716 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM—1965 
simply moved in closer. 
The changes we are talking about are of small magnitude as compared with 
the almost daily fluctuations on land -- the temperature rise in 1957-58 along 
central California was only about 3 degrees above the established average con- 
dition. The observed changes in marine life offer some evidence in support of 
what many naturalists have long suspected -- the life chains of the sea = from 
the floating diatoms to the great fish stocks are to be considered a system that 
is turning over at a rather high rate of speed - some of the smaller organisms 
have life cycles of a day or a few days, and the great blue whale, largest 
animal on earth, attains its full size in three or four years. But each level of 
the chain decreases in total mass as we proceed form the first producers to the 
last carnivores. There appears to be a great deal of lost energy in this system 
of turn over, and now and then the suggestion has been made that we should harvest 
our food from the lower levels -- the plankton -- instead of going to all the 
expense and uncertainty of catching fish. People who suggest this apparently do 
not realise that the plankton may be as equally spotty and uncertain. 
Much more practical are the suggestions for the culture of these types of 
organisms that we can utilize at the second step -- such animals as clams and 
oysters. Oyster culture is our oldest marine industry -- practiced by the 
Romans. But shellfish and alga culture -- such as the green Chlorella for which 
so much was hoped a few years ago -- must be done in bays. We have given very 
little heed to the use of our bays except as cloaca maxima. If we should ever 
want to return San Francisco bay to a condition adequate for oyster culture, we 
would have an almost impossible clean up job on our hands. Some of the future 
proposals for water to Los Angeles, which include bypassing of unsatisfactory 
water from farmlands and industries into San Francisco Bay would make the possi- 
bility even more remote. San Francisco bay is gone -- as a scene for shellfish 
and seaweed culture. This is a local example of what we may allow to happen on 
a world wide basis while at the same time we talk about increasing our food 
supplies. 
Another possibility is that we may domesticate whales and seals and a 
fanciful novel has been written about the great herds of whales controlled by 
electronic fences and of the divers that shepherd them about. It may be more 
practical to increase the nutrient content of shallow waters by stirring up the 
bottom with compressed air jets, or eliminating by chemical means some of the 
hordes of useless bottom animals like starfish that consume the greater part of 
the available food material that might instead support fish. Something along 
these lines has been suggested by Sir Alister Hardy, but admittedly we must be 
much more certain about the significance of these animals to the economy of the 
sea as a whole before we can proceed with confidence. Men's continuing war with 
the agricultural pests on land is in large part a problem of his own making -- 
by the intense cultivation of uniform crops he has set up attractive conditions 
for insects and viruses which in a state of undisturbed nature are only a small 
part of the system. 
Today we have added a new variable to the uncertainties of the sea -- radio- 
active waste polution. Some of our Russian colleagues are of the opinion, and 
they may have some evidence for this -- that any degree of disposal of radioactive 
waste in the sea is potentially harmful, especially if it reaches the sea at 
those times when fish eggs are developing. This problem needs far more intensive 
study than it has so far received, even in England where studies are under way 
in the Irish Sea around the outfall of their infamous isotope sewer at Windscale. 
