You may be refering to the "Albatros"
Leslie

-----Original Message-----
From: Conchologists of America List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Ross Mayhew
Sent: 12 August, 2000 6:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Great Voyages of Discovery

In the 1890s, there was an extremely successful 2-year, rond-the-world
journey
of a ship that made trawls and took planktonic samples in every sea - an
excellent sampling of the marine biodiversity of the planet.  I don't recall
the
name of the vessal - was it the Darwin?

I would like to find out a bit about similar great voyages of discovery
which
have been made in this century: i am aware of several research efforts on a
much
more limited scale, but was there ever again a similar, grand
round-the-world
marine exploration expedition, with its main focus being on benthic
orgainisms?
What about protracted, intensive, yet more regional efforts?  I was certain
there was such a one in the Indonesian region a couple of years ago, but
cannot
now find any information regarding this.   Also, what about the Carribean?

This IS mollusc-related, since these voyages always yield large numbers of
new
mollusc species, reminding us just how slender our knowledge of the ocean's
floor truly is, and how rich the biodiversity of even the deepest parts of
the
seabottom.  Let's see if we can come with a good list, like we did with the
topic "conchological couples"! Has anyone written a book on the topic, or
made a
decent catalogue of such efforts?

-Ross.