Ross:
I believe it was the Challenger expedition
Hank
-----Original Message-----
From: Ross Mayhew <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, August 12, 2000 10:34 PM
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.