712 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM—1965 
IV The Inexhaustible Sea 
The title of our discourse is taken from a recent magazine article, but it 
illustrates an opinion about our future expectations from the ocean that many in- 
formed scientists view with some reservation. It is true that the seas of the 
world cover the greater portion of the globe and that much can be expected from 
them in the future. But our knowledge of the seas is only slightly less frag- 
mentary than that of the moon, and some of the schemes and imaginative devices 
proposed for obtaining resources from the ocean are only slightly less fanciful 
that the devices suggested for bringing a sample of moon dust back to earth, and 
almost as expensive. 
The optimism of those who speak of the inexhaustible sea had best be tem- 
pered by a remembrance of how we have regarded our terrestrial resources. It 
was not much more than 60 years ago that men still spoke of the boundless wealth 
and inexhaustible resources of the North American continent. Now we seem to 
have transferred this attitude to the sea, but we have no real justification for 
doing so. In short, our estimate of the inexhaustible resources of the sea is 
based on our lack of understanding of the sea. It is also part of man's blithe 
optimism that the future will always be taken care of, somehow, But the gloomy 
prophets of the plundered planet school (as some have disdainfully called them) 
are right in one essential: mankind cannot always hope that the future is 
assured, unless he limits his numbers so that they do not exceed the carrying 
eenacity of the earth. The solution to Los Angeles is not to commit all the 
water of the western United States to its unlimited growth, but to stop Los 
Angeles from growing. One of the plans for moving water to Los Angeles would 
be so devastating to fish life, especially what is left of the salmon, that the 
Fish and Game people have categorically recommended against the scheme. Thus 
what we propose to do on land may affect the life of the sea and our expectation 
of future harvest. 
but there is also the implicit notion that we can do almost anything we wish 
to our native environment, the land, as long as we have the sea to fall back on. 
But because we are creatures of the land, the sea *i11 always to our secondary 
reserve -- and what will it avail us to reduce our land to a vast denaturalized 
desert of houses, highways, power plants and turn to -upporting ourselves on fish 
meal and plankton soup -- if indeed that is possible? Man will not be able to 
live on fish meal alone. 
The eminent fisheries biologist Sir Alister Hardy has pointed out that 
apparently several times in the history of life on earth certain animals have 
been forced back into the sea to make their living. Porpoise and whale like di- 
nosaurs evolved, and in later epochs the mammalian whales, seals and such birds 
as auks and penguins evolved from terrestrial relatives. Perhaps this was due 
to competition for food, Sir Alister goes on to remark that man's increasing 
populations will force him back to the sea as well -- and he proposes a few fan- 
ciful devices of his own -- underwater fish herding gadgets and perfected diving 
apparatus that will enable us to stroll about in far deeper water than we can 
now reach. At any rate, it is to be noted that this return to the sea will not 
be the result of competition from another, more successful terrestrial mammal, 
but from man's own pressure of numbers. Are we justified in the comfortable 
notion that the sea is our ultimate safety valve? 
The problem was concisely put some 1800 years ago by the greek poet Oppian, 
