study of material collected both before and after the John Murray Expedition.
However, of much wider potential significance were the more general observations on the distribution of the benthic fauna and of the physical and chemical factors affecting it. The most dramatic and unexpected discovery of the cruise was undoubtedly the more or loess azoic area of the sea floor extending from about 100 metres to 1.300 metres depth off the coast of Arabia and somewhat deeper in the Gulf of Oman. In several of the samples taken in this zone, and particularly in the neighborhood of Ras el Hadd, the mud brought up in the trawls and dredges smelt strongly of hydrogen sulphide and a hastily improvised assay technique revealed almost 30 mg H2S/1 in the interstitial water
(Mohamed, 1940). Similar conditions had been found in the Black Sea and in some enclo9sed fjords, but this was the first record in the open sea. Hydrogen sulphide found in the bottom muds of several of the lagoons of the Maldive Archipelago was thought to be due to the decomposition of abundant organic matter derived from the vegetation of the islands. No explanation for the open sea observations was offered, however, other than that 'the sterility of the area must be attributed either to some harmful character of the bottom deposit or else to some seasonal change in the general conditions of the deep water'. At least part of the answer became apparent from the work on mid-water chemistry by Mohamed, and particularly by Gilson.
Gilson's particular responsibility during the cruise was the investigation of the nitrogen cycle which involved the study of the distribution of nitrogenous compounds in t he water column in relation to the phytoplankton, and some laboratory work at the Plymouth Laboratory after the Expedition. The resulting report (Gilson, 1937) is an excellent summary of the state of knowledge of phytoplankton ecology which, during the 1920s and 1930s, was developing rapidly.
At the turn of the century Brandt had developed his theory that the growth of phytoplankton was controlled by the availability of nutrients. He believed that nitrate supplies to the phytoplankton came entirely from the land and that this explained the richness of inshore waters compared with oceanic regions. The control of the availability of nitrate to the phytoplankton was attributed by Brandt to the activities of nitrate-reducing bacteria, which prevented the nitrates from reaching lethal levels in the sea.
No significant progress in extending and refining Brandt's ideas was made until Atkins and Harvey improved the analytical techniques for phosphates and nitrates at Plymouth in the mid-1920s and later, together with Cooper, and adjacent regions. Thompson had spent some weeks at the Plymouth laboratory specifically to familiarize himself with the latest analytical techniques and the John Murray Expedition provided an early opportunity to apply them to a tropical ocean.
Taking advantage of these techniques, Gilson made a number of important contributions and observations, many of which have been largely ignored by later workers. First, he derived a workable relationship between Marshall and Orr's (1928) recently defined 'compensation point', the depth at which oxygen produced by photosynthesis just balances that consumed by phytoplankton respiration, and Secchi disc determinations of the opacity of the water column. The general validity of the compensation point calculated in this way seemed to be confirmed by the fact that this depth corresponded closely in most of the John Murray stations with the lower limit of the layer depleted of nutrients. However, in several of the Gulf of Aden stations there was a marked thermocline well above the computed compensation depth, with the nutrient deficient and high oxygen layer restricted to the zone above the discontinuity. These results, and others, did much to confirm earlier work indicating the importance of thermal stratification of the water column in controlling primary productivity.
Gilson found that the oxygen profile in the euphoric zone often showed a peak well below the surface, indicating inhibition of photosynthesis by high light intensities and agreeing with Marshall and Orr's (1928) observations. Moreover, this oxygen peak was usually rather higher in the
water column than the layer of maximum abundance of phytoplankton cells as determined by net catches so that, as Gilson wrote (1937, p. 38) 'The total algal population is not necessarily a true measure of the productivity, if we define productivity as the rate of carbon assimilation and cell increase'. He had, incidentally, no direct means of measuring primary productivity, but obtained what he called 'the roughest of approximations' to a general figure for the Arabian Sea as a whole. This was computed from the observed general deepening of the compensation point from late September to late February and the change in nitrate levels (used by the phytoplankton) in this same period. Using Cooper's (1933) recently published information that nitrogen represented 0.5 per cent of the wet weight of phytoplankton, Gilson calculated a production rate of 14.4 g wet wt/m2/day, though he felt that this was too low for the upwelling regions and too high for most of the Arabian Sea. Assuming that carbon represents about 3 per cent of phytoplankton wet weight, Gilson's figure would be roughly equivalent to 500 mgC/m2/day, which is not very different from modern estimates (see Qasim, 1982; Krey, 1973).
In his main work, on the nitrogen cycle, Gislon made particularly important observations on the nitrite concentrations. He noted that almost all of the John Murray Expedition stations showed a high level of nitrite in a narrow zone at the base of the nutrient-depleted surface layer, a phenomenon which had already been observed and has been widely found subsequently in oceanic areas. Gilson suggested that this primary nitrite maximum was the result of the activity of nitrate-reducing bacteria in the special conditions occurring in this zone where ample nitrate occurs together with abundant organic matter, providing an easily oxidized energy source. This explanation had already been suggested by Rakestraw (1933), but studies in the late 1930s and much more recently (see Raymont, 1980, p. 313) indicate that this nitrite peak is due to bacterial oxidation of ammonia released from dead phytoplankton cells, rather than to de-nitrification, or to the direct release of nitrite by phytoplankton.
Gilson would have been more in line with modern thinking if he had applied the same explanation for the secondary nitrite maximum at depths below about 150 metres at several stations, particularly in the north-eastern Arabian Sea, off the Makran coast and off the coast of Arabia. This was the first record of such secondary maxima which are now known from a number of other regions including the eastern tropical Pacific. They are restricted to water bodies with very low levels of oxygen and are thought to be due to the action of denitrifying bacteria (Raymont, 1980). Curiously, Gilson (1937,p. 65) made the point that bacteria known to be capable of reducing nitrate to nitrite required low levels of oxygen, as found at those stations where the secondary nitrite maxima were encountered, but he did not go onto suggest such de-nitrification as an explanation. He did, however, point out that 'the fact that these stations lie in the neighborhood of the "head areas" described elsewhere in these reports … is suggestive, but the connection cannot be regarded as established'.
Thus, these azoic regions were found where water with a high nitrite and, much more to the point, very low dissolved oxygen content, Wyrtki's (1973) north Indian intermediate water, impinges on the sea-bed. The reason for the deep oxygen minimum layer in the Arabian Sea and elsewhere is
the result of the balance between consumption by the oxidation of abundant organic matter beneath regions of high primary productivity and replenishment by advection and mixing with other water masses, an explanation clearly stated by Sewell and Fage (1948). In the Arabian Sea the situation seems to be exacerbated by the fact that the replenishing water flowing northward into the area at intermediate depths already has a depleted oxygen content (Swallow, 1984). But the connection between the low oxygen content of the overlying water, producing inhospitable anoxic benthic conditions, and the absence of megabenthic organisms, seems not to have been made at the time, resulting in Sewell's (1934a) curiously noncommittal explanation of the azoic zones quoted above. The reasons for this failure seem to be twofold. First, the mid-water hauls made during the Expedition revealed fairly abundant pelagic life in the oxygen minimum layer ( see Sewell, 1947a; Sewell and Fage,1948) clearly showing 'that this water is not per se responsible for the absence of life' (Sewell, 1934a). Second, and perhaps even more important, is the fact that although Mohamed (1940, p. 191) emphasized the correspondence between the low dissolved oxygen levels and his low pH levels, the details of the oxygen profiles obtained in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman, like the temperature and salinity sections, were never published. If they had been, Sewell would perhaps have realized that the overlying water in the azoic regions was, indeed, responsible for the absence of life.
Conclusion
The answer to the question: Was the John Murray/Mabahiss Expedition particularly significant? Must be 'yes'. But such an answer is subject to some important qualifications. First, its 'political' implications were minimal in the United Kingdom, but considerable in Egypt. Second, the scientific results, which might have been expected to have had a wider and longer lasting impact, had remarkably little effect at the time and their potential importance has become apparent only in retrospect. The reasons are undoubtedly complex, but the following factors each surely played a part.
First, the conceptual framework necessary for an appreciation of the significance of the results on sea-floor topography and geology did not exist in the 1930s and was not to materialize for at least a further two decades. Second, many of the results, though published, seem to have escaped the notice of later workers. Gilson's (1937) excellent report on the nitrogen cycle, for instance, does not receive a single mention in the volume on the Biology of the Indian Ocean edited by Zeitzschel (1973), and only a single reference in Raymont (1980). Most of the results, of course, appeared in the Scientific Reports of the Expedition rather than in conventional scientific journals and may therefore have failed to reach as wide a readership as they might otherwise have done. On the other hand, the results of many other expeditions were published in much the same way but nevertheless entered the literature adequately. Perhaps the war was to blame for this, as for many other things. In the excitement of the post-war boom in marine research there was certainly a tendency to start afresh in many areas and to ignore, albeit unintentionally, the older literature. The earlier John Murray Reports were perhaps among the casualties. Finally, and most regrettably, some of the potentially most important results were never published. For this there is no obvious explanation other than lack of time or motivation,
which most of us use to excuse our failure to produce. John Murray, who wrote 1.600 pages of the Challenger Reports and co-authored as much again, would have found this unforgivable!.

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