40 



harsh environmental conditions, and starvation. If only one percent 

 of a million eggs spawned by a single female survive to adulthood, 

 the adult population would increase 5000-fold. 



Understanding and predicting the natural fisheries fluctuation 

 will require incorporating biological data into the development of 

 physical models of ocean activity. This in turn will require tapping 

 into the growing capability of supercomputers and supercomputer 

 software to handle massive amounts of data, improved techno- 

 logical innovation in environmental sampling, and the training of 

 graduate students in the use of emerging research techniques. 



Understanding the cycles of commercial fish populations is in one 

 sense only a by/product of the basic research and that National 

 Science Foundation supports. But as the federal agency supports 

 research and education in each scientific discipline, NSF has an ad- 

 ditional responsibility of connecting that research to problem areas 

 of national interest. 



That requires strong partnerships, not only among agencies and 

 with universities, but with the industries that can take the knowl- 

 edge and the technologies that come out of research and apply 

 them to the needs of the people. 



Let me offer one other example. 



One of the most spectacular results of the slow drift of the con- 

 tinents is found along the mid-ocean ridge system that Dr. Ballard 

 mentioned earlier. Heat that is transferred to the ocean from the 

 hot, fractured volcanic rock along the mid-ocean ridge has an im- 

 portant impact on the chemistry of the oceans and may have sig- 

 nificant effects on their biological productivity as well. 



About 20 years ago, researchers aboard deep-diving submersibies 

 like ALVIN made a totally unexpected discovery of a broad range 

 of living plants and marine animals among these hydrothermal 

 vents. While this has been tremendously exciting as a scientific dis- 

 covery, it has had important economic implications as well. 



The unique, heat-resistant enzjones isolated from bacteria found 

 in hot water vents have provided products used in the multi-million 

 dollar biotechnology industry and in basic molecular biological re- 

 search. 



In 1993, the ALVIN submersible found evidence of a large com- 

 munity of bacteria that live in porous rocks well beneath the 

 seafloor. Some researchers estimate that the biomass of this sub- 

 seafloor biosphere is comparable to the mass of all living things on 

 the surface of the earth. 



Discoveries of deep seabed and sub-seafloor life forms have 

 opened up entirely new avenues of research and opportunities for 

 understanding the complex interactions between living organisms 

 and their environment. 



These are only a few of the literally scores of topics included in 

 our ocean science research support, each with an equally interest- 

 ing story to tell. These success stories, however, are not the result 

 of heroic efforts of NSF supporting research in isolation. Instead, 

 they reflect collaborative programs that involve academic research- 

 ers, agency scientists, oceanographers, and resource managers in 

 other federal agencies and in international efforts. 



In our research activities that are relevant to fisheries, NSF has 

 worked to develop partnerships between the best academic re- 



