18 



Oceanography — The Ten Years Ahead 



to such high pressures and perpetual low tem- 

 peratures. It also offers him intriguing questions: 



"What are the enzyme systems that operate in 

 these conditions?... 



"What is the meaning — the function and his- 

 tory—of those strange structures, 'fishing rods' 

 and 'lanterns', that characterize known inhabitants 

 of the deeps?... 



"Did an original ancient fauna adapt to and sur- 

 vive the severe drop from 12° to 2°C; or did this 

 change bring widespread extinction and replace- 

 ment? 



"Recent years have brought discoveries of ex- 

 tremely ancient organisms; 



"Under what conditions have these 'living fos- 

 sils' survived? How can we account for the rad- 

 ically different evolutionary rates that we find 

 in the sea?... 



"The plankton is formed typically of small es- 

 sentially floating creatures that we might expect 

 to be uniformly dispersed, hence evenly distrib- 

 uted... 



"How does the plankton, apparently helpless 

 in the face of water movement, maintain discrete 

 distributions?... 



"What factors limit the distribution of com- 

 munities, regulate their abundance and deter- 

 mine their internal structure?" 



3. THE MOTION OF THE WATERS 



"Direct current measurements during the past 

 year have shown that the east-west transport of 

 water in the eastern tropical Pacific is probably 

 at least three times that previously estimated. 

 We may ask: 



"How good are some of the other estimates of 

 water transport? Just what, how big, and how com- 

 plex is the circulation pattern of the oceans? This 

 question leads in turn to others. What are the 

 'time constants' of the oceans? Why are some 

 water masses but not others homogeneous over 

 hundreds of thousands of square miles? Why 

 is there the vast oxygen minimum beneath the 

 thermocline in the tropical eastern Pacific and 

 eastern Pacific and eastern Atlantic? What is the 

 rate of mass exchange across the thermocline? 

 Even more fundamentally, how are thermoclines 

 formed and why do they persist? 



"That the questions listed above remain un- 

 answered reflects not only the lack of quantita- 

 tive measurements of the motions of the ocean 



waters, but also the inadequacy of our thermo- 

 dynamic and hydrodynamic models of the sea 

 and the air. The two great earth fluids can be 

 thought of as interlinked heat engines, and both 

 theory and experiment need to be concentrated 

 on the boundary between them... 



"How are the waves formed, and how do they 

 grow and decay? What is the partition of energy 

 and momentum, transmitted by the wind to the 

 sea, between waves, currents and turbulent mo- 

 tion? 



"Waves beneath the sea surface, called internal 

 waves, are far more mysterious than the waves 

 at the surface. 



"How are internal waves generated? Do they 

 break near shore? Are they effective in mixing 

 nearshore water? What is the role of internal 

 waves of tidal period in tidal friction?" 



4. OCEAN-ATMOSPHERE RELATIONSHIPS 



"So intimately connected are the oceans and the 

 atmosphere that basic research in one field must 

 necessarily involve the other... Studies of these 

 relationships may be highly fruitful in long-range 

 weather forecasting. 



"Less well-known and little understood are the 

 long-term effects on climate caused by the ultimate 

 stirring up of the deep ocean waters. 



"Does the supply and coldness of the deep water 

 vary at its source around Antarctica from year to 

 year, or decade to decade? And if such variations 

 occur, how long after and by what mechanism do 

 they affect climate? 



"In the deep waters of the sea, with their slow 

 transport, we have a natural built-in lag which is a 

 most promising beginning for the understanding 

 and ultimate prediction of long-term climatic 

 fluctuations." 



5. ESTUARIES AND COASTAL WATERS 



"Men have lived since time immemorial near 

 the seashore and have benefited from the natural 

 resources of inshore waters. Yet little is known 

 about basic processes at the margins of the sea. 

 Consequently, coastal and estuarine waters are 

 now claiming an increased share of attention 

 from oceanographers. 



"Some of the questions are: 



"What are the mechanisms of sediment erosion, 

 transportation, and deposition on the shelf and 

 in the surf zone?... 



