44 OCEAN SCIENCES AND NATIONAL SECURITY 



in nature depend upon comprehension of antique processes. The 

 possibihty of ice on the Antarctic melting, as it once must have, and 

 raising the level of the sea by perhaps 200 feet would spell doom for 

 many large cities of the world. At the moment, the cycles of climate 

 and sea level which are known to have existed in the past cannot be 

 explained. 



Along with curiosity about the origin of the Earth is the related 

 question of the origin of life itself. Apparently life began in the 

 oceans. Every major biological family has its most primitive mem- 

 bers still in the oceans. There is speculation that such life began 

 when the sea was a warm broth of organic and inorganic materials 

 which, over the eons of time, ultimately produced that complex 

 molecule capable of self-reproduction. By sampling life in more de- 

 tail in the sea and particularly at greater depths, not only can the 

 taxonomy of species be clarified but the actual processes which pro- 

 duced evolving forms and affected the rate of development may be 

 discovered. The ocean shields its life from cosmic rays which can 

 produce mutations, and it is possible that other forms of life, such 

 as the ancient coelacanths which represent the link between fish and 

 vertebrates on land, may be discovered. 



In finer detail, there are great mysteries as to how certain types of 

 sea cucumbers concentrate the mineral element vanadium in amounts 

 100,000 times that trace in the ocean itself, and how the oyster con- 

 centrates copper. The presence of other biological organisms or 

 "trace elements" in the sea in unbelievable dilution may, nevertheless, 

 be found significant in the entire complex of biological balance. Per- 

 haps these substances possess medicinal properties that may explain 

 freedom of undersea life from the ravages of cancer and other diseases. 



But what is most significant is the elemental and oft repeated fact 

 that the oceans cover 71 percent of the surface of the Earth and 

 represent the greatest basic area of undeveloped knowledge of the 

 world around us. The first step in any scientific attack on a problem 

 is obseroation and it is this pi'ocess of observation tiiat has been so 

 strongly emphasized in proposals for an increased program of research. 

 Then significant contributions can be made from the more funda- 

 mental fields of physics, chemistry, biology, and geology in relating 

 these observations to the cumulative fund of scientific knowledge 

 abead}^ developed and in generalizing these observations through 

 what are termed "natural laws." 



C. OCEAN SURVEYS 



Maps are the basic tools of all the sciences that deal with the Earth. To 

 exploit and fully use the oceans, we must first map them sj^steniatically. * * * 

 During the past 100 years, the land areas of the Earth have been mapped in 

 ever increasing details but accurate maps of the ocean basins exist only from their 

 shallow rims. For the 90 percent of the ocean floor that lies below the continental 

 shelf, only the gross features of shape and structure are known. Existing maps 

 of the ocean basins are comparable in accuracy and detail to land maps published 

 at the beginnin.f^ of the I8th century. In addition to the bottom topogrrphy 

 and the associated gravitational and macnetic fields, we need to map in three 

 dimensions the synoptic, seasonal and average distribution of water temperature, 

 density, chemical properties and currents. In the biological realm, we should 

 map the fertility of the sea and the abundance of marine organisms in all ocean 

 areas .2* 



2S "Oceanography 1960-70, Ocean Surveys," NASCO Report, eh. 7 (draft), p. I. 



