48 



understand what the effects of any specific liuman activity will be on 

 that system. We must also understand in what manner and to what 

 degree our specialized use of one part of that system will affect other 

 parts of the system. 



In light of our general ignorance about these matters, research on 

 the natural oceanic system must accompany any attempts at regulat- 

 ing the use of the oceans by man. We should also, wherever possible, 

 use the tracers available from man's planned or inadvertent actions to 

 help us understand the behavior of the natural system. A national 

 program in what I shall call "unfettered" research on the marine sys- 

 tem initiated by scientists and subject to the purifying type of debate 

 typical of such research will do more to establish guidelines as to what 

 the tradeoffs must be in man's ineluctable drive to the sea than any 

 highly directed crash program. 



UNFETTERED RESEARCH 



I would like to give you a few examples of how unfettered research, 

 initiated and promoted by scientists, has helped us understand the im- 

 pact of man on the oceans. My expertise is in the field of the marine 

 geochemistry of the heavy metals and I will confine my examples to 

 this area. 



The interest in the behavior of heavy metals where streams meet the 

 ocean has been with us long before the interest in heavy metal pollution. 

 The reason is that the natural rate of supply of metals to the oceans 

 and the high solubility of most of the heavy metals in open aerated sea- 

 water, because of complex formation, predict much higher concentra- 

 tions of heavy metals in the ocean than is found. The classic case of this 

 is the realization by Haber, the great German chemist, that he could 

 not economically extract gold from the sea to help Germany pay 

 reparations after World War I. Investigators have thus concluded that 

 there must be a self-purifying process active in the ocean system to re- 

 move these metals and one natural candidate, from a chemical point 

 of view, is the estuarine environment. This is an area of high biologi- 

 cal productivity and rapid sedimentation so that the sediments can be 

 depleted in oxygen before all the organic matter is utilized by aerobic 

 organisms. Anerobic organisms then utilize the organic material with 

 the conversion of trapped seawater sulfate to hydrogen sulfide — the 

 chemical with the rotten egg smell — which then controls the chemistry. 

 Under these conditions most heaA^ metals form insoluble compounds 

 of sulfur — as sulfide — and are immobilized. Iron and manganese, un- 

 like these other metals, form fairly soluble sulfide compounds and are 

 subject to release. As they reach aerated water they form highly insolu- 

 ble oxide compounds which act as scavongere for heavy metals in the 

 water columns. There is the possibility that this process is the major 

 source of the ferromanganese oxide nodules found in the deep sea 

 which are being actively considered for metal exploitation. 



Most aspects of this, and related work, have been carried on by scien- 

 tists long before the current concern for pollution, suppoiied in many 

 cases by funds dedicated to unfettered research. I believe tliat in ade- 

 quate understanding of the consequences of heavy metal pollution in 

 coastal systems will come primarily from a continuation of this type 

 of research which should be encouraged philosophically and 

 financially. 



