[[77]]
DREDGING
[[79]]
The Blake dredge has a ten-foot iron bar across the top, a handle arrangement and a long twenty-foot net at the bottom, in which things are thrown after being loosened by the top bar. The bottom of the net is fastened so that specimens cannot be dropped out.
This is put way down till it is on the ocean bottom, and then trawled along slowly for an hour or more. Sometimes the whole dredge is lost when it hits an unexpected mountain peak or rock or ledge at the bottom, as it was at Abingdon Island, and once the whole thing was terribly twisted and bent out of shape because of hitting something way down in the depths. [[80]]
It is dragged along, the top iron bar loosening things from the floor of the sea, dumping them into the net, and then brought to the surface.
The things brought up are always very cold, often just above freezing because it is so cold down there. One day a whole bucket load of sea cucumbers came up in the net and they were icy cold as if they had been in an icebox.