482 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



next problem is a qualitative one regarding the population of the sea : 

 what are these creatures that populate the waters? This is a basic 

 problem in marine biology ; upon it depend the solutions to problems 

 of economic, or ecologic, or purely biologic interest. We must know 

 what organisms wo are working with before we can determine how 

 they live together in communities, how they depend upon one another, 

 and how they affect us. 



Creatures of the sea do, in fact, affect the affairs of man in many 

 ways. Many of them have served us for food since the beginning of 

 mankind. When we build structures in the sea for our own purposes, 

 certain of the animals and plants whose domain we have invaded use 

 those structures to their own ends and thus either destroy what man 

 has made or so befoul and beclog it as to render it worthless. When 

 we sail in tropic waters, other marine life — corals and algae — has been 

 there long before us and raised up an edifice that passively awaits the 

 unwary navigator and his fragile keel. If we are thrown into the sea, 

 or when we voluntarily venture into it, still others may unintentionally 

 do us bodily damage or even deliberately seek us out as a meal. Most 

 "dangerous" of all, to marine biologists anyway, are those that have 

 such bizarre or complicated ways of life that they entice us to devote 

 most of our lives to learning of them and solving their riddles. 



Since the close of World War II, interest in the Pacific Ocean has 

 been increasing steadily. A number of expeditions were sent out to 

 study the tropical Pacific, among which were those of the Pacific 

 Science Board (National Academy of Sciences-National Kesearch 

 Council) and the George Vanderbilt Foundation. Among the 

 expeditions of the Pacific Science Board were those comprising the 

 5-year Coral Atoll Program, in some of which the present authors 

 participated. 



The expeditions of the Coral Atoll Program did much to broaden 

 our knowledge of life on the coral atolls of the Marshalls, Gilberts, 

 Carolines, and Tuamotus. But field team studies came to a close 

 before the most interesting part of the Pacific could be studied : the 

 western rim, the f aunal gateway to that vast coral world that reaches 

 to Hawaii, the Galapagos, and even our own western shores. Moving 

 eastward from the Malay Archipelago and its wonderfully rich fauna, 

 we find no depletion through the Philippines, but what of the western- 

 most islands of Micronesia? They are a scant 600 miles east of the 

 Philippine Islands (see map, fig. 1) , no journey at all for sea creatures 

 with free-swimming young stages. However, between the Philippines 

 and the Palau Archipelago lies one of the greatest deeps in all the 

 seas. How many of the East Indian species have been able to span 

 this deep? Even the submarine ridge upon which the Palaus are 

 situated, extending northeastward from the Moluccas, is covered by 



