84 OCEANOGRAPHY 



tradition and wide experience in collaborating witli and coordinating 

 the activities of other people, institutions, and scientific disciplines, 

 however, we are able to gain a large return from this relatively small 

 investment, 



I welcome the opportunity to tell you of some of the things we are 

 doing and thinking about in some areas of our research program that 

 impinge broadly on oceanography. 



Coastal processes are being studied with special reference to the 

 hydrodynamics of tidal and estuarine flow, the diffusion mechanics of 

 impinging salt and fresh waters, and coastal erosion, deposition, and 

 structure. This work, like most activities of the Geological Survey, 

 is being carried out both in the laboratory and in the field. We are 

 studying the principles and quantitative characteristics of tidal flow, 

 fluid mixing, chemical hydrography, and particle movement and are 

 applying the knowledge gained to the interpretation of existing nat- 

 ural environments, geologic structures and history, and the develop- 

 ment of better instrumentation. 



The geochemical balance of the hydrosphere is a subject whose 

 theoretical and practical interest for geology and oceanography we 

 have long appreciated, but in which we have only recently become ac- 

 tive on a small but broad scale. Geological Survey personnel are now 

 leading a worldwide study of the dissolved substances being carried 

 to the ocean by rivers, with the objectives of explaining the dissolved 

 load in the oceans and of detecting and explaining anomalies in the 

 global geochemical balance. The problem of salt balance in closed 

 basins is also being studied theoretically and empirically, with a view 

 to explaining variations in the salt content and related physical prop- 

 erties of water bodies, including the ocean. 



The marine geology and mineral resources of the continental shelves 

 and shallower oceanic waters is a realm of oceanograpliic interest 

 whose investigations the Geological Survey regards as a particularly 

 logical and proper extension of its responsibilities on dry land. 



We are mindful of the million square miles of unsurveyed ground 

 below our shelf Avaters ; of the potentially strategic insular and shoal 

 waters belonging to or entrusted to the United States in the central 

 Pacific; and of the new outlooks on sedimentary, biological, and geo- 

 chemical processes that can residt from imaginative research in these 

 areas. 



We have been actively working on the marine geolo^, sedimenta- 

 tion, hydrology, and geochemistry of parts of the Atlantic continental 

 shelf, the insular Pacific, and the Arctic Ocean. We have conducted 

 and published extensive scientific surveys of the mid-Pacific test sites 

 and western Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, have synthesized 

 available records for the continental shelf areas of much of the world, 

 have carried out a 2-year program of geophysical investigations of the 

 Arctic basin from a floating ice island, and have discovered that ma- 

 rine bacteria over the Bahama Banks can separate the isotopes of 

 hydrogen. 



The dating, or geochronology, of events in oceanic history and the 

 sedimentary and geochemical record of the ocean basins is basic to 

 many other areas of oceanography. All geochronology depends on 

 unidirectional processes such as the steady decay of radioactive ele- 

 ments and organic evolution, as revealed by the fossil record, and the 

 Geological Survey employs a large proportion of the best qualified 



