90 



Moreover, my honest opinion is that the system 

 proposed in the Law of the Sea is unworkable. I don't 

 object, although the mining companies did object, to sharing 

 their technology. They regard that as a secret, proprietary 

 for their own company. It's primarily the technology of 

 getting the metals out of the ores, extracting the nickel, 

 cobalt, and copper from the nodules. There's a secondary 

 problem of getting the nodules up to the surface, but I 

 think that's not a very high-powered technology, I don't 

 think, and I think they might be willing to share that. 



The other much more serious problem, it seems to me, 

 is that no United Nations agency is liable to be a very 

 effective instrument for doing something as practical as 

 mining. I mean, it would be all right if they could 

 contract with some mining firm to do it, but to do it 

 themselves is liable to be a fiasco. That's essentially 

 what the deep-seabed mining provision is, that a company or 

 a consortium can nominate two sites, and then the other 

 "prize, " as they call it, gets to choose one of those sites 

 and the company gets the other. Then, somehow or other the 

 enterprise has to raise the money to do the mining, get the 

 technology, develop the equipment, or develop this 

 managerial system and the equipment, and sell the product. 



Revelle: It's just not the kind of thing that an agency as clumsy 

 as the UN could possibly do, I don't think. 



I think the developing countries are going to be 

 seriously disappointed in it. I don't think anybody 

 believed it was going to work very well, but Elliot was 

 willing to go along with it because in fact it did also make 

 provision for genuine mining conpanies to do part of the 

 mining. 



Sharp: How is all of that going to end up with the way the Law of 

 the Sea Conference is now? 



Revelle: Well, they're still talking about it in the Ocean Studies 

 Board with about as much hopeless resignation as ever! 

 There's an agency in the State Department, the Bureau of 

 Oceans, Environment, and Science, which has an assistant 

 secretary at the head of it. 



One of the divisions of that bureau is the Marine 

 Affairs Division headed by a man named Bill Erb [spells 

 name], now at least. It was formerly headed by Norman Wolf, 

 the lawyer I spoke about. His principal job is to try to 

 get consent from coastal states for American research 

 vessels that want to do research there. Sometimes it works 

 and sometimes it doesn't. 



For example, the Geophysics Film Committee of the 

 National Academy of Sciences has a project with WQED 

 Pittsburgh to make a series of seven geophysical films. I 

 know about this because I'm the chairman of the NAS 

 committee that is supposed to be doing it. We made 

 arrangements for the Woods Hole submarine Alvin to dive in 

 the Guaymas Trench off Guaymas in the Gulf of California. 



