34 SEA GRANT COLLEGES 



dreaming becomes reality so rapidly that it's almost regarded as respectable. 

 IS some seem like "stunts," it is worthwhile to remember that such spectaculars 

 that form milestones of human achievement contribute honestly to people's self 

 esteem. They are the necessary steps to give us the confidence to go on to even 

 greater achievements. Yesterday's "stunt" is tomorrow's useful routine. 



Remember, we are inventing the future, not merely predicting it. When 

 people asked, "What will the new deep research submarines look for?" the best 

 answer was: "For things we don't yet know," To survive in a new environment, 

 true readiness is to be ready for the unexpected. 



Let us start at the coastline. Instead of smoothing and concreting coast- 

 lines, we may scallop them to build as many harbors and estuaries as we can 

 and to lengthen the total coastline of the earth. There is a snowflake figure in 

 mathematics which shows that any area, however small, can be enclosed by a 

 line of infinite length. The smaller the scallops or harbors we build, the longer 

 will be the coastline. But if our purpose is to provide seashore not only for the 

 organisms in the sea but for peoples' recreation, the theoretical concept of in- 

 finity becomes finite in terms of the quantum of people size. 



Next, perhaps, we should heat up some coastal waters not only so that you 

 can swim in them but also to make suitable warm water habitats for transplanting 

 useful fishes that previously could not multiply there. With the coming rash of 

 large nuclear reactors, waste heat is regarded by the land engineers as a prob- 

 lem because when it is introduced into cooling water, it produces profound eco- 

 logical effects. 



Many conventional conservationists consider any changes of this kind with 

 the environment to be bad. But if we go about it in a sound engineering way, we 

 can introduce waste heat into the sea in a number of different ways and find 

 those effects on the ecology which are beneficial. Thereafter, this heat would 

 no longer be waste but be useful. 



Because land engineering with its parochial focus in conserving our land 

 and preventing it being washed into the sea and because of the almost total use 

 and reuse of fresh waters so that rivers will no longer flow into the sea, the 

 sand that maintains beaches along the shorelines no longer simply comes down 

 from the land. Beaches are not just there. Sand is continually being taken away 

 to accumulate in the canyons on the continental shelves or even in the deep sea. 

 We'll need to dredge the .sand back and remake the beaches. The beaches will 

 still be in dynamic equilibrium but one link in the cycle will be provided by 

 man's intervention through ocean engineering. When we leave the shoreline, we 

 will need vehicles to supplement the conventional ones which are so limited by 

 the wind and wave at the air -sea interface. We need increasingly to go down in 

 submarines or up in true air seacraft. Present seaplanes can only make emer- 

 gency landings in the sea. We need the kind of air seacraft that can fly out, 

 settle, do its work in a high sea, take off vertically, perhaps, and move on to 

 the next job. 



The present factory ships with their catchers that catch and process whales 

 and fish will grow into floating oceanic cities. We are beginning to get inklings 

 of how to quiet waves by punching holes in harbor walls, much the same as we 

 punch holes in acoustical tile to absorb sound energy. With these elements as a 

 beginning, floating artificial harbors or wave -stemming walls of the floating 

 cities become possible. Or, more comfortable dwelling quarters may be float- 

 ing stably a hundred feet or so below the surface where any wave motion is so 

 damped out as to be unnoticeable. The artificial harbors and other mother ship 

 platforms must be arranged to retrieve small submersibles, to retrieve them 

 underwater so that a rendezvous in the high seas--a much more difficult job 

 than a rendezvous in space- -becomes unnecessary. 



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