Chapter 1 Introduction 



. . . an unknown world at our doorstep . . . our last 

 frontier here on earth . . . 



President Lyndon B. Johnson 



The global sea is indeed, as President Johnson 

 has said, our final earthly frontier. Throughout 

 recorded history, it has given much. We sail the 

 seas; we fish them; we extract the oil beneath their 

 depths. We struggle to protect ourselves against 

 their hazards. We strive to learn their secrets. But 

 an understanding of our oceans is severely limited; 

 they still retain the aura of the mysterious. 



The imperatives of our time, however, require 

 that we turn to the oceans to seek solutions to 

 problems which are already acute today and will 

 inevitably be intensified. Much of the world is 

 hungry, and we must look to the oceans to help 

 satisfy that hunger. An ever-increasing need for 

 minerals presses inexorably upon us, but we know 

 little of where, when, why, or in what quantity the 

 riches of the ocean exist, or at what cost of 

 extraction. Except for isolated instances, our lack 

 of knowledge is a source of concern. 



As we crowd one another in our cities and seek 

 more land for housing and industrial development, 

 we crowd our near shores and estuaries. We dredge 

 channels for harbors, and bury our oyster beds. We 

 fill our wet lands and destroy the breeding grounds 



Figure 1. Miami Beach, Florida, September 

 1947. A hurricane-driven wave towering 

 many feet into the air smashes at approach 

 to Baker's Hanlover Bridge just north of 

 Miami Beach as the tropical hurricane struck 

 in full fury at the coastal resort city. (ESSA 

 photo) 



for marine organisms. We use the water to dump 

 our wastes and in the process kill our fish. We 

 flock to our coastline and expose ourselves to the 

 storm surge and the hurricane. We build dams and 

 breakwaters, and upset the equilibrium of our 

 beaches. 



We are confronted today with many impera- 

 tives which in turn raise an infinity of questions. 

 Answers are to be found only through under- 

 standing of the complexities of the interacting 

 land, sea, and air and the biological and geological 

 resources which are sustained by the rhythms and 

 cataclysms of nature. 



High on the list of these imperatives is the 

 defense of our Nation in a time of surpassing 

 technology which has changed the oceans from a 

 vastness of protection of our borders to a medium 

 of stealth and menace. We must be able to detect 

 and defend against undersea weapons of enormous 

 destructive power. To detect, we must know how 

 energy propagates through the fluid, how it is 

 affected by the sea bottom and by living creatures. 



The surge of technology also compels us to 

 confront a host of new problems whose solution 

 will depend on the direction and vigor of our basic 

 science effort. Paradoxically, the greater our tech- 

 nological capabilities in the oceans become the 

 greater the basic science problems become. 



Development of marine protein concentrate 

 creates a need to insure adequate sources of raw 

 material; it is necessary to develop better under- 

 standing of the nature of organic matter in the sea, 

 and its transfer through the food web. To increase 

 man's ability to live and work ever deeper in the 

 sea, it is necessary to learn more of hyperbaric 

 physiology. The proposed use of nuclear energy to 

 create new harbors, modify shorelines, or dig 

 canals demands new knowledge about possible 

 long term ecological effects. The building of dams 

 brings the necessity for better understanding of 

 the supply of riverborne sediments and the conse- 

 quent loss of beach sand. The technological ability 

 to change or regulate the flow of fresh water into 

 estuaries requires more knowledge of estuarine 

 circulation. 



The National enterprise in marine science has 

 not lacked its studies, analyses, assessments and 



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