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Both for logistic and technical reasons, and because it was considered a kind of national border, benthic investigations were until the 1940's performed mostly within the 3 nautical miles limit, an area of only about 3000 sqkm. As a consequence, few sampling sites were located outside the 100 m depth contour. The outer shelf and the upper slope were left largely unsampled from the Danish side, as were also the banks west of the Faroes. The results for the period are collected and summarized in the series "The Zoology of the Faroes" (1928-1971).
Meanwhile, from the 1860's until the 1st World War, a number of British expeditions investigated deep-sea and lower slope depths south of the Faroess, including areas that are now inside the Faroese EEZ. The results are published in various British journals and books, among them Wyville Thomson's: "The Depths of the Sea" (1873).
During the same period a few Danish and Norwegian expeditions took small numbers of deep-water samples north, east and west of the Faroes. The results, which are few among so many others from their large investigation areas in the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic, are to be found in the comprehensive reports "The Norwegian North Atlantic Expedition, 1876-1878" and "The Danish Ingolf Expedition 1895-96".
For older times' shipsfare, the Faroes were conveniently located for getting fresh water supplies and as offering harbours in case of distress. So, by and large, a substantial number of samples can be supposed to have been taken by expeditions from many countries just passing by on their way to more distant destinations. Many of these samples are probably never worked up or mentioned in the literature but stand forgotten on the shelves in the collections of various museums. Others are mentioned among samples from other regions, in reports and papers where one would never look naturally for them, but only find them by chance (examples are to be found in Bruntse & Tendal, 2001: "A bibliography of benthic marine invertebrates of the Faroese Economic Zone"). |
