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.