GEK and the Stream

Ocean currents are difficult to clock. The standard method is to measure the distance that a ship moves through the water and compare it with the distance it moves across the bottom of the sea, as shown by celestial observations. Any difference between the two figures is attributed to a current that helped or hindered the ship. The trouble with this system is that it gives only average current velocities over considerable distances and periods of time.

Last week the research ship Albatross of the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institute returned from a 22,000-mile Atlantic cruise with new information about the Gulf Stream obtained by a gadget called the Geomagnetic Electrokinetograph. GEK is a steel box full of vacuum tubes which analyzes electrical information from two electrodes trailed behind the ship. When the ship is swung 90DEG in one direction and then 180DEG in the other direction, the electrodes interact with the earth's magnetic field and so measure the motion of the water in relation to the sea's bottom.

On most charts the speed of the Gulf Stream is given as about one knot. After making 1,200 GEK readings, the scientists on the Albatross decided that the stream has been underrated. Between Cape Hatteras and the Grand Bank, it often flows as fast as four or five knots. It also squirms erratically through the Atlantic. Ships steaming through it are sometimes moving with the current and sometimes against it. So their navigators put the average speed of the stream much too low.

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