Jimmy Bonner., Age 12,, Of Fairfield., Tex., for his question:

Why are there currents in the ocean?

The most massive mountain ranges and the mightiest rivers of our planet are 3n the seas. The sea grater rivers are wide currents that sweep through the oceans in swirling eddies, surface currents have been known and used fbr ages. Recently, scientists discovered that deeper currents flow far below the surface.

Benjamin Franklin had the gulf stream engraved on a chart of the Atlantic Ocean. He hoped that sailing ships would use the eastward sweep of the great eddying ocean current. In 2947 a modern viking named Thor Hyerdahl drifted across the pacific on the raft kon tiki. And proved that the Indians of South America could have used an ocean current to reach and perhaps settle some of the polynesian islands.

In the 20th century, these and other surface ocean currents were well charted and most experts assumed that they were caused mostly by the winds and guided by the land masses and the spinning earth. Scientists of the igy had other ideas. They took a global view of the world wide ocean. They suspected that the surface currents were only part of a system of constantly mixing ocean waters.

Watery like the atmosphere: tends to move and blend, when you add cook salty water to warm,.salt free watery the two solutions stream together until the mixture becomes equalized, the world ocean is forever creating differences in temperature and density and it is natural that these different solutions of ocean water should flaw together and mix, IGY scientists found that ocean currents may be caused partly by the natural tendency of cool., dense water to mix with warm' lighter water. The gulf stream. Swirls warms surface water from the equator through the chilly north atlantic.

A mile below the gulf stream is a cold,, dense counter current. It flows in the opposite direction, down from the polar seas. A similar counter current was found below the surface current which wafted the kon tiki across the pacific.

Winds, land masses and the spinning earth help shape the surface currents, but experts now suspect that these streaming rivers in the sea may be caused by other factors. Differences in temperatures density and saltiness may cause the currents which mix and blend the waters of the world wide ocean,

Probings in the pacific revealed a still deeper current. The south equatorial current which wafted the kon tiki flows westward from peru to the pacific islands. Below it is a counter current flowing eastward and carrying a stream of cooler water in the opposite direction. Still deeper is a third current flowing westward.