are similar accumulations of available data from other areas on both the 

 north and south shores of Long Island Sound. There is also unpublished 

 material (e.g., Rhoads on the benthic fauna of the Sound, personal 

 communication) as well as information scattered through the more formal 

 published literature. It occurs to me that from all these sources it 

 would be possible for some interested party to put together a definitive 

 documented inventory of the fauna and flora of Long Island Sound. Such 

 a volume on this distinctive and most important body of water would be 

 of enormous scientific and practical use - a modern counterpart, if you 

 like, of the early classic by Sumner, Osburn, and Cole (1913) , "A Bio- 

 logical Survey of the Waters of Woods Hole and Vicinity ." 



Let me here turn to a subject of broader dimensions . The New Haven 

 Harbor Station Ecological Studies have amply fulfilled the requirements 

 embodied in the various federal pollution control and environmental 

 policy acts and amendments as they developed before and during the 

 course of the investigation here reported. Furthermore, as indicated 

 above, there is also now available a wealth of ecological information on 

 a number of other specific areas on the Long Island Sound shoreline; 

 these base-line data are the outcome of intensive scrutiny under the 

 same regulations that dictated the present study. In this regard we owe 

 much to the movement that led to the requirements for detailed examina- 

 tion of localities where there was the potential for "thermal pollution" - 

 the popular and often intemperate terminology that had its origin with 

 the development of nuclear power in the utility business. Now, it seems 

 to me, it is appropriate that the public in Connecticut and New York be 

 made aware of the thorough nature of these environmental monitoring 

 studies, which, it should be noted, have been conducted at enormous 

 expense. Uninformed and unbridled public pressure on regulatory agencies 

 might thereby be modified. What is needed at this stage is more flexi- 

 bility in the regulatory processes, especially with an eye to the time 

 requirements that so impede our progress toward a reasonable degree of 

 energy independence. I believe that in the present state of our assembled 

 knowledge of Long Island Sound we are now in a position to take positive 

 steps in this direction. 



Like so many others, I worry in the broader context about the 

 entangling regulatory web now plaguing us in so many walks of life; it 

 can be a debilitating and stultifying process, pernicious in the long 

 run. The need for such straight-laced canon clearly comes under question 

 in all fields of scientific and technological endeavor. Its reductio ad 

 absurdum in the field of medicine is illustrated by penicillin. If this 

 wonder drug, introduced 40 years ago, were discovered today the chances 

 are that it "...would not pass the extensive animal research tests that 

 are a prerequisite to marketing" (Altman, 1979) . A different example of 

 the stifling effect imposed by present federal regulatory policy is that 

 of the system of grant and contract proposals for research support - 

 particularly as it applies to the academic community . Thus Leopold 

 (1970) estimates that last year some 2700 man-years were invested in 

 proposal writing, and suggests that we may be approaching the fanciful 

 situation alluded to a decade and a half ago where if "...some group 

 should ever want to bring research progress to a standstill, they could 

 do so by establishing a competitive grant system under which all researchers 

 would be required to prepare written proposals describing what they wished 



