Discovery database

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Discovery database

Royal Research Ship Discovery, which was used during the early Discovery Investigations

The Discovery investigations were a series of Antarctic cruises commissioned by the Royal Society over the period 1925-1951. Originally with the aim of investigating the commercial whaling industry the cruises constituted some of the first coordinated scientific work in the Southern Ocean. The cruises contributed enormously to our understanding of the Southern Ocean describing both the Antarctic convergence and the importance of krill as food for whales.

Despite their importance very little of the data collected is available to the scientific community. In order to resolve this issue the British Antarctic Survey is undertaking a project to make data from the Discovery Investigations publicly available.

At present biological data has been extracted from the Discovery Reports along with meta data associated with the sampling stations. All of this data is now available in the form of a relational database here.

Samples taken during the Discovery Investigations, now held by the Natural History Museum, London.

There are plans to expand on this work by extracting data from the Discovery Archives held at the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton and the physical samples collected during the Discovery Investigations held at the Natural History Museum, London. The results of that project will be presented here as it progresses.

Discovery Database contents

The Discovery database contains data on the fish, cephalopod, amphipoda and mysidacea collected during the Discovery Investigations. These data comprise the abundance of each species at individual sampling stations used during the Discovery Investigations along with associated metadata such as date, time and net used.

Click here to access the Discovery Database.

Related references used to produce the database

Anonymous. (1929). Discovery investigation Station List 1925-1927. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 1, pp. 1-140. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1930). Discovery investigations Station List 1927-1929. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 3, pp. 1-132. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1932). Discovery investigations Station List 1929-1931. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 4, pp. 1-232. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1941). Discovery investigations Station List, 1931-1933. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 21, pp. 1-226. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1942). Discovery investigations Station List, 1933-1935. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 22, pp. 1-196. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1944a). Discovery investigations Station List, 1935-1937. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 24, pp. 1-196. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1944b). Discovery investigations Station List, 1937-1939. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 24, pp. 197-422. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1949). Station List, R.R.S. 'William Scoresby', 1931-1938. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 25, pp. 143-280. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1953). Discovery investigations Station List, R.R.S. 'William Scoresby', 1950. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 26, pp. 211-58. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Anonymous. (1956). Discovery investigation Station List, 1950-1951. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 28, pp. 299-398. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Barnard, K.H. (1932). Amphipoda. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 5, pp. 1-326. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Norman, J.R. (1930). Oceanic fishes and flatfishes collected in 1925-1927. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 2, pp. 261-370. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Robson, G.C. (1930). Cephalopods. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 2, pp. 371-402. Cambridge University Press, London.

Tattersall, O.S. (1955). Mysidacea. In Discovery Reports, Vol. 18, pp. 1-190. Ccambridge University Press, Cambridge.

The majority of the Discovery Reports have been digitised and are now available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library website and can be accessed by clicking here.

Visualisations produced during project

Stations in the Southern Ocean used during the Discovery Investigations (1925-51) colour coded by year

Krill distribution as recorded during the Discovery Investigations

Krill egg distribution as recorded during the Discovery Investigations

Page created by Philip Martin
Please contact Nathan Cunningham for more information