49 



My second example comes from the concern over the aerosol trans- 

 port of lead from automobile exhaust to the oceans. Dr. Clair Patter- 

 son of the California Institute of Technology', a geochemist who has 

 contributed significantly to both the primary marine lead data and the 

 human interest aspects of the lead problem, was probably driven to 

 concern over lead pollution when he had to worry about how one gets 

 a lead- free laboratory in smoggy Pasadena in order to determine the 

 age of the solar system. His geochemical expertise not only estab- 

 lished the age of the solar system at 4.55 billion years but was har- 

 nessed to understanding the effects of lead transport to the oceans. 



In a manner analogous to the transport of man-injected aerosol 

 load, a natural radioactive lead isotope Pb^^° is also transported from 

 continents toward the ocean through the atmosphere. As it is removed 

 from the air into the surface water and then subsequently into the 

 sediments, it can be used to study both the rate of deposition of coastal 

 marine deposits and also in determining the fate of lead in the oceans. 

 Thus, the study of the marine disposition of Pb^^° can be used as an 

 index of the behavior of heavy metals in general. 



Again, these results are the direct consequence of unfettered research 

 programs following the logical paths shown by antecedent results. 

 One cannot imagine that a directed program for estuarine pollution 

 studies would have had the marine geochemical behavior of Pb^^" as 

 the highest priority item. Indeed, it is doubtful if it would be under- 

 stood, in the earlier days of its use, by anyone except those interested 

 in natural and manmade radioactivities. 



My third example is the recent observation by several investigators 

 in the United States and France that suspended particulates in the 

 deep ocean water columns are enriched in heavy metals far above the 

 concentrations in deep-sea sediments underlying them. The most di- 

 rect interpretation of this result is that fine-grained indigenously 

 produced particles are scavenging these metals from the water column. 

 This helps to explain why, despite the increased supply of mercury to 

 the ocean surface by man's activities as well as other metals, virtually 

 no change in concentration is seen in the water column. 



Again, this research was part of more general work on the fate of 

 particulates throughout the ocean system. Such work has been of con- 

 cern to international scientists long before the drive to regulate or 

 understand heavy metal pollutants. 



On the basis of these and many other examples, I contend that good 

 fundamental research tested in the open scientific marketplace against 

 peers will do more to provide the framework to make decisions about 

 competing uses of the sea than highTy directed research aimed at arriv- 

 ing at immediate answers to these problems. 



THE ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEMS 



I am a university professor and am committed both to the unfettered 

 research concept and to involvement with the contemporary problems 

 affecting the marine environment. The overwhelming impression that 

 I get from Federal agencies is that there is a feeling in Washington 

 tliat one should be able to finance the quest for an answer to the com- 

 plex problem of multiple use of a large complex system like the ocean 

 in the same way that one finances research for a fighter plane. To me, 

 there is very little comparison between the two methods of financing or 



