PLANKTON AS FOOD 



many parallels with the populations of men as living things, hi the previous 

 chapters of this book, time and time again, the interdependence of one living 

 thing with another is emphasized. Nothing is free from the complexity of 

 its surroundings. If conditions are right, and there is adequate food, there will 

 be something to eat it, and the more food the greater the numbers, but in 

 turn there will be something else to eat those. As food becomes short the 

 numbers dwindle but the result is a regeneration of the prime nutrients and 

 so the cycle is constantly maintained. With humans, conditions are different 

 as we have learned in part to control our environment, we warm our houses 

 in cold weather, we store our food at harvest to spread it out over the whole 

 year and we have organized transport to distribute it. How absolutely natural 

 that our numbers have increased ! On top of this we have reduced our worst 

 natural enemy — disease — and are doing our utmost to prevent warfare. This 

 inevitably means continued increase of population and continual demands 

 for more and more food and more and more organization in distributing it. 

 As Lord Adrian said in his Fawley lecture in November 1959 — 'Much 

 remains to be done before the under-developed territories of the world can 

 be freed from poverty and hard labour, but the objective cannot be attained 

 if the timing is not adequately supervised, if the population of the world is 

 allowed to increase more rapidly than we can increase our means for feeding 

 it.' Sir James Gray in his presidential address to the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science at York in 1959 said 'the writing on the wall is 

 tolerably clear ; if Man behaves like an animal and allows his population to 

 increase whilst each nation steadily increases the complexity and range of its 

 environment, Nature must take her course and the Law of the Jungle prevail'. 

 Man is a hve animal, and his populations are living communities, but he 

 does have the potential ability to exercise control. Without it, the continued 

 supply of increased food will mean more and more people to feed and greater 

 demands for more food. Always, pending the ideal, there will be those near 

 the sources of food and amply fed, always there will be those on the out- 

 skirts who cannot get enough— and always there will be more. With control 

 of numbers — and the method we hope will have no parallel with plankton ! — 

 there could be ample food for all. Without it, more effort to find more food 

 merely means that instead of starving millions eventually, like the dino- 

 flagellates of the 'red tides', there will be starving multimillions. Until we 

 learn that control we shall continue to look to the sea for more and more food, 

 and always our sea-food will be linked with plankton. 



M 171 



