184 
which have studied these issues specifically to testify on the subject 
in-greater detail. 
Maybe most important of all, we urge, and this is possibly the 
biggest issue, that those who would use the oceans to subsidize 
their enterprises ought to bear the burden of proof that no irre- 
versible damage will result now or in the future. 
I have not told you about my experiences of some ocean dumping 
that happened in the Mediterranean. There are two of them, of dif- 
ferent character. The Pechine Regine Culman Co. in France has a 
huge aluminum factory in Gardin, as you know, treating the min- 
eral to obtain aluminum has produced enormous heaps of red tail- 
ings. Around Gardin, mountains of these were accumulating, and 
one day this company said they had to get rid of that and put it in 
the ocean. But they did it very carefully. 
They commissioned a number of universities to study what kind 
of damage these tailings could do in the ocean. We have been vol- 
untarily doing that, refusing the money, and we found out that as 
for vertebrates and for invertebrates, these tailings, when put on 
the bottom of an aquarium were not interfering with life, even of 
sensitive creatures. The tailings were slightly alkaline, and it 
seemed to me that the disposal of this red mud in great depths in 
the Mediterranean was at least to be tried on an experimental 
basis. 
The company built a long pipeline from the coast to the drop-off 
zone at about 600 feet, and from then millions of tons of this red 
mud were progressively, day after day, dumped into the ocean. We 
periodically visit the site with our submarine. 
The damage done here is mechanical, not chemical. On huge 
areas, this red mud that is practically harmless spread on the 
bottom, burying all the bottom life, filling in little holes in which 
all the animals seek refuge. Before these animals have time to 
make a new life on the surface of this material, another wave ar- 
rives and displaces them. 
There is some damage done occasionally, even with inert materi- 
al, not to be compared with the other kind of dumping that they 
have witnessed, the dumping by Monte Disson Co. of Italy of indus- 
trial tailings containing high doses of sulphuric acid. They were 
dumped at the north of Corsica for years. The uproar of the popula- 
tion succeeded not only in stopping the dumping but in putting the 
president of the corporation in prison. The thing that I have per- 
sonally witnessed is that the whales that were swimming in this 
area were losing their skin, literally. The black skin of the whales 
could be peeled off by hand because of damage by sulphuric acid. 
There are also examples I would like to mention of accidental 
dumping, due to accidents in navigation. We have witnessed one of 
them very carefully. A Yugoslavian ship was rammed off Otranto 
in the south of Italy, in 90 meters of water, with a cargo of the lead 
compound that you put in gasoline, the antiknock compound. It is 
a very active position. Together with a little judge of Otranto, our 
society was lobbying the Italian Government to do something about 
it. Finally, $12 million were allocated by the Italian Government to 
recover the drums and their recovery almost paid for the salvage 
operation. 
