_Agassiz or Blake Trawl._--This is generally considered to possess advantages over the preceding, and is decidedly better for those not experts in trawling. Its frame (fig. 18) consists of two iron runners each the shape of a capital letter D, joined by iron rods or pipes which connect the middle of each stroke with the corresponding point on the other letter. The net is a tapering one, its mouth being a strong rope bound with finer rope for protection till the whole reaches a thickness of some 2 in. It is fastened to the frame at four points only, the ends of the curved rods, and thus has a rectangular opening.
[Illustration: From Alexander E. Agassiz's _Three Cruises of the "Blake."_ By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The chief advantage of this frame is that it does not matter in the least which side lands first on the bottom; it is to the other trawls what Ball's dredge is to an oyster dredge. The course can also be altered during shooting or towing the Blake trawl with far greater ease than is the case with others. An Agassiz trawl very successful in the North Sea has the following dimensions: length of the connecting rods and therefore of the mouth 8 ft., height of runners and of mouth 1 ft. 9 in., extreme length of runners 2 ft., length of net 11 ft. 3 in., weight of whole trawl 94 lb., 63 of which are due to the frame.
It is instructive to note how closely our knowledge of bottom-living forms has been associated with the instruments of capture in use. As long as small vessels were used in dredging, the belief that life was limited to the regions accessible to them was widely spread. The first known denizens of great depths were the foraminifera and few echinoderms brought up by various sounding apparatus. Next with the dredge and tangles the number of groups obtained was much greater. As soon as trawls were adopted fish began to make their appearance. The greatest gaps in our knowledge still probably occur in the large and swiftly moving forms, such as fish and cephalopods. As we can hardly hope to move apparatus swiftly over the bottom in great depths, the way in which improvement is possible probably is that of increasing the spread of the nets; and a start in this direction appears to have been made by Dr Petersen, who has devised a modified otter sieve which catches fish at all events very well, and has been operated already at considerable depths.