Hardy, Alistair Clavering (1896-1985)

English marine biologist who designed the Hardy plankton continuous recorder. He developed methods for ascertaining the numbers and types of minute sea organisms. Hardy was born in Nottingham and educated at Oxford. In 1924 he joined an expedition to the Antarctic, and on his return in 1928 he was appointed professor at Hull University, where he founded the Department of Oceanography. After World War II he was professor at Oxford for 15 years. Hardy made his special study of plankton on the 1924 Discovery expedition. The aim of quantitative plankton studies is to estimate the numbers or weights of organisms beneath a unit area of sea surface or in a unit volume of water. He developed a net that can be used behind faster-moving vessels, at a depth of 10 m/33 ft, giving a larger area in which accurate recordings can be made. Surveys using this device now annually cover many thousands of kilometres in the Atlantic, North Sea, and Icelandic waters, for the benefit of fisheries.