Whalers and sealers were the first people to visit the southern oceans in numbers, and in the 1930's Antarctic whaling accounted for some 12 per cent (by weight) of the total harvest of fish and other animals from the sea. It was the importance of the whaling industry and the need to know more about the physical and biological system on which it was based that was the justification for the classic work organized by the Discovery Committee between the wars. Since then whale catches have declined in absolute and relative terms, and public concern for the whale as the victim of an outstanding example of bad management of a large natural resource has increased.

The past ten years have seen a greatly increased interest in the Antarctic krill Euphausia superba Dana (Fig 1). In particular there have been several Russian expeditions whose main aim has been the evaluation of krill as an exploitable resource (Burukovskiy and Yaragov, 1965) and, more recently, Japanese expeditions have ventured into the Southern Ocean with similaraims (Nemoto and Nasu, 1975). It is obviously vital that international agreement should be reached soon to control this potential exploitation of Southern Ocean fisheries. The problem is at present receiving careful consideration by the SCAR Group of Specialists on Living Resources ofthe Southern Ocean.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has relied on sledge dogs as the main form of transport for field parties since its predecessor, the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), imported them in 1945, when it created a permanent presence on the continent. Over the years dogs have been used for extensive work over a very wide area. In 1975 BAS changed its policy with respect to work in the southern Antarctic Peninsula. In future seasons scientists will not winter in this area but will be flown to Adelaide Island and then into the field. They will carry out more detailed scientific work in particular areas of interest. This means that it is no longer practical to maintain huskies on base as they could not be kept fit and well disciplined during the winter for a short summer season. The scientists, similarly, could not be expected to learn to work the dogs efficiently in the time available, and the change in the nature of their work means that they will not move camp so frequently. The dogs, since they must be fed even if they are resting, would be uneconomic in such a situation. Finally, most of the work will be in areas that are thought to be safe so the dogs will not be needed to probe for crevasses. In future seasons BAS will rely on skidoos for field work (Figs 1 and 2).

An ice shelf is a floating ice sheet, attached to land where ice is grounded along the coastline. Nourished both by surface snow accumulation and by glaciers and ice sheets flowing off the land, ice shelves can reach a considerable thickness, varying from up to 1 300 m when the ice starts to float to 200 m or less at the seaward edge (known as the ice front). Nearly all the world's ice shelves are found in Antarctica, where they cover an area of about one and a half million square kilometres. The two largest are the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf, each with an area of about half a million square kilometres. Smaller ice shelves fringe other parts of the Antarctic coastline.

A previous article (Polar Record, Vol 16, No 104, p 7243 5) outlined the current results, principally from polar areas, of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) obtained during the cruises of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES) research vessel Glomar Challenger. An indication was given of the considerable contribution made by DSDP coring to fundamental geoscientific research. At that time only three legs had been completed in high latitudes: leg 12 in the North Atlantic Ocean, leg 18 in the North Pactific Ocean, and leg 19 in the Bering Sea. No drilling had been undertaken in Antarctic waters but the plans for such work were outlined in the article.

A joint geological expedition from the Department of Geology, University of Cambridge, and the Geologisch-Palontologisches Institut der Universitt Hamburg worked in Svalbard from 27 June to 12 September and was based at the building Mexico in Ny-lesund. The expedition totalled 17 members, was organized from Cambridge by Ailsa B. Reynolds, and was led by W. B. Harland.

The Mrdalsjkull ice cap, in southern Iceland, was visited in July and August 1975 by a party of seven, operating from a base camp on its western side, at the head of the Prsmrk valley. The objectives of the expedition were to record evidence of changes in the extent of the ice cap since its last re-advance (about 1850?) with a view to correlation with climatic data, and to examine the role of imagery from the Earth Resources Technology Satellite-1 (ERTS-1) in this context.

This expedition to the Blosseville Kyst area of east Greenland was wholly geological, comprising several groups brought together under the leadership of Professor P. E. Brown of Aberdeen University. It aimed to follow up geological discoveries which had been made in 1971 by expeditions from Cambridge and Sheffield, and also to pursue several new lines of research directed primarily at relating the sediments and volcanic rocks in east Greenland to the birth of the North Atlantic Ocean. The expedition chartered mv Signalhorn from Martin Karlsen AS of Brandal, Norway, for a period of 52 days; after some delay, due to a mechanical emergency in the North Sea, she sailed from Aberdeen on 20 July. The journey was slow and rough and featured an abortive attempt to take the shorter route round north-east Iceland. On 26 July the east Greenland coast was sighted at lat 68 N in fine weather. Aputitq and the Kangerdlugssuaq area were beset by heavy pack ice, but good progress was made northwards along Blosseville Kyst through moderately open water about five miles offshore.