512 
First of all, let me provide a historical perspective on what types 
of substantial information the marine scientific community can 
offer to these problems. There also exists a body of incomplete in- 
formation that makes it difficult to assist you. Finally, I will con- 
sider our general concerns about the husbandry of this quarter of a 
billion tons of societal wastes, including the sewage sludge, that 
has to be placed somewhere. 
The marine scientific community have developed effectively the 
strategies to manage or to control the releases of toxic pollutants to 
the oceans and to protect human health, to protect the integrity of 
ecosystems, to protect recreation, transportation and the aesthetics 
of the marine environment. We have developed these strategies 
over the last 30 years where we have been able to identify the pol- 
lutants and to control their releases. For example the British nu- 
clear industry releases thousands of curies of highly toxic radioac- 
tive substances to the Irish Sea each year and protects the health 
of the most exposed individuals very effectively. 
Over the last 80 years certain catastrophes have identified 
marine pollutants like mercury. We are able now to protect the 
health of most exposed consumers of mercury through the con- 
sumption of sea foods by very simple measures. The FDA maxi- 
mum level of a half part per million of mercury—wet weight—in 
fish defines a most important safety factor. 
Now formidable problems do confront the marine scientific com- 
munity when it is asked to consider the entry to the oceans of such 
materials as sewage sludge which contains a large number of pol- 
lutants that can insult marine life. 
The cause effect relationships that we have developed with re- 
spect to human health for mercury and the radioactive compounds, 
and those with respect to the integrity of ecosystems for the PCBs, 
DDT and other hydrocarbons have provided a basis to control iden- 
tifiable pollutants entering the oceans. But now here we are faced 
with a problem where the discharged material may contain a host 
of toxic substances, the indentities of which are unknown. 
Here we are faced with the problem how to define an unaccepta- 
ble input of wastes to the ocean. Can we define these unacceptable 
effects today objectively? 
The scientific community is attempting to do this. Let me de- 
scribe the difficulties we are encountering. Also, I will offer you a 
term that might be assessed by you as a substitute for the word 
“degradation” as an unacceptable impact upon the environment. 
I will do this by illustration. In the Los Angeles Bight coastal 
zone that receives wastes discharge from 11 million people, the 
nature of the bottom marine communities are being changed in 
about 5 percent of the area. 
Now, we are not causing any single species to become endan- 
gered, but we are changing 5 percent of the indigenous populations. 
Is this acceptable or not? Is 10 percent, is 1 percent? What is degra- 
dation and what is acceptable? 
The scientists can’t answer this question at the present time. I 
agree that the critical problem is the identification of the loss of a 
renewable resource through waste disposal in the ocean. The re- 
newable resource may be food that we eat, fish, shellfish; recrea- 
