Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 134

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SOLITARY ASCIDIANS (TLTNICATA, ASCIDIACEA
AND SORBERACEA) OF THE FAROES
fied by Steenstrup in 1858. The specimen
was recorded from Miðvág, and might have
been collected by Japetus Steenstrup who
visited the Faroes in 1844 and took benthic
samples around the islands from row boats
(Tendal and Bruntse, 2001). The ascidians
were categorized within the molluscs until
the middle of the nineteenth century, but
there are no ascidians in the mollusc species
list of Morch (1868). The first literature
treating ascidians collected within the pres-
ent-day Faroese EEZ is in a report of Herd-
man (1884) on the cruises of H.M.S. “Light-
ning” in August and September 1868 and
H.M.S. “Porcupine” the year after. On each
of the cruises ascidians were recorded at a
single station out of a total of fourteen in
1868 and twenty in 1869. The sampling ef-
fort from these two pioneering cruises was
concentrated around the Faroe-Shetland
Channel, because of British oceanographic
interests in the area at that time. Nearly a
decade later from 1876 to 1878 a Norwegian
Deep Sea-Expedition was accomplished
with three stations within or close to the
present-day Faroese EEZ, but no ascidians
were recorded (Bonnevie, 1896).
Ascidians recorded in Vestmanna were
identified by Klixbíill in 1880 (Hartmeyer,
1924). When these specimens were col-
lected is uncertain, but some dredgings were
done in 1878 and 1880 (the former year by
C. F. Wandel) from the mail-ship from Den-
mark to Iceland and Faroes (Tendal and
Bruntse, 2001); it is possible that the Vest-
manna records are from one of these sam-
plings. HMS “Lightning” visited the Faroes
again in August-September 1882 and took
benthic samples at ten stations at the south-
ern border of the Faroese EEZ (Carpenter,
1868). In two of these stations ascidians
were recorded (Herdman, 1884). “Fylla” did
some sampling in the Faroe-Shetland Chan-
nel in 1890; ascidians were recorded at two
stations (Hartmeyer, 1923; 1924). In 1895-
1896 twenty-two stations were positioned
within the Faroese EEZ by the Ingolf Ex-
pedition (Bøggild, 1899), and ascidians
were found at three of them (Hartmeyer,
1923; 1924). The físhery steam ship
“Michael Sars”, took several benthic sam-
ples within the Faroese EEZ in 1904 and
recorded ascidians at 12 stations (Bierkan,
1905).
The sparse number of samples from the
latter half of the 19th century represents
more or less coincidental occurrences of
oceanic research vessels in the Faroese area
on journeys with other destinations and pur-
poses, and we must move well into the 20th
century to find a large scale biological in-
vestigation of the Faroes.
Hartmeyer (1923; 1924) included most
records from the Faroes until that time in
his extensive work on the Arctic and boreal
ascidians. Later in the 1920s a survey of the
whole Faroese biota took place; the marine
part was collected in 1924-1927. In autumn
1926 the fishery inspection vessel “Besfo’t-
teren” was employed for sampling and in
1927 “Dana”. The results were published
in uthe Zoology of the Faroes” (Árnbáck-
Christie-Linde, 1952).
Since the 1920s, a number of samples
have been taken in the Faroese area e.g■
NORBI (Monniot and Monniot, 1979), but
in none of these have I succeeded in finding
any ascidian record within the Faroese EEZ-