Fróðskaparrit

						70

MYSIDACEA (CRUSTACEA) IN THE FAROE AREA

Previous investigations

In 1895-96 the Danish »Ingolf« Expedition

sampled 22 deep-water stations off the

Faroes, in the area which today is defined

as Faroese Fishery Territory. The research

vessel »Thor«, used by the Danish Com-

mittee for the Exploration of the Sea, made

fishery investigations round the Faroes in

1903-05. The mysids collected by »Ingolf«

and »Thor« were studied by H. J. Hansen

and included in his publication (Hansen,

1908). The following 15 species were

recorded: Boreomysis arctica, B. microps,

B. nobilis, B. scyphops, B. tridens, Eucopia

unguiculata, Gnathophausia zoea, Hanse-

nomysis fyllae, Meterythrops picta, Param-

blyops rostrata, Parerythrops spectabilis,

Praunus inermis, Pseudomma affine, P. fri-

gidum and P roseum.

Spárck (1937) contains the following in-

formation about the history of zoological

investigations in the Faroe area. The echin-

oderm specialist Th. Mortensen, using the

vessel »Beskytteren« (Royal Danish Navy)

in 1899, and the zoologist A. Strubberg, us-

ing the vessel »Margrethe« in 1913, made

extensive collections of marine inverte-

brates in near-shore and shallow water.

Comprehensive zoological investigations

of the Faroes started in the autumn of 1924

where the young zoologist H. Lemche was

responsible for the fíeld work. The carci-

nologist K. Stephensen worked in the area

in March-April 1925, followed by H. Lem-

che and R. Spárck in the summer of 1926.

Spárck used the research vessel »Dana«.

The coelenterate specialist P. L. Kramp in-

vestigated the shallow water fauna in the

autumn of 1926 on »Beskytteren«.

The colleetions of mysids were meager

as only two species were reported: Praunus

inermis and Schistomysis ornata (Stephen-

sen, 1929). A third species, represented by

one badly damaged specimen, was also

mentioned as «Mysis (oculata (O. Fabri-

cius) ?)». We will never know what species

that specimen represented. The nearest re-

cords of the cold water species Mysis ocu-

lata are from fjords of eastern Iceland.

T. Brattegard sampled fíve stations in the

Faroe area in 1983 using a modified Roth-

lisberg and Pearcy epibenthic sampler

(Brattegard and Fossá, 1991). T Brattegard

and J.-A. Sneli sampled 12 stations in 1986

and one station in 1987 in the Faroe area us-

ing the epibenthic sampler and a newly

constructed detritus sledge (Sneli, in press).

These stations are included in the BIOFAR

station list (Nørrevang et al., 1994).

The BIOFAR and BIOFAR 2

investigations

The intention with the BIOFAR pro-

gramme «Investigations on the marine ben-

thic fauna of the Faroe Islands» was to

study the invertebrate fauna at depths deep-

er than 100 m to supplement and update in-

formation in «The Zoology of the Faroes»

(Spárck et al, 1928-37, 1928-42, 1935-42;

Sparck t and Tuxen, 1928-1971).

During the BIOFAR programme in the

years 1987-90 (some samples also taken in

1991-1993, Nørrevang et al., 1994) rough-

ly 600 localities were sampled, at depths

from 20 to 2420 m, with 790 deployments

of sampling gear. The stations sampled at

depths shallower than 100 m were taken

when foul weather made sampling in open