The fauna of the deep sea

by Sydney J. Hickson

The pelagic zone may be divided into several geographical regions and sub-regions, which it would be beyond the scope of this book to enumerate here, but there is one that calls for a few brief remarks. In many parts of the ocean there may be found vast areas of floating sea-weed, which carry with them a population of crustacea and other animals peculiarly their own. This ‘sargasso’ fauna presents so many characteristics and so many features different from that of the ordinary pelagic fauna, that the tracts of sea bearing this weed must be considered to rank as a special region of the pelagic zone, which may be called the Sargasso region.

The zone of shallow water for which we shall adopt Professor Haeckel’s term—the Neritic zone—embraces all parts of the seas of less depth than 500 fathoms, including the inland seas, the shores of great continents and islands, and the shallow banks in the great oceans. It does not include the superficial waters—which belong to the pelagic zone—but extends only from the actual bottom to a distance of a few fathoms above it. The fauna of this zone is extremely varied, consisting of animals that swim, crawl, or are permanently fixed to the bottom, animals of almost every variety of colour and marking, and of every size and shape.

The exact limits of the Neritic sub-zones are not easy to define. The distinguished naturalist Forbes, to whom the abysmal zone was unknown, divided the seas from 0–50 fathoms in depth into three zones—the littoral zone lying between tide-marks, the laminarian zone extending from 0–15 fathoms, and the coralline zone from 15–50 fathoms.

The first of these will stand as a sub-zone, the animals that are able to withstand exposure to the sun and air either in pools or upon the rocks and sand even for a few minutes frequently possessing features that distinguish them from those dwelling beyond low-water mark, just as those more active creatures that migrate backwards and forwards with the ebb and flow of every tide differ from the dwellers in the open sea. There is, it is true, at every low tide, a migration of part of the fauna of this sub-zone into the next, but still it is sufficiently well defined to be allowed to remain in our category.

The second sub-zone is not so easy to define. The terms ‘laminarian’ and ‘coralline’ used by Forbes are only applicable to certain geographical regions and must be abandoned for general use.

We can only recognise one sub-zone between the littoral sub-zone and the abysmal zone, for notwithstanding the important varieties it exhibits in the nature of the bottom, whether it be rocky, sandy, or weedy, the amount of light, the temperature of the water, and the rapidity of the currents, it is not possible at present to point to any general characters of the fauna of its different parts to justify us in subdividing it.

The name that may be given to this second sub-zone of the neritic zone is the Katantic—the sub-zone of the slopes.

The last well-marked zone is the abysmal, extending from the 500–fathom line to the greatest depths of the ocean, one of enormous superficial area, one that it is most difficult to investigate, and one about which we know but little.

In the present state of our knowledge we cannot divide it into any well-marked sub-zones nor even into geographical regions or sub-regions. It is not divided into sections by any important geographical barriers, and the general characters presented by its fauna are practically the same all the world over.

Professor A. Agassiz has pointed out in his ‘Challenger’ monograph that the deep-sea echinoids of the Atlantic Ocean differ from those living in corresponding depths in the Pacific Ocean, but it is doubtful whether any such well-marked differences can be observed in other groups of animals. If, in the course of time, increased knowledge of deep-sea animals emphasises the difference between the abysmal fauna of the Pacific and that of the Atlantic, then we can divide this zone into two geographical regions; but at present it seems more correct to consider the abysmal zone as one that is indivisible either bathymetrically or geographically.