Joe Le Monnier 
Area of 1980 Research Project 
largest city, with a population in ex- 
cess of eleven million. 
Another feature of China’s marine 
geology that is of particular interest 
is the very broad continental shelf in 
the East China Sea. Shelf widths are 
greater than 300 miles (more than 
twice the width of most other shelves), 
giving this shelf dimensions approach- 
ing those of the epicontinental seas, 
those ancient, broad, shallow seas that 
spread on the continents and from 
which thick sequences of sediments 
were deposited. Many of the substan- 
tial Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimen- 
tary sequences in the central United 
States, for example, accumulated in 
waters substantially shallower than 
300 feet. The East China Sea is one 
of the few modern analogs of an epi- 
continental sea. Hence, by learning 
how sediment enters and accumulates 
in the East China Sea, we may begin 
to understand how the ancient epi- 
continental seas developed. Moreover, 
the shelf of the East China Sea is 
the site of an extremely active fishing 
industry and may also hold vast stores 
of petroleum, two factors that make 
its study economically as well as sci- 
entifically interesting. 
Because of China’s recent turbulent 
history, neither the country’s large riv- 
ers nor the Egst China Sea have been 
studied in detail by modern ocean- 
ographic methods. Political consider- 
ations kept Western nations from 
working off the China coast for the 
last thirty years, and kept many So- 
viet-bloc countries from working there 
for the last twenty. More importantly, 
the Cultural Revolution played havoc 
with Chinese research efforts. Many 
leading Chinese marine scientists 
spent part of the decade from 1966 
to 1976 working on farms and in fac- 
tories rather than in scientific insti- 
tutions. Entire laboratories were 
closed, and the flow of foreign journals 
into most scientific libraries was cut 
off completely. Some Chinese libraries 
I have visited have gaps as great as 
six years in their collections of West- 
ern journals. Hence, at a time when 
the marine and earth sciences were 
flourishing outside of China, with a 
proliferation of data on such subjects 
as plate tectonics and continental 
drift, inside the country these disci- 
plines languished. At the end of the 
Cultural Revolution, when contacts 
with Western countries were finally 
renewed, Chinese scientists found 
themselves in much the same situation 
as Rip van Winkle: while time had 
stood still for them, the rest of the 
world had changed markedly. 
In the past four years scientific ex- 
changes between China and other 
countries have increased dramatically. 
Chinese scientists now regularly at- 
tend international conferences and 
visit selected scientific institutions in 
the West. Through these ever increas- 
ing contacts, Chinese scientists have 
been brought abruptly into the 1980s. 
In the marine sciences, ships and new 
equipment are being built and pur- 
chased at a pace that would make 
any American oceanographer envious. 
(Not entirely facetiously, I asked sev- 
eral of my Chinese friends if we could 
import the “Gang of Four” to the 
United States in order to hasten the 
acquisition of newer and better equip- 
ment and ships.) 
It was under these circumstances 
that a group of eleven U.S. marine 
scientists set out this past summer to 
work with a group of fifty Chinese 
scientists in the East China Sea and 
the Chang Jiang River. The group 
from the United States was interested 
in studying processes related to the 
Chang Jiang River and the broad con- 
tinental shelf. Our Chinese colleagues 
were interested in learning more about 
U.S. technology and approaches to sci- 
entific problems. 
The program stemmed directly 
from a cooperative research agree- 
ment on sediment dynamics, signed 
in the spring of 1979 between the Na- 
tional Bureau of Oceanography of 
China and the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 
of the U.S. Department of Commerce. 
Unlike many government-to-govern- 
ment agreements in which the work 
is handled almost exclusively within 
governmental agencies, both sides 
agreed that much of the work would 
be done by scientists from universities 
and independent agencies. The Chi- 
nese scientists came from various uni- 
versities, research laboratories, and 
governmental bureaus. In the Ameri- 
can delegation, a total of eight uni- 
versities and research institutes from 
different parts of the country (in ad- 
dition to NOAA personnel) were rep- 
resented. (Additional funding for the 
project was supplied by the U.S. Of- 
fice of Naval Research and the Na- 
tional Science Foundation, and the 
National Geographic Society provided 
some travel money.) 
To understand the interaction be- 
tween the Chang Jiang River and the 
East China Sea a number of specific 
but interrelated questions must be an- 
swered: (1) How are the water and 
sediment loads (both suspended and 
dissolved) transferred from the river 
to the sea? (2) Where is the sediment 
transported after introduction to the 
sea at present and where was it trans- 
ported within the recent past? (3) How 
are the transfer and transport of sedi- 
ment affected by the current and tidal 
regimes of the area? (4) What is the 
interaction between the sediment and 
benthic organisms (those found on the 
sea floor)? On this last point, it is 
important to understand that in areas 
with relatively low rates of sediment 
accumulation, organisms can signifi- 
cantly alter depositional patterns 
through biological activities, enhanc- 
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