FOOD SHORTAGES AND THE SEA^- 



By Daniel Mebriman 



Director, The Bingham Oceariographic Laboratory 

 Yale University 



[With 2 plates] 



Since World War II our attention has been drawn in forcible man- 

 ner to the problems created by a rapidly increasing population in a 

 world of food shortages and diminishing natural resources. Such 

 books as Osborn's "Our Plundered Planet'' and Vogt's "Road to Sur- 

 vival" paint dramatic and frightening pictures. The press follows 

 with alarmist statements about future depletion or speaks with undue 

 optimism about anything that offers the slightest hope of alleviating 

 critical conditions. Here the oceans come in for a large share of at- 

 tention, especially with reference to supplying the ever-increasing 

 need for protein. This is wholly natural; the oceans cover nearly 

 three-quarters of the earth's surface, and recent technological ad- 

 vances have led to a number of eminently newsworthy "miracles" of 

 modern fishing, such as electronic aids, "atomic" trawls, electrophysio- 

 logical fishing, the deep scattering layer, and detection of fishes by 

 the noise they make. 



More fundamental than new techniques in fishing, however, is the 

 problem of what food is to be taken from the sea — or, to put it another 

 way, at what point can man most advantageously^ break into the sea's 

 cycle of life ? 



This cycle can be said to begin with the vast assemblage of minute 

 floating plants (phptoplanton) and animals (zooplankton) which 

 populate the upper levels of the sea. The microscopic phytoplankton 

 comprising more than 99 percent of all marine plants, creates organic 

 matter from inorganic materials in the present of sunlight, by the 

 process known as photosynthesis. No animals have this capacity; 

 they must fee either on plants or on other animals that have first fed 

 on plants. 



It has often been suggested that the sea's cycle of life might be in- 

 terrupted right here; and if a way could be found for harvesting 

 phytoplankton and zooplantkton for human consumption it might be 

 comparable with the best agricultural practices. But without human 



1 Reprinted by pprmission from The Yale Review, vol. 39, No. 3, spring 1950. Copyright Yale University 

 Press. 



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