224
THE SEAS
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depths of the ocean Ëùe pressures are therefore enormous,
‘
as much as three tons to the square inch.
Yet there is no
part in the sea in which animals cannot live.
At rst
’
sight it seems remarkable that any living creature Could
_
endure such enormous pressures, but we must realize that
that is their natural environment.
We, on land, live
'
always with a pressure of 14 lbs. to the square inch on our ,
bodies, but we are not conscious of it ; when the barometer
rises by one inch the increase of pressure on our body
surface may be as much as one ton, yet this is not noticeable.
The great pressures in the depths of the ocean have a
slight effect on the density of the water, but because water
is almost incompressible the increase in density with depth
'
is extremely small.
It Can in no way be sufcient to support
'
a
persistent and erroneous popular belief_ that-, owing to
_
-
,
the increasing density, objects sinking Will nd their own
,
level before they reach the bottom, a level in which the
density of the water is the same as 'theirs and below which
.
they cannot sink because the density of the water becomes
greater.
Sir Wyville Thomson in “ The Depths
the
_
Sea. ,” remarks,
”
There was a'curious popularnotion, in
-
which I well remember sharing when a boy, that, in going
'
_
down, the sea water became gradually under the pressure
'
heavier and heavier, and that all the loose things in the
sea
0ated at different
according to their Specic
-weight : skeletoris of men, anchors and shot and cannon;
and last of all the broad gold pieces wrecked in the loss of
many a galleon on the Spanish Main ; the whole forming
.
a
kind of " false bottom ”
to. the ocean, beneath which”
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there lay all the depth of clear still water, which was heavier
.
than molten gold.”
‘
.
It has been suggested for. instance that the Titanic
.
thus sank to a false bottom; but under the increasing -
pressure ”sealed air chambers would become “
imploded
"
or_