244 POPULATIONS OF THE SEA 



factors motivating its ability to, shall we say, rise above, or come 

 to terms with its environment, then this is ethological work. Some 

 ecologists, however, notably Elton, have recognized the limits set 

 on ecological deductions by lack of behavioral data. 



Both of these approaches, conjoined with neurophysiology and 

 other biological disciplines are of course needed in the attempt to 

 comprehend fully an animal's whole relation to its environment or 

 neighbors; but they all demand very different techniques and need 

 different degrees of emphasis according to the stage at which 

 scientific knowledge finds itself, but especially they need different 

 types of mind to study them. 



Consider now the biological aspects of oceanography and, in 

 particular, those with which the independent marine laboratories 

 are concerned. These laboratories may be held to be responsible 

 for seeking out the fundamental facts upon which rational exploita- 

 tion of the sea for the greatest good of the community may be 

 based, and for providing the operational research scientist in 

 government departments with a sound basis upon which to build. 

 This is the main justification of their support from public monies 

 allocated mainly for the purposes of development. Let us take 

 stock briefly. 



It is a little over a century ago since scientific marine biology 

 got underway. It rightly gave up much time in the early stages to 

 collection, description, and systematization. In European waters 

 at least we know the eggs and larvae of almost all the marine 

 fishes and a good deal about the stages in the life histories of most 

 things that live in the sea; we are in a few messes over nomen- 

 clature, but perhaps not bad ones; we have got together a vast 

 amount of ecological and physiological — though almost no etho- 

 logical — data; and we certainly know something about the harvest 

 from the sea in terms of material returns from certain expenditures 

 of effort and cunning. Of this catalogue of achievement the 

 community as a whole is probably only much concerned with the 

 last. This harvest, in so far as it consists of such things as fishes, 

 whales, crustaceans, and molluscs, is dependent mostly on the 

 congregation of these various animals in diverse ways at certain 

 times and places where they may be caught, cither there or in 

 passage there. 



