382 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1961 



voyage of Savannah^ tlie age of the sea appeared to have reached full 

 maturity ; it had become a primary area for both commerce and con- 

 flict. And such, magnified many times, it remains. Yet a careful 

 look ahead shows that, influential as it has been in the past and is 

 today, the true significance of the sea for civilization is only beginning 

 to become apparent. 



Those who have heard the scientific testimony presented to the 

 committees of Congress in recent years are especially conscious of 

 this. The inquiries of these groups have ranged from biological 

 warfare to the political issues of exploring outer space, from the need 

 for language computers to the potential uses of rocket engines, from 

 geodetic myths and fallacies to the shifting curricula of American 

 education. Through these and other technological surveys, there has 

 been revealed not only the capabilities, wants, and expectations of the 

 scientific fraternity, including anthropologists, but also those of the 

 economist, the industrialist, the conservationist, the engineer, the gov- 

 ernment official, the teacher, the student, the soldier, and the sailor. 



In addition to providing a factual base for current legislation, the 

 inquiries have been designed to give public officials a preview of the 

 issues they will be called upon to face in the decades ahead — issues so 

 sweeping in scope that they must be anticipated and plamied for 

 well in advance if they are to be met at all. 



It is from the analysis of the vast amount of information poured 

 into Congress by the country's most laiowledgeable men and women 

 that the image of the sea has emerged, almost startlingly, as a potent 

 force which spreads across the entire spectrum of future human affairs. 



The direction in which we turn seems to make little difference. 

 Regardless of the social complex or problem under study, if we trace 

 its predictable convolutions far enough ahead, we discover that sooner 

 or later the trail encounters some aspect of the expanding influence 

 of the oceans. 



The most competent forecasts available today indicate strongly that 

 the remainder of the 20th century will find Americans — and, indeed, 

 people everywhere — forced to concentrate upon seven great quests. 

 These are : the search for Security, for Living Room, for Water, for 

 Climate, for Resources, for Industry, and for Knowledge itself. 



In every one of these areas, the sea is proving a crucial element — so 

 crucial that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the new age into 

 which we are moving is not only the age of the atom, the electron, and 

 space : it is also a new age of the sea. 



THE SEARCH FOR SECURITY 



Nuclear weapons, the rising tide of nationalism throughout the 

 world, and the rapidly growing East-West battle for the mind of 



