OCEANOGRAPHY 161 



work that have been mentioned many times in these hearings and, of 

 course, have received considerable consideration on the part of the 

 National Academy of Science Committee. These are the areas of 

 food, pollution, and of expanding knowledge. 



We heard a great deal about the possibilities of developing the 

 resources of the sea, of developing a marine agriculture, of farming 

 the oceans, and so on. I feel it is essential to point out that before 

 these exciting possibilities can be realized we have to have a very great 

 deal more basic information about the kinds of animals and plants 

 that are present in the sea — what they do, how they live, their life 

 cycles, how they are distributed, and what their properties are in 

 terms of the contribution they make to the balance of life in the sea. 



It is not enough simply to measure the overall total quantity or 

 volume of, let us say, phytoplankton ; it is not enough to take a 

 chlorophyll measurement as an index of productivity unless we know 

 the composition of all these organisms in tenns of the species involved. 



One of the reasons for this is tliat the animals that feed upon plant 

 material in the open sea are themselves highly selective in their feeding. 

 They do not swim through the water simply scooping up everything 

 that may be tlie right size, but have the capacity to select out certain 

 features just as an animal on land on an acre of woodlot, for example, 

 will eat certain plants but not others. So also in the sea the minute 

 Crustacea, upon which larger fishes depend for their food, are highly 

 selective in their feeding. It is highly essential to study this species 

 composition. If this is not done, then we will ignore one of the most 

 important of the biological variables and come to have only a very 

 dim notion of reality. 



The role of bacteria, which has been for the most part overlooked 

 in the sea, is also significant. Recent studies have shown the presence 

 of various kinds of bacteria in sea water and in fresh water determines 

 whether or not the other living organisms are able to utilize material 

 for their nutrition. 



For example, certain species of algae — and Chlorella is one of them — 

 can support the metabolism, can support nutrition, can support the 

 reproductive life cycle of certain species of Crustacea only if it is 

 accompanied b}^ bacteria because Chlorella alone does not have all 

 the nutritional properties necessary to support the reproductive life 

 cycle. 



This area, so far so little developed and so little investigated, must 

 be looked into if we are really going to take advantage of the resources 

 of the sea and to harvest them in the way in which we hope to be able^ 

 to do. 



The problems of pollution, of course, are enormous. Rational an- 

 swers to the questions of what can be introduced into the sea without 

 affecting the economy of the living organisms depend entirely upon 

 greater amounts of research in the knowledge of what oi'ganisms are 

 present and what they are doing. 



At the present time we have only a broad overall information that 

 it is possible that certain levels of various kinds of wastes, including 

 radioactive wastes, do not appear to cause gross damage. But mitil 

 we know for sure just what the levels of tolerance are for the many 

 organisms, from microscopic organisms through the bottom-living 

 marine invertebrates, the various fishes, we may be doing something 



