Discovery Investigations

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The RSS Discovery in action for the Discovery Investigations

The Discovery Investigations were a series of British research expeditions and land-based studies between 1924 and 1939 and from 1949 to 1951 on the biology of whales in the Southern Ocean . These campaigns were financed by the Colonial Office and organized by a Discovery Committee founded especially for this purpose in London in 1923 . The aim was to make the scientific results of this research available to the whale and fishing industry. In addition, numerous geographical objects in the Antarctic were mapped and named.

The ships used in the research trips were the RSS Discovery (1924–1931), the RRS William Scoresby (1927–1939) and the RRS Discovery II (1929–1939 and 1949–1951). In 1925, a research laboratory was set up at King Edward Point in South Georgia . The Discovery Committee functioned in its function until the outbreak of the Second World War , when the research series initially came to an end. It was continued from 1949 to 1951 under the aegis of the National Institute of Oceanography . The last Discovery Investigations report came out in 1980.

literature

  • FD Ommaney: South Latitude . Longmans, Green & Co., London 1938.
  • Alfred Saunders: A Camera in Antarctica . Winchester Publications, London 1950.
  • John Coleman-Cook: Discovery II In The Antarctic . Odhams Press, Watford 1963.
  • Alister Hardy : Great Waters . Harper & Row, New York 1967, ISBN 0-00-211291-4 .
  • William James Mills: Exploring polar frontiers: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1 . ABC, Santa Barbara 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 .

Web links