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Coastal Zone Information Center COASTAL ZONE INFORMATION CENTER@ VAN CAMP SEA FOOD COMPANY DIVISION RALSTON PURiNA COMPANY 840 VAN CAMP STREET, PORT OF LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA GC 1005 P67 All 1965 POTENTIAL RESOURCES OF THE OCEAN property of CSC library U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE NOAA COASTAL SERVICES CENTER 2234 SOUTH HOBSON AVENUE CHARLESTON, SC 29405-2413 COASTAL ZONE INFORMATION CENTER VAN CAMP SEA FOOD COMPANY DIVISION RALSTON PURINA COMPANY 840 VAN CAMP STREET, PORT OF LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA January, 1965 POTENTIAL RESOURCES OF THE OCEAN Table of Contents Fore ward The Size of the Ocean I The Newness of Ocean Science 2 The Ownership of the Ocean and its Resources 3 Energy from the Sea 7 Fresh Water from the Ocean 9 Minerals from Sea Water 11 Minerals from the Continental Shelf 14 Minerals from the Deep Sea Bed 15 Manganese Nodules 15 Other Mineral Deposits of Ocean Origin 16 Food from the Sea 17 The Web of Life 19 The Human Need for Animal Protein 21 Fish and the Human Animal Protein Needs 22 The Present Dietary Situation of the World 23 The Present Fisheries 24 The Distribution of Animal Proteim from the Sea 28 Fish Protein Concentrate 30 Conservation and Fishery Disputes 32 Ocean Research 34 Conclusions 36 Literature Cited 40 FOREWORD Last year we were asked on several occasions by different entities ..,in.and out of.the United States Government to participate in.thinking ..and planning.respecting what should be the nature, size and scope of the National Oceanographic Program. As one part of this activity we @prepared our thoughts in a paper "Fishery Aspects of the National Oceanographic Program." We@circulated copies of this to colleagues in the industry, academic ocean researchers., nutritionists, and governmental officials involved.in planning and carrying forward such activities. We asked that our ideas,be read carefully and critically so that we could all move forward more expeditiously to a greater understanding and use of the ocean. The response to this request was fruitful beyond our expectations and we wish to use.this opportunity to thank each of you who took .of your busy time to respond. Obviously if the government, or the world, is going to-invest' the Jarge sums in ocean research suggested in that paper, and in our considered judgement required.if.the world.ocean harvest is to be maximized, there requires to be some account taken of whether the potential resources of the ocean.are adequate in scope to justify the-expense. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, a semi-autonomous body in UNESCO, has been dealing actively with the scientific aspects of this question. Pursuant to its requests, its two scientific , advisory bodies (the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) of the International Council of Scientific Unions, and the Advisory Committee on Marine Resources Research (ACMRR) of the Food and Agri- culture Organization of the United Nations) have made reports to it upon a General Scientific Framework for World Ocean Study. These two reports are in the process of publication and distribution by IOC to the ocean scientific community of the world for critical comment by individual scientists as well as by their several organizations and representatives. In our view both of these documents are of extraordinary quality and merit your serious attention and comment. The problems of explora- tion, understanding and utilization of what 7,17. of the earth's surface which comprises the World Ocean are so complex, huge and varied that N their elucidation will require the concerted efforts of all ocean scientists from.every race, country and society. A world organi- zation such as IOC is no better than its constituent scientists make it. The planning work upon which IOC,is engaged is of funda.- mental importance to the progress of ocean science and its ability to contribute to mankind's welfare. It will be no better than you make it through your thoughtful contributions. The Committee on Oceanography of National Academy of Sciences/ National Research Council has been examining another aspect of this matter,the economic justification of ocean research. It has just published.an excellent study of the application of cost- effectiveness technique to support the case for basic ocean research (see Greenberg, Science, December 25, 1964, vol. 146, no. 3652, .pp. 1659-1660). The.oversimplified conclusion of the report is that an annual non-defense expenditure of $165.million over the next 10 to 15 years could.be an "essential component" in saving $3 billion a year,,chiefly through conservation practices, and in adding annual production of.about another $3 billion. We commend this report to your close examination.. Our Department of Resources has been asked to comment on the pro- bable extent of harvestable resources of the ocean. In a lecture at Universidad Agraria, La Molina., Lima, Peru in.November; again @at UNESCO's first Latin-American Seminar on the Oceanography of the Eastern Pacific Ocean at the end of November; and in a lecture to the Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama in early December, this subject was dealt with in a preliminary manner. The attached.document is the body of the latter lecture. We would appreciate having your critical comments on its concepts so that 'we can move more-surefootedly in our examination of these matters. @Sincerely yours, Van Cai iip Sea Food Company Gilbert C. Van Camp, Jr. President January 15, 1965 POTENTIAL RESOURCES OF THE OCEAN Wilbert McLeod Chapman Van Camp Sea Food Company There@are major difficulties.in -giving.any.clear concept of the potential resources of the world ocean. A first-difficulty is that-the oceanis so big, Various, and variable,that one can harldy.form a clear'.simple idea about it. The second is that we really,do not know very,much about the .ocean-and its resources.so that-there is difficulty,in.s.aying what, and how much, will turnout to be of use to man. Thirdly, for the most part, it does@not belong to anybody in.particular and it is quite difficult to. use the,concept potential resource.in such a context because almost every- thing..else we-.think about, except the air, belongs to someone or some .@country, and,even.the-,air space,over a.country belongs to-that country,in a real sense. THE SIZE OF THE OCEAN Jet airplane travel.is destroying.gr adually a person's ability to judge large geographic distances. Even.so it takes the better part-of.two days to fly Singapore to San Diego,.one is not@in sight of..land very,much dur- ing.this,time, and one.is.,only,flying-over one-of the,larger parts of the world..ocean, the Pacific. Even.the Pacific@seemed to be larger back@about twenty years,ago when..it took seventeen.days and nights of travel on a troop-ship,just to-get from Guadalcanal to. San Francisco, and no,land was seen.in the interim at all. Perhaps it suffices to say,that the,ocean,is the biggest thing there is around.that one can.readily think about, and it is too big-to comprehend all at one sitting. Like a.billion..dollars, it is a. useful concept and a nice thing,,to'have, but.a little-difficult to get specifically focused.in mind as.to,details. All of the communicating seas and oceans of the world, known under.the collective@name World Ocean, cover about 70.8%,,of the earth's surface @and contain.about-1,370.million.cubic kilometers@of water (Moiseev, 1964). Dissolved.in this water is some of almost everything there is.on.land and air because-water is such a wonderful solvent, and [email protected] here ,so lon,g,.possibly.before there was.dry land. Because there is so much water there,is an enormous amount of,material of any sort dissolved in.,it from gold.to!hydrogen. Some things are simply more abundant than..others. With few exceptions:the'.ocean is also the,oldest thing:around, because most land, including,the highest mountains,-have@beenunder its surface at onetime or another,.and.s.ometimes more than once. Life started.in.the ocean and there it still thrives,in such.enormous:pro- fusionand volume@as to.stagger the imagination. More.,,living matter is .currently being- created. in the ocean than...on, land for the,simple reason .that not-only.does nearly three-quarters-of the solar radiation-striking the earth.fall upon the ocean,.but by,penetrating into the ocean.to a.life -2- developing extent by fifty or more meters, it generates new life through microscopic plants that dwell throughout that thickness, rather than just that rising from the surface as on land. Most organic matter on earth is in the ocean; very large quantities of it (and perhaps as much as 90%) is in a dissolved state and not even organized into living matter. The vol- ume of living matter itself that is in the ocean is so vast as to defy comprehension. (Kesteven, 1963). For eons before there was life on earth, and ever since there has been, a rain of precipitates filtering down out of the ocean has been slowly building up sediments on its bottom. Since life began there has been added to this rain of sediments the debris of living things that did not go back into solution upon death, so that the ocean floor is covered-with a great variety of materials use'ful to man, but seen on land only where upheavals of land masses have brought these sedimentary deposits up to the air, or at least shallowly enough under the earth so man can dig them out. (Revelle, et al, June 1964), While the narrow, shallow rim of earth under the ocean and around the con- tinents, called the continental shelf, will probably turn out, upon full investigation, to be composed about like the adjacent land masses, it is not necessarilyso that the composition of the hard rock under the sedi- ments smoothing over the bottom of the deep-sea bed (or of the submarine hills, valleys and mountain ranges borne by it) will turn out to be the same. In any event the crust of the earth (and all land we see is so called by geologists) is much thinner under the deep-sea bed than it is under the land masses, and its composition there is not yet well known. The mantle below it, on which the crust floats, is perhaps within practical possibility of being drilled into to see from what it is made, and it is the function of the National Science Foundation's '@Operation Mohole" to do this. Until this is successfully accomplished, our knowledge of composi- tion of both crust and mantle under the deep-sea bed will remain conjec- tural. (Oroman, E., 1964; Thompson, G.A. and M. Talwani, 1964). THE NEWNESS OF OCEAN SCIENCE At least since there have been men recognizeable as Homo sapiens Abroad, and for a long while before that, the sea has been'used and studied. The ancients have left their kitchen middens containing the shells and fish bones from their diets behind them as mute witness to their interests in the ocean and its resources. Long before the dawn of the written word certain sea shells were magic symbols of fertility to the dawning neoli- thic society and were carried far inland by commercial trails long for- gotten about, to be found in the lowest village and cave deposits by today's archaeologists. Aristotle drew together existing knowledge of the ocean and its inhabi- tants up to his time, and made many natural history studies and conjec- tures himself upon his observations of the sea and its living inhabitants. -3- But-it was only about 100 years ago that man began a.systematic scientific inquiry.about.the sub-surface ocean with the famous voyage of the ."Challenger". It was only 65 years ago that a.few northern European scientists got together rather informally to found the International Coun- cil.for the Exploration.of the Sea. Thirty eight years ago a Committee ,on oceanography appointed by the National Academy,of Sciences took note of the modest state,of ocean.research in the United States. The interest thus@aroused caused.private benefaction,to come-forward. The Scripps Institution-of Oceanography and the Wood's Hole Institute of Oceanography thus got their starts. Another NAS Committee on Oceanography reported ..in much.the@same vein in,1949, but its report was swamped out of public @notice by the Korean War (Anonymous, 1960). Late in the year 1957 a Third Committee on Oceanography was established by the National Academy.of Science. Its report, appearing.as recently as seven.years ago, was when American Oceanography beganto grow. In.that year the'United States expenditure on.oceanography was,about $30 million. .It has now grown to somewhat more than $125 million per year. Offshoots from this vigorous committee resulted in the Scientific Com- mittee on Ocean Research.being,formed.in the international field by the International Council of Scientific Unions. From this group, spurred on .and supported by NASCO,,came the-organization of the mammoth International Indian Ocean Expedition, the formation.of the Office of Oceanography in UNESCO, and finally the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission-as a semi-autonomous body in UNESCO. Its first session.was held as recent as 1961. So recently [email protected] and inquiry begun to grow. So%large and unknown yet is the ocean. THE OWNERSHIP OF THE OCEAN AND ITS-RESOURCES The other attribute of the,ocean, besides its size and our ignorance that.is confusing is that nobody,owns..it. It is true that there@are four classes of oceanic salt water as to ownership. The .first is the iulAnd waters which are the.absolute@property of the coas- tal,country; the second.is the territorial sea which, for most practical purposes., belongs.to the coastal country except that.the international community has some liens upon it such as the right of.innocent passage through1t; the third is,a contiguous zone12-miles wide,in which the coastal country has jurisdiction for narrowly prescribed,.and limited special purposes; and the fourth is the rest of the salt water,.the most of.it, the high.seasi which belongs to@everybody. There have been a.great many international-conferences,- arbitrations and adjudications among the community of nations over the past thirty- five years aimed at establishing rules of law under which man's activi- ties in,these four classes of salt water can be regulated for the con- venience of mankind, and to define the boundaries between them. The -4- most important-of these was the Conference on the Law of the Sea con- .vened by the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland,.in.the spring of 1958. It resulted in four conventions that.codified most aspects of the public Law of the Sea. These were: Convention.on the High Seas; Con- vention onthe Territorial Sea; Convention on the Continental Shelf; and Convention.on Fishing and the,Conservation of the Living Resources of the High Seas. The first three ofthese conventi 'ons have been ratified.by enough coun- .tries (22) to put them.into force; the fourth requires only five more ratifications to.come into force also. At the,rate they have beencoming it should"be,in force by theiend Of 1965. Accordingly, for practical purposes, these four conventions can.be assumed to represent international law in this field. Theltwo prime,questions not solved by them are the breadth of the territorial sea and.the authority,of the coastal state over fisheries lying,on.the high seas off its coast. This is an-extremely complex andlively field of law. There are an.um- ber of good -recent books on it in most principal languages. An-excellent recent.review of the whole subject in Englishis McDougal and Burke ."The Public Order of the Oceans", Yale'University Press, 1962, 1226,,pp. The following summary,of the law is vastly oversimplified but will perhaps ..serve present purposes. Inland waters and.their contained.resources, the resources under them, and the air space over them belong to the adjacent country in the same manner as does its land space. The boundary between inland waters and the territorial sea have been pretty well stabilized in the above conventions. This is no,longer a very active field of dispute among nati ons, although.a few small places with odd geography, such as.the Persian Gulf, may lead to disputes which will further define this legal situation. The territorial sea,Ats contained,resources, the land under it and the air above, also beAlong to the adjacent-country as does its land space except.that,.subject-to,certain specific conditions, theLcoastal country cannot interfere with,.or hamper, the,innocent passage of, shipsthrough its territorial sea. The means of.determining the boundary of the-territorial seas as between adjacent countries is adequately regulated by these conventions. The boundary between theterritorial sea andthe high seas.is not so deter- mined. An examination.of the history and antecedents of the 1958 and,1960 Con- @ference on.t.he taw.of the Sea enables one@to,,.-say, however, with some degree of assurance,.that the boundary between.the territorial sea.and the high,seas is a line each point of which is equidistant from the -5- boundary between the inland waters (or land) of the coastal state and its territorial sea. There is a concensus that the X of this formula is not less than 3 marine miles nor more than 12. Nations have a right to choose any distance desired between these limits, but no clear obli- gation to recognize the sovereignty of another nation over an X distance of more than.3 marine miles. In a band of sea every part of which is within 12 marine miles of its coast, called the contiguous zone, the coastal state may exercise the control necessary,to prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, immi- gration or sanitary regulations within its territorial sea, and to punish infringement of the above regulations. The rest of the world ocean,is open to all nations, coastal or non-coastal, and is called the high seas. On, in, or over this high seas, all nations @have, among other things:. 1) Freedom of navigation; 2) Freedom of fishing; 3) Freedom to lay submarine cables and pipe lines4 and 4) Freedom to over fly. The "Convention on Fishing" again asserts that all states have a right for their nationals to fish on the high seas subject to their treaty obliga- tions, the interests and rights of coastal states provided in the conven- .tion and the duty to provide for the conservation of the living resources of the high seas. Conservation is defined as the aggregate of all measures rendering possible the optimum sustainable yield from those resources so a's to secure a maximum supply of food and other marine products. The spe- cial'interests and rights of the coastal state are defined in such a manner that it can enforce conservation, as so defined, of resources being fished in the high seas off its coast by itself or others, or only by others. Under some conditions it can even enforce conservation measures on the fishermen of other states on the adjacent high seas unilaterally. Provi- sions are laid down for the peaceful settlement of disputes arising out of these matters running, in the last instance, to compulsory arbitration according to criteria laid downAn the convention. Under the "Convention on the Continental Shelf" the sovereign rights to explore and exploit its natural resources pertain to the coastal state. These resources are defined as the mineral and other non-living resources of the sea bottom and sub-soil together with living organisms belonging to sedentary species,:that is to say, or Iganisms which, at the harvestable stage, either are immobile on or under the seabed or are unable to move except in constant physi,cal contact with the seabed or the sub-soil. The continental shelf.is defined as'the.seabed and sub-soil of the submarine areas adjacent to the coast (and islands) but outside the area of the territorial sea to a depth of 200 meters or, beyond that limit, to where the depths of the superjacent waters admits of the exploitation of the natural resources of the said areas. These rights by the coastal state on the continental shelf specifically do not affect the'legal status of the superjacent waters as high seas, or that.of the air space above those waters. -6- If one draws on a very large globe a line 3 marine miles from the coast, it can scarcely be told fromthe line marking the coast; a 12-mile line .stands out a little more clearly. But most of.the world ocean lies out- side aline 12-miles from any.land. Subject to the obligation to not overfish.theresources lying therein, all states have a right for their nationals thus,to utilize these resources. The resources become the property of him who first reduces them.to.his possession. This is so of the. mineral and non-living1resources of the deep seabed, which, again, occupies most of the space under the high seas. It may be noted that not only doe's no country have any private property rights over this, theJarger part-of the earth's surface, but.that no .person can.obtain such a-private property right aE all. Such rights as do exist to harvest and use these resources belong to the several coun- tries and not to private persons. A fisherman,.or a miner,.on the high ,seas, can be the object of international law but only sovereign nations are its subjects. A fishermen or a miner does not harvest the resources of the high seas or the deep seabed.under any rights flowing to him from ,international law; he can only exercise the rights that belong to his sovereign permitted,to him by the municipal.law of his sovereign. Reflection will bring,you.to the conclusion that everything you can think of on earth belongs to some person, or to some group of persons organized as a sovereign government, except the high seas, the-deep seabed,.their .resources, and the air above. Departure from this thought to the contem- .plation of the.lack of property rights over the remaining 70% of the earth takes a@little doing. Bankers normally show a hesitance in providingloan capital without.the security of a piece of property, or something tangible, that can,be seized and sold in case of failure of the business , Large industry has shown hesitance.inthe exploration and exploitation of resources it cannot own. (Mero, 1959). Much talk.is heard of fish.farming and the improvement of-fish breeds as with domesticated animals. But no farmer can Afford [email protected] stock that can.be harvested willy-nilly by any other farmer, nor can he undertake the costly process of improving the breed only to turn itloose@in the enormous common pasture where it can be harvested by a foreign fisherman a thousand miles away without it even being identified. Except for the general rights noted above international law scarcely goes. out upon the high seas. There is nobody,of uniform law over this vast area. Citizens upon it respond. to the municipal law of the country whose, .flag their vessel flies. .No nation.has yet been-strong enough to command all of the world ocean, .nor is any such likely to arise in the foreseeablefuture. All aspects of the ocean (its resources and.its role as a highway carrying most of the world's commerce) are too valuable to all nations for them to allow it to come under the'governance of anyone. But as we go more upon'the ocean, and occupy it and its bottom more fully, as science and.technology is enabling us to do in a.vast rush, a body of -7- law for man's governance in this enormous international common must be developed. Neither men'.nor their sovereigns oar! live in peace except under law. Basically neither 'one like to cooperate with others. The great pastures of the ocean require this cooperation imperatively and if there were no other reason-for their existence this one alone would bring forth an organization like the United Nations, and its specialized agencies. With these concepts of enormity, modes and recent knowledge, and com- mon property in mind.let us.look at how man is doing, and may do, in the use of some of the potentials of the sea. ENERGY FROM THE SEA One does not need to go upon the sea to realize the enormous amount of energy contained in it which, if tameable, would be useful to man- kind. The enormous waste of energy in waves beating on the shore, the tremendous thrust of tidal bores,up particular estuaries and-bays,.and the titanic power in the flow of the great rivers in the sea such as the Gulf Stream, and.Kuroshio, have long excited the imagination of man. In more recent.years the great quantities of.energy capable of reason of the juxtaposition of warm surface waters over- lying cooler water layers has been-apparent, particularly in the tropics and sub-tropics where the eastern.boundary,current conditions often leave a quite shallow warm surface layer above the cold bulk of the oceanis depth. Attempts have been made to harness these forms of energy. The Passa- maquoddy Bay project is one well known effort in the direction of harvesting'tidal currents. The French effort off the Ivory Coast of West Africa is a.weil'know:-effort to'harvest the energy of tempera- ture differences in equatori.al,seas. None of these has 'yet turned out to.be successful nor is there any great likelihood'that they will be.so in the near future. The reason for this is that the.s.,cience and.t.echnol6gy of making easily transpor- table energy available for mant;ind's use fromlother sources is pro- ceeding at such.a rapid pace that there,$eems little likelihood of the similar science and technology with respect to the use of oceanic energy directlycatching up from the standpoint of competitive.cost in the near future. It is not generally realized how rapidly man is.moving toward the goal of cheap and abundant useful energy. The competitIve,struggle is between fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas, shale) and nuclear fission, 'with fusion processes receiving much basic scientific attention.and theoretically capable of Winning the race in.the end,. -8- A few years ago nuclear power was simply a dream in the minds of a few theoretical scientists but the practical applied scientists, tech- nologists and engineers quickly grasped it and have pushed its competi- tive costs down very rapidly. As they have done so, those with pro- prietary interests in fossil fuel energy have redoubled their efforts to lower their unit costs of energy production. In 1962 an eminent authority in the electrical industry stated flatly that nuclear power was not competitive with conventional energy. He estimated that in the period 1973-1978 nuclear power would cost between 6.17 and 6.89 mills per kilowatt hour and that the cost of energy from conventional sources would vary between 3.9 to 5.6 mills per KW. Thus in 15 years he estimated that nuclear power would be still far from competitive with conventional power. In the meantime nuclear power installations have been constructed or are being constructed. One at Oyster Creek in New Jersey will be com- pleted in 1967-68 and is expected to deliver power at costs as low as 3.66 mills per KW. In the meantime another large plant is being built inthe East using low priced coal, designed for completion in 1967, and expected to deliver power at 3.59 mill/KW hours (Abelson, 1964). Obviously the racers have come much closer in two years time than had been expected to happen in fifteen years only so short a time ago. In doing so they have sharply reduced the cost of energy from either source, and the chances are good that there will be further sharp reductions yet in the cost per unit of producing electrical energy from both sources. California with its population expected to rise from the present 17 million level to 42 million level in 2000 (Brown, 1964) and its relative shortage of fossil fuels, has been rapidly building its power production and the plans for further expansion are astronomical in size. A change in thinking about energy source is taking place. There are some vision- aries who say that the last fossil fuel plant to be built in California is now on the drawing boards and that all future expansion will be from nuclear power. In the face of the rapidly declining cost of energy production from fossil fuels and nuclear fission there would appear to be little likeli- hood of energy from the ocean becoming competitive in our time. There is eno ugh uranimum dissolved in the ocean to provide the nuclear fuel for mankind for almost all time to come. The difficulty is separ- ating it from the water. If one ran 2,000,000 acre.feet of sea water through a sea water factory (about 660 billion gallons) one could, with perfect efficiency,recover about 5.6 tons of uranium which would convert into about 6.6 tons of uranium oxide, the normal commercial form. At $16,000 per ton this would yield an income of about $105,000. But a plant at the present state of the art to handle this job would cost -9- about $100,000,000 and operating it long enough to handle this much water in a year would cost about $12,000,000.. (McIlhenny and Ballard, 1963). Although these figures are so far out of joint presently as to appear to be ridiculous, basic research designed to concentrate ur- anium from.sea water is being pusued steadily (particularly in England) and it is unsafe to say that this will not in time become practical. Also the quantities of deuterium and tritium in sea water hold out the prospect of practically limitless quantities of fuel for atomic fusion plants (McIlhenny and Ballard, .1963). This will remain oflargely academic interest until a practical atomic fusion plant is built. Again, it is unsafe to speculate that a break through in fusion engineering will not bring this about in a few years. FRESH WATER FROM THE OCEAN The more than one billion cubic kilometers of water in the ocean is more than any thinkable quantity .of humans in any livable concentration on earth could use for all combinedagriculture, industry or municipal and domestic purposes for all time. The problem is to separate it from everything that is dissolved in it and transport it to where it is need- .ed, all at a cost that can be afforded. No activity more likely to render great sections of the earth more habitable can be conceived than making fresh water available where none or little is presently at hand, It must be kept in mind that the ocean provides all the fresh water we presently have. Seventy percent of the solar energy falling upon the earth strikes the ocean and.major parts are absorbed in it. More energy strikes the earth in low latitudes than at the poles and the process there goes on more steadily. Thus thelow latitude ocean surface is warmed more, more water is evaporated from'the ocean surface into the atmosphere and with it goes the-enormous energies in the clouds. The imbalance of,cold toward the poles, heat.toward the equator, the totation,of the earth, the interference of land masses, and other natural forces set up and drive the great ocean.currents which transfer the heat energy from the low latitudes to the high. The atmosphere and.the ocean compose a vast, clo- sely-coupled heat engine, with the ocean as the great reservoir of energy making up the flywheel that keeps the engine running reasonably steadily and reasonably predictably. Knowledge and understanding of this great heat engine and its processes are beginning to accumulate as oceanographers and meteorologists ply their pro- fessions more energetically and,rno,r.el together; technology and engineering also move apace. It is becoming apparent that there may be ways which man can learn and do to tinker with the workings of this heat engine practically in such a manner as to evaporate fresh water from.the ocean and transport it through the atmosphere to where it is wanted and thus, in Kruschev's phrase I'make the deserts bloom". The technical problems in the way of.doing this are still very large but it is nolonger safe to say that scientists _10- and engineers cannot do something with nature that man wants done urgently enough to pay the bills. In the interval before that happy event occurs research goes on in .other fields which gives much hope that the nuclear giant may be harnessed in the neat future to get a very large amount of fresh water out onto land where it is badly needed at practical costs. It must be kept in mind that there are numerous situations where man can now afford to pay rather high water rates for considerable amounts of fresh water. Fresh water distillation plants using diesel fuel have been used for many years already on ocean going vessels, and since the last war they have become practical even on such smaller ves- sels as tunaclippers, thus much.extending their range. Where fuel is cheap, water is dear, and men are thickly concentrated, distillation plants are already in operation on land to support the domestic needs of considerable cities. Examples are provided by Kuwait, Curacao and Guantanamo Bay. Approximately 20 million gallons per day of such land-based installations are already in operation (Revelle, et al. , March 1964). Much research is going into methods of:deriving fresh water from sea water not only by multistage flash distillation, but by long tube vertical distillation, vapor compression distillation, freezing, reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, etc.,. Costs in.some of these processes are already in the practical range of what man can pay for water for some purposes in a good many places. A useful yardstick is provided by the rapidly growing city of Tijuana, Mexico, which now has apopulation of about a,quarter 'of a million and is still growing rapidly. It lies in a stark desert alongside the Pacific Ocean. It outgrew its municipal water supplies for domestic uses some time ago. Potable water is now sold from tank trucks on a large scale at $1.25 per 1,000 gallons, and under this water cost struc- ture the city still grows rapidly. Across the-border in San Diego the Office of Saline Water Conversion of the Department of the Interior built an experimental multistage flash distillation plant calculated to produce about 1,000,000 gallons per day. By improvements in method made before the plant wa's recently moved to Guantanamo Bay, capacity was raised to 1.4 million gallons per day which could be produced at a cost of a little less than $1.00 per 1,000 gal- lons. The power source was ordinary commercial electricity off of the line. Recent studies by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the office of Saline Water Conversion and the Office of Science and Technology (Revelle, et. al, March 1964) indicate the practicality of combining gigantism of plant modern technology, and modern energy sources into plants that can ..produce fresh.water from the ocean at muchless costs thad this. One.such sch-eme to use a.technology estimated to be available@by,1980 (the,reverse osmosis method) and a capital investment of about $450.mil- lions, yields a cost estimate for fresh water of 21 cents per 1,000 gal- lons in.volumes of 1,000 million.gallons per day (loc.cit.p.29). Other schemes even larger in capital cost and water yeild are presented as possible of accomplishment inthe foreseeable future which might,yield Jarge volumes of fresh water at the plant boundary under certain.condi- .tions for as.low a,.cost as 11.2 cents per:1,000. gallons (loc.cit., P?18). From,these heady,calculations emerges the concept of a.gigantic dual purpose@plant using nuclear energy which would produce the energy for evaporating fresh.water from.the ocean, for transporting it to where it was wanted, and for generating surplus electrical power, for industrial uses in.such places as needed both.fresh water and electrical power, were near to the,sea, and could raise the@necessary capital. At the-most effic- ient size studied, the capital cost estimatedto be required for one such plant would be about $2 billion. Such a-situation arises in California. There a system.costing well more .than $1 billion is well along inconstruction.designed to.transport fresh water from themorthern rivers-of that state to its desert south, where population and industry is growing so rapidly. At one point the water must be raised a.considerabl,e,height over the Tehachapi Mountains.to enter the southern-co.astal plain. Much power will be needed for this pumping. All the@additional power and freshwater that could.be practically pro- .duced at the same time at reasonable-cost could.be used. Accordingly, although the@above referred-to report from the Office of Science and Tech- nology is less than eight months old, studies are already well under wayin California-to incorporate a smaller model of this dual purpose,nuclear pow- ered fresh water plus power plant (at a cost of about $100 million) into the California Water Program. .Thus, although.much research and engineering is still needed.in nuclear power Weration in large plants, freshwater conversion in large plants, and the coupling of the two.into practical plants to produce fresh water and electricity at competitive costs, this research and engineering is going forward at anincreased pace, applications in developing programs of fresh water conversion.by these means are under active study, and the production of great-volumes of fresh water from the ocean for man's use on land.is no.longer a visionary prospect.- MINERALS FROM SEA WATER Avery considerable amount of several dissolved things are already re- covered from [email protected] year. Common.salt has been produced from -12- ocean water by solar evaporation from prehistoric times andthis is still the source of great tonnages of salt produced at such,diverse localities as San Francisco Bay, San Diego Bay, Black Warrior's Lagoon, Mexico; Cape Verde Islands; Tuticorin, South India; etc, Much.of the magnesium used inthe United States in both metallic and in other compound forms,.is re- .covered from the sea in the Freeport, Texas, plant of the Dow Chemical Company. This is also true of a large part of the bromine used in the United States. On,the,other hand, despite the vast array of chemical compounds dissol- ved in sea water, and available,there in volumes far greater than man's need for.them, only common salt, sodium and potassium compounds, magne- sium and magnesium-compounds, and bromine are produced from sea water in commercial quantities. The reason.is exclusively economic. The other elements and compounds..are not worth,the cost of.removing the water from them,under present technology. Furthermore this is the outlook for a good.long while,to come. McIlhenny and Ballard of the Dow Chemical Company (1963) have carried out a most useful study that illustrates the.reasonwhy. They..:have hypothesized a plant using.the most modern available technolo- gies and taking.advantages of the economies of what they considered.to be about the largest practicalbe size for such a-plant. This hypothetical plant would process about 2 million acre,feet of sea water per year (660 billion gallons), whichis a considerable amount of water, but scarce- a drop in.the bucket as far as.the ocean-is concerned. This plant would cost about $100 million to construct and about $12,000,000 per year to operate. It would produce about 93 million tons of various elements, metals, compounds, etc., per year fromthis amount of water and (when.converted into the normal products, of commerce at 1962 prices)@: these commodities would bring about $1,353,million,per year income to the plant. This would appear to.be an investor's dream, but there are certain flaws in.,the picture when.it is examined a little,closer. The bulk of this product and value ($763 million and 76.3 million tons) would be common,table salt. The annual production of this commodity .from this one,plant would represent about 3 times,the@amount of table salt used for all purposes in the United States in,1961 and about 3/4 .of all that is used in the-world per year at present. At this rate of production.the $10 per ton used'.for this calculation would.not.last long .as the market price,the main item of income would shrink sharply, and the plant would soon be buried under a.mountain.of salt. The next biggest income hypothecated from the plant's operation would be -13- magnesium oxide with 6 million tons at $53 per ton (1962 price) bringing in about $314 million. This would represent about five times the annual use of this product in the United States and nearly,twice its annual use in the world. Thus inventory accumulation and price deflation for it would likely be worse than for salt. The third largest product would be bromine with 184 thousand tons at $430 per ton (1962 U.S. prices) yielding $79 million. This would be about twice the United States volume of use of this element per year, and the market would quickly collapse. The plant would additionally provide all the magnesium metal, 41% of the sulphur, 56%.of the calcium and 58% of the potassium used per year in the United States. The 1962 prices for these commodities ($705, $23.5, $4.2, and $31.0 per ton, respectively) used to compose the $180 million dollar income these commodities should contribute to the $1,353 million annual income of the plant would be pretty shaky. The eighth largest income producer (strontium with 76 thousand tons at $66 per ton and $5 million gross) would represent nearly eight times the annual use of this commodity in the United States, and there is.not much call for it at all outside the United States. Thus, in total $1,341 million of the plant's $1,352 million annual income would be pretty well shot before the first year of production was completed through simple overproduction, and a fair share of the remaining $12 million would be spent to haul away and dispose of the excess product. The $20,000 realized from 40 pounds of gold, the $28,600 realized from the 6.6 tons of uranium oxide, would not be of much help in paying the year-end bills. McIlhenny and Ballard point out.further that either where a recovery plant for other chemicals than those.nowIrecovered from sea water is put as a parasite on.a present plant, or upon a fresh water conversion plant, the economic results are about the same under presently available technologies. The best of present saline water conversion plants concentrate the salt water no more than four times. Taking out the remaining water will not be much less costly than taking out all of the original water. Other methods of concentrating specific compounds or elements from sea water than those contemplated above, are, of course, capable of being developed. As McIlhenny and Ballard say "Much greater problems in science have been solved when the solution looked fartherest away." But under present and immediately forseeable knowledge, understanding and technological art the situation for recovering much more variety of the dissolved minerals in the ocean looks bleak. -14- MINERALS FROM THE CONTINENTAL SHELF -Great quantities and*considerable varieti es of minerals are presently taken from the sub-soil of the continental shelf. Petroleum, gasl limestone and sulphur are some commodities presently produced in con- siderable volume from such situations in the United States. Magnetite (iron) ore is mined commercially in Japan in 90 ft. of water; tin is so mined off Malaysia; diamonds off South Africia; thorium sands off South India; and other examples could be nam ed (Mero, 1963). There is no reason to think that the mineral composition of the contin- shelf will prove to be any more or less rich than that of the ad- jacent land. Exploration involving seismic, gravity and magnetic surveys are somewhat more simple and less expensive when done at sea than over land. Drilling costs at sea in depths up to 100 fathoms are practical instances now, and as experience accumulates they are likely to cheapen. The big bre ak through in this field which appears to be on the immediate, or close, horizon is the ability of a man with a prospector's pick or other such instrument to live in specially prepared underwater dwelling for prolonged periods and work for hours at a time with "Scuba" gear in depths up to 100 fathoms (Cousteau, 1964). The work of the last year or, two in the Mediterranean and Red Sea under Costeau, and the work re- cently completed under U. S. Navy auspices off Florida, indicate satis- factorily that man.is capable physically, physiologically and psycho- logically of doing this. The present crude technology of these experi- ments seems likely to be advanced to more sophisticated stages rather rapidly. Thus it looks as if instead of exploring the sub-soil of the continental shelf indirectly by seismic, gravity or magnetic surveys, or by a dredge pulled at the end of a long wire (as has yet been the practice up to now) man should soon be able to get down and work over the continental shelves by sight and touch, shipping off or digging up samples as required, with- .out as much danger and hardships as those experienced by the desert pros- pect'or and his burro for the past hundred years on land. This.should.inevitably, open up great new mineral wealth to all coastal countries having a substantial continental shelf. It was in anticipation .of these developments that the nations of the world modified international law as they did in the "Convention on the Continental Shelf" so that the resources of these adjuncts of the continents could be brought to har- vest under law * There is another sort of mineral on the continental shelf that is oceanic in origin and gives promise of much future production. These are the phos- phorite nodule deposits that are found so plentifully on the continental -15- shelf at all (or most) places where there is substantial upwelling of water from the deep sea. Known major deposits of phosphorite nod- ules have been found off Peru, Chile, Mexico,.the west and east coasts of the United States, Argentina, Spain, South Africa, Japan and on the submerged parts of several islands around the Indian Ocean. A number of such deposits are known off the coast of California, some of which are*expected to yield as much as 100 million tons of phosphor- ite.(Mero, 1963). Since California uses an equivalent.of over 400,000 tons of phosphate rock per year and,has no commercial grades of phosphor- ite in deposits ashore, the discovery of these large off shore deposits has excited interest. A subsidiary of the Union Oil Company did advance as far as to least 30,000 acres of such deposits off San Diego from the Department of.the Interior. MINERALS FROM THE DEEP SEA BED The deep sea bed has not, heretofore, been mined. There is reason to think that within the next generation deposits of truly oceanic origin on the deep sea bed will become major sour .ces of such metals as nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium and some others now used as essential ingredients in.industry and not overly abundant on land in commercial deposits. Manganese Nodules The most exciting,of these deposits are the so called manganese nodules. They are called this because they always contain 4 substantial amount of manganese, and may be up to 507. manganese. However, they contain a number ofother elements as well,, in greater or lesser concentrations. The composition of the nodules vary considerably from ocean to ocean and as to locality,within an ocean. In the Atlantic the composition of the nodules is relatively uniform and high in iron content. In the Pacific the composition of the nodules varies widely from place to place and apparently,with some pattern (Mero, 1963). One of the exciting aspects of these deposits is their enormous extent. They cover broad areas of all oceans. Their estimated present volume is substantially more than.1 trillion tons. Crude preliminary measure- ments in 25 locations in the Pacific indicated an average in the eastern part of that ocean of 30,000 tons of nodules per square mile. Similar measurements in the middle Pacific yielded an average of 55,000 tons per square mile, and in the western Pacific of 25,000 tons per square mile (Mero, 1963). -16- Assuming that only ten percent of these nodule deposits prove economic to mine there are sufficient supplies of many metals in these nodules to last industry for thousands of years at present rates of production. There also is evidence that these nodules are accreting out of the ocean now as they have been doing for past millenia and that manganese is thus being accumulated three times as rapidly in them as it presently is being used by man, cobalt twice as fast, nickel as fast, etc., (Mero, 1963) The nodules are loose on the ocean bottom, They are easily photographed and picked up in small lots by the oceanographer's dredge. They range in size from small peas to largish balls.. There is no reason why they cannot be picked up readily by an oversized vacuum cleaner type of hydraulic dredge, pumped to the surface, and into waiting ore boats. Two companies are said presently to be in the design stage of equipment of this nature for this purpose. The metallurgy presents problems that have not yet all been worked out but which are under active investigation by the Bureau of Mines and others. The capital, costs for engaging in such an enterprise would be substan- tial, but not overwhelmingly large for a number of United States compan- ies. Mero (1963) estimated that a deep sea hydraulic dredge of the type he had in mind would run about $6 million per unit, including design and development costs, and that a plant to process the nodules recovered would cost $60 to $70 million. He estimated that the gross value of the products recovered and processed per year by such equipment would be'about $250 million and, at metal prices prevailing in A?ril 1963, might yield a return on invested capital of.berween 30 and 100% ?er year. A single such operation, he reckoned, could produce about 50% of the United'States con- sumption of nickel, over 100% 'of that of manganese, about 5% of that of copper, about 35% of that of cobalt, about 7% of that of molybdenum, as well as appreciable amounts of vanadium, titanium, ziroconium, etc.,. If this all appears to be somewhat visi onary, it may be observed that one company thought well enough of the prospects to hire Mero away from the University of California to aid it in the design and development of equip- ment for these purposes. Other Mineral Deposits of Ocean Origin Although manganese nodule deposits hold presently the most immediate interest for large scale mining of the deep sea floor there are other major resource's of similar ogigin on other parts of the ocean bottom that hold just as large interest for the longer term as techniques of ocean mining are developed and as high grade ore deposits on land are -17- exhausted. Substantially spealUng these.depos@ts on the deep sea floor are inexhaustible. Red clay covers about 40 million square miles of ocean floor. At least ten quadrillion tons,of-it are available. It is a mixture of compounds as are the manganese nodules. Elements of particular interest in it are copper, cobalt, aluminum, and nickel. These de- posits have an average composition of 20% alumina and 0.02% copper. They contain at least 10 trillion tons of alumina and 10 billion tons of copper. Red clay is by present standards a lean ore, but the future may consider it.,to be richer (Mero, 1963). Calcareous oozes co ver almost 50% of the ocean floor, or some 50 million square miles, Some assay as high as 95% calcium carbonate, and are very similar in composition to the compounds which account for 95% of the cement rock market. Deposits of nodules assaying a- bout 75% barium sulphate are found in several locations off Califor- nia and Ceylon. About 11 million square miles of the ocean floor is covered by Diatomaceous oozes which in some cases are almost pure silica. They could be used for any purpose for which diatomaceous earth is now used. Although up to now these enor mous deposits of minerals of oceanic origin have bee'n sheltered from man by the thick overburden of water and the lack of practical technologies with which to deal with them, this will not necessarily remain the case for I ong. Actually there are some attractions to deep.sea mining as compared to land mining. Because of their common property nature,the politiQal and property costs and risks associated with land deposits are absent Aside from water there is no overburdento remove, no drilling costs, no need for explosives and ore breakage. There are no drifts to make or shafts to sink and.no townsites to buy and develop. With available camera equipment the whole deposit can be explored and every ton of ore to be expected accounted for before mining starts. Ocean mining lends itself to full automation with minimum labor requirements. Cheap sea transportation can be used from mine to market without the need for other intervening forms of transportation (Mero, 1963). FOOD FROM THE, SEA As is well known all life on. earth is-nourished by the basic prod- ucts of interaction between so-lar radiation, carbon dio-,zide, chlor- ophyll, trace elements and water. The basic output of.this trans- mutation is carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, oils and the other things composing living matter. Only the plants (in.significant amount) contain the chlorophyll through the agency of which the solar energy can be bound with chemicals to create living matter. Upon these plants the great range of planetary animal life, including our- selves, fully depends. Sea water has dissolved in it all of the chemical ingredients required to support plant production.. It receives over 70% of the solar radia- tion that strikes the earth. Scarcely a drop of salt water within 100 feet of the sea surface is devoid of plant life, and plant life is found deeper in the ocean than that in considerable amounts. Accordingly, as with so many other things about the ocean, it supports more photosyn- thesis and plant food production that can be readily imagined or than a much vaster human population than that presently living could eat. The ocean varies as much by area in its production of life as does the land. There are ocean "deserts" as well as extremely fertile ocean areas, as with the land. Mostly this is due to certain required chemicals being exhausted in the superficial layers of the ocean where insolation is heav- iest and plant life most abundant. By contrast, below the level to which solar radiation can reach and plant life subsfts (say 150 to 200 ft. in most ocean areas) these chemicals are superabundant. Where there is vertical circulation of these nutrient rich deeper waters to the surface, plant life again flourishes in abundance comparable with the most productive farm lands. Such places are Peru, Chile, California, South West Africa, West India, South East Arabia, the Japanese home islan ds, the Grand Banks'. etc., etc. With the ocean operating just as it is now a conservative estimate of the weight of carbon fixed into living matter annually by ocean plants (phy- toplankton) is 19 billion tons (Schaefer, 1964). Although we are all acquainted with the kelps and algae of the sea shore and shallow inshore waters, most of ocean plant life (as contrasted with most of that with which we ate acquainted on land) is composed of one-celled organisms of microscopic size. Although they are produced in these vast amounts in the ocean, and some- times in such profusion that miles of ocean are rendered cloudy, or soupy, or even colored by their presence, it is unlikely that they will ever be of much importance to man directly as food. The reasons for this are several. The most important is that even a maicimum abundance there is still so little dry weight of plant life per cubic meter of water that the cost of separating the water from the plant life is beyond all possible range of direct value of the living matter as food. This highly abundant phytoplankton must be much concentrated by other organisms before it can be further' concentrated by man and used by him directly. _19- This concentration is done by animals of all sizes which graze upon the plants of the ocean much as cattle graze uponthe grass of the prairie. Thus animal protein arises in vast bulk in the ocean, in greater bulk than man needs or could use. Upon the smaller of these multitudinous one-celled animals and plants feed multicelled animals of larger size that may be visible to the human eye, or even rather large (as with jelly fish,.krill, etc.,), which drift freely with Ithe ocean currents and are called plankton. Where plant plankton is being produced ac- tively, and animal plankton is grazing on it profusely, it is possible with a small meshed net to catch pounds or gallons of such plankton quite easily. From this fact publicists have put forward the idea that plankton.soup will be the salvation of m ankind. This is sheer buncombe. In the first place plankton soup is not something for which children would cry for a second bowl because of its fine taste. In the second place its separation from the water and processing into stable and transpor- table shape is impractically costly. Thirdly, it not only contains a great variety of plants.and animals that could not be separated from each other practically, but in any one place in the ocean the composi- tions of.the plankton catch changes grossly from day to day in a manner making a reasonably standard product quite impossible. Lastly, the total productivity of ocean areas change rapidly from day to day and from season to season in manners as yet unpredictable, and the fre- quent location of maximum plankton concentrations of the nature to which we are referring would not be easy or cheap. Although very large quantities of organic material is converted into protein directly utilizable by man by oysters,.clams, mussels, bar- nacles, shrimp, etc., and phytoplankton is put into directly utili- zable form on a large scale by such fish as anchovies, another level of concentration by living things is ordinarily required before all of this vast production of tiny oceanic food units can be captured -by man in a form that he can use and at cost that he can afford. This is done by the bony fish, the sharks, the squid, whales, porpoise, and the myriad other larger animals of the ocean. When these proliferate and congregate in such manner that man can cheaply catch them, process them into acceptable food, and transport them to consumption centers in still acceptable form at acceptable price, only then does ocean production become food for man. THE WEB OF LIFE The web of life in the ocean is incredibly complex as we know it now, and we are still pretty ignorant about it. Well over half (perhaps as much as 90%) of the organic matter in the ocean is not in living form at all, but is in forms,resulting from excretion, death, bacterial -20- action, and enzymatic dissociation that has left it outside the living form. (Kesteven, 1962). In any event, in a rich sea area like that off Peru, the first life of practical size for man to use in large volume is a fish like the anchovy that lives normally almost entirely on microscopic phytoplankton. Asso- ciated with the anchovy are sardines, some mackerels, and some other fishes that appear to be able to subsist indiscriminately on plant or animal plankton. These are the sorts of fish that are most abundant and exist in great schools that can becaught easily and cheaply. Al- though properly prepared these fish are excellent as direct human food, most people do not accept them readily and the market for them is thin. They go into fishmeal which is fed to poultry, swine and cattle, by which route they enter the-human diet, and into fish oil which is mostly used for margarine. Upon these vast swarms of herbivores and half carnivores live the bonito, the tuna, and such fishes that are readily acceptable directly by humans in their diet. Upon the others, and these latter, subsist the squid and great sharks; upon the great squid.live the giant sperm whales. A wholly different chain of life of similar complexity arises from the shallow ocean-floor involving the bottom-living diatoms and detritus, sedentary molluscs (such as clams,.oysters and mussels), the crustacea (such as shrimp, crab and lobster), and bottom fishes (such as flounders, cods,.etc.,) etc. At intermediate depths are other chains of life of similar complexity. They contain fish like the hake which are near the bottom at one time and even up to the surface at others, the ocean perch which regularly inhabit the middle layers well up from the bottom, the lantern fishes which may move up.and down from the dark deep to the surface diurnally, etc. All of these chains of life interlock in various feeding and life his- tory manners, in.incredible complexity. The reason for noting this complex natural scene even.so hastily is to point out that the carbon originally fixed by the plants into organic matter transfers from stage to stage of life in the ocean as one of these organisms is eaten by another up the scale, and then by another and yet another. These stages are called trophic levels. As the carbon moves from trophic level to trophic level, it is dim- inished in volume at the new trophic level. The reason for this is that much of it is lost through metabolic action and waste products that are excreted (carbon dioxide in breathing, urea products, and -21- faeces, as well as cast off shells in crustaceae, etc.,). For a long time it has been customary among scientists dealing with this subject to use the rule of thumb that as the biological carbon moves from one trophic level to another it diminishes by a factor of ten. For instance, ten pounds of anchovy eaten by one bonito will yield one pound of live bonito. It is now becomingwell known that this conversion factor is en- tirely too conservative. Lindner (personal communication) finds.that shrimp convert their food into body weight with an efficiency of about 25%. Lasker (personal communication) working with the krill (Euphausia pacifica) finds that when it is feeding either wholly on zooplankton, it converts its food to body weight at efficiencies ranging from 11% to 40%, and averaging (as with shrimp) about 25%. Schaefer (1964) has calculated what would happen with 19 billion tons of carbon fixedinto phytoplankton if it were converted into second stage carnivores (just about,the average trophic level at which he estimated the world fisheries to be presently working) at ecological efficiencies of 10%, 15%, and 2Cr/.. He arrives at a total weight of second stage carnivores (fish, shellfish, squid, etc.,) of 190 million tons at the 10% level, 640 million tons at the 15% level, and 1.52 billion tons at the 20% ecological effi- ciency annual production would be 7.6 billion -tons. Adequate studies have hot yet been made which would convert eco- logical efficiency as Schaefer uses the term, or the more generally used concept of food conversion to body weight, into a general idea of overall ocean efficiency in conversion of food from one trophic level to another. Since a 25% average conv.ersion.of food to body weight.do,es not appear to be out of expectation for marine animals (chickens produce one pound of weight from less thati three pounds of feed) and the 19 billion tons of biologically fixed carbon per year in phytoplankton is a notably conservative estimate, perhaps a rough number of 2 billion tons per year of second stage carnivore generation could be taken as reasonably conservative estimate of the actual production of fish and squid by the ocean per year in forms large enough to be harvested and used by man. THE HUMAN NEED FOR ANIMAL PROTEIN There are about 3 billion people on earth presently. Each of them requires about 70 grams of protein per day to remain in a healthy nutritional condition (Schaefer, 1963). this works out to a human need of about 76 million tons of protein per year for the present human population. Schmitt (manuscript) gives reasons indicating the possibility that the human population will level out at about -22- 30 billion. Such a population would require about 760 million tons of protein per year to fill its nutritional requirements. Of coursemost protein now.entering the human diet is not animal pro- tein and perhaps it never will be. At present the protein at the point of consumption is approximately 67% of plant origin, 2WI. of meat and .,milk origin, 4% of poultry and egg origin and 5% of fish origin (Schaefer, 1963). Theoretically it would perhaps be possible for man to subsist healthily simply on plant proteins, for all of the essential amino-acids are pre- sent in the plant protein (King, 1965). As a practical matter this is not the case because the main source of manis food energy is the cereal grains, and other seeds (wheat, corn, rice,.barley, millet, beans, peanuts, soybeans, etc.,) and these are short of lysine and the sulphur containing amino-acids that man needs in his diet to stay in energetic health. Thus, as a practical matter, the human dietrequires a considerable amount of animal protein to protect health and energy. Certainly the percentage thus required will change as civilization, society, and habits change. Perhaps an animal protein.component of the protein requirement of a diet for 30 billion.people of 407. would not be ridiculous. This would require about 300 million tons of.animal protein pet year. FISH AND THE HUMAN ANIMAL PROTEIN NEEDS Fish range in protein content from about 15% of 24% (Olcott and Schaefer, 1-7 1963) and perhaps an average of 20% for rough calculation is not too far out of the way. Fish protein contains all of the amino-acids re- quired by the human body in proportions well balanced to maintain health and energy. As we have seen above the ocean is producing about 2 billion tons of fish and squid in the second carnivore stage at the present time in total weight. This means a production.of animal protein at this tro- phic level of about 400 million tons per year. When one considers the conservative nature of all of these estimates, and the fact that the average fish catch in the world is -shifting rap- idly toward.the first carnivore trophic level, one can.say with some assurance that a.world ocean is producing more fish and animal pro- tein than a human population of 3 billion.people can possibly use, and appears to be capable of producing somewhat more animal proteinthan a population of 30 billion people would need. The fact that most of it now dies a natural death and returns its components to the sea is beside the present point. -23- THE PRESENT DIETARY SITUATION OF THE WORLD Let us turn,,then, from these theoretical considerations, which are so rosy, to a look at the world as it is working under a population pressure of about 3 billion people, and under the social and economic conditions that actually exist. There is nothing rosy about it at all. it is generally considered that 30 grams per day of animal protein in the human diet is sufficient for maintaining the human body in vigor- ous health; 15 to 30 grams per day is considered to be on the border line of,a healthy situation; and less than 15 grams per day is consider- ed to be in the danger zone. (Olco tt and Schaefer, 1963). The actual situation in the world today is that 19.5% of the human pop- ulation has an average of more than 30 grams of animal protein in its daily diet; 19.3% have between 15 and 30 grams per day; and a whopping 60.7% majority has less than the danger limit of 15 grams per day (Meseck,1962). The per capita daily consumption of animal protein in som e selected countries are: U.S.A. 66 grams; Japan 15 grams; Egypt 13 grams; Pakistan 8 grams; and India 6 grams (Meseck, 1962). These are some of the figures behind the statements by the nutritionists of WHO, FAO and UNICEF (Sen, 1963) that 1.5 billion people are presently living under conditions ofprotein malnutrition damaging to health and energy and that 0.5 billion people are suffering from protein malnutri- tion at the level characterized as sickness. The protein malnutrition diseases of kwashiorkor and marasmus are well known as the largest single killers of pre-school age children on a world wide basis. It is noted tha t these serious conditions of protein malnutrition are concentrated in the developing world, the tropics and the sub-tropics, for the most part. This is the area where social unrest is most ram- pant on a world-wide basis as any daily newspaper will indicate. This is the area characterized by northernersas inhabited by lethargic, indolent people who seem unable to care for themselves adequately as their populations increase, and who do not know enough to stop in- creasing. On the other hand, these people say they have been preyed upon by the northerners so long, and so robbed of their sustenance, that they have difficulty in recovering and progressing now that the northerners have gone, or been sent, home. Perhaps a good share of this acrimonious dialogue arises from the typical protein deficiencies of the human diet in the developing world. There are large populations of humans where the normal lot of an infant is to suffer for a time from protein deficiency disease. Clinical work adequately shows that this not only results in physical and mentalretardation (NAS/NRC, 1961). Thus perhaps a good deal of -24- the root cause of social unrest, slowness in economic development, diffi- culties in governance,.and other socially undesirable traits of the develop- ing world arises from protein malnutrition, and is.capable of cure in one generation. A corollary to such an hypothesis would be that correction of the protein-malnutrition cause would be a necessary precondition to cor- rection of the social and economic problems of the developing world. 'In any event the World Health Organization, the Food for Peace Program, UNICEF., FAO and the other United Nations agencies and bilaterial aid programs concerned with these problems are now giving the most serious attention to improving the protein nutrition of the developing world as rapidly as is possible. There are many reasons why this problem developed and why it is difficult to resolve. Broad areas of middle Africa have endemic livestock diseases which prevent much animal protein being raised on the land. Great areas' of heavily populated South East Asia require the arable land needed for livestockraising for the production of cereal crops. Religious scruples prevent many people from eating any meat, others prevent large popula- tions from eating any pork, and some primitive people even eschew chickens onreligious grounds, at least at certain periods.. This present world problem was a long time arising from complex sources, but it cannot be so long in being resolved because the temper of the times and the pressure of added population exciting further serious unrest will not permit it. THE PRESENT FISHERIES We have noted above that the ocean produces more animal protein in sizes that can be practically used by man in greater volume than man can use, and that large sectors of the human population are suffering from protein mal- nutrition on a socially unacceptable scale. Let us see what the fisheries are doing in reaction to this. In 1850 the world catch of fish and shellfish (excluding whales) was about 1.5 to 2.0 million tons. By 1900.it had.increased to about 4 million tons; in 1930 to 10 million tons; in 1950 to 20.2 million tons; in 1960 38.2 million tons (Moiseev, 1964); andin 1964 production is estimated to be about 50'million tons. In addition to this the whale production in 1961, at least,.was about 2.5 million tons (Moiseev, 1964). Most of this ex- pansion in the world fisheries has come from the ocean. During the first five years of the decade ending with 1962 the growth rate of the marine fisheries was 4.5% per year. During the last half of that decade it was 8% per year (Olcott and Schaefer, 1963). It seems presently to be accele- rating. -25- The total world catch of fish, whales, she ilfish, other aquatic animals and acquatic plants was 47.2 million tons in 1962. Of this less than 10% (4.67 million tons) came 'from fresh waters (Moiseev, 1964). Even this last figure is suspected of being somewhat too high because a ,large component of it is from official statistics provided by Communist China when it was apostrophizing the "Great Leap Forward", which fell flat on its face. Despite the considerable and valuable product of fresh water pond culture, especially in connection with rice paddy cul- tivation in.Asia, there is evidence that fresh water fish production on a-world-wide basis is not doing much better than holding its own, nor is it expected to do much better than this in the future. The reason is that man as a whole.is destroying the productive capacity of the fresh waters through bverfishing, construction of dams and diversions, use of pesticides and otherwise tampering with the environment, just about as fast as he is building ponds with which to raise.more fish. The expansion in production of aquatic food must be expected only from the ocean on a substantial scale. It is instructive to look at the composition of the world catch of aquatic 'food. In 1962 85.9% of this was fish (40.4 million tons); 7.6% (3.5 million tons) was shellfish; 5.1% (2.4 million tons) was whale; 1.4% (0.7 million ton-s) was ot'her.aquatic animals.@ In the period 1938 to 1962 the fish component of this production had increased from 18.3. to 40.4 million tons (by 221%); the crustacean component had increased from 1.6 to 3.5 million tons (219%); the whale component had shrunk from 2.9 to 2.4 million tons; the aquatic plant component had increased from 0.5 to 0.7 million tons; and the 'other aquatic animal component had increased from 0.1 to 0.2 million tons (Moiseev, 1964). Obviously the important aquatic crop is fish and shellfish (93.4 of the total) and it is upon these that dependence must be placed for food from the waters. Since most food from the waters is fish (85.9% in 1962) and most of this is from the ocean (88.4% in 1962) it is instructive to look at the composition of the world catch of marine fish. In 1962 the herring and anchovy (clupeoid) component of the catch was 41.1% (14.6 million tons); the cod,,haddock and hake (gadoid) component was 15.5% (5.51 million tons); the horse macker 'el, sea perch, etc., (Percomorph)-com- ponent was 12.0% (4.27 million tons); the tunas and mackerels (scom- broid) component was 6.7% (2.38 million tons); the flat fish com- ponent was 3.Wl. (1.2 million tons); the salmonoid (salmon and smelt) component was 1.5% of the catch (0.55 million tons); the sharks and ray (elasmo branch) component of the catch was 1.0% (0.37 million tons); and all,the other kinds of fish was 18.5% of the catch or 6.77 tons. -26- it is reasonable to expect that the 18.8% of the catch that was un- allocatable by species groups in the above tabulation was actually distributed among these groups in about the same proportion as the other 81.2% of the catch. If that were so then in 1962 51% of the world ocean fish catch was clupeoid fisk; 247. was composed of gadoid and perciform fishes; and only 15% was composed of scombroids, pleur- onectids, salmonoids and elasmobranchs. This reinforces the calculat ions of the food production capabilities of the ocean as set out above by indicating that the average world fish catch is composed of fishes not much above the first stage car- nivore level. It is obvious from this tabulation that the important volume producers of animal protein food from the sea are not the fancy fish such as,,.sal- mon, tuna, sole, bonito, corvina, and halibut, (or even the staple cod- fish) but instead are the lowly herrings, sardines and anchovies. As a matter of fact the increase in production of herring-like fishes be- tween 1938 and 1962 (from 5.37 million tons in 1933 to 14.66 million combined total catch (9.65 million tons) of all cod-like, tuna-like, salmon-like, and flat fishes in 1962 (Moiseev, 1964). Yurthermore the anchovy catch of Peru and Chile alone has increased by something between 2 and 3 million tons from 1962 to 1964. A great deal is heard publicly of salmon, trouts, etc., and partic- ularly of the rosy future ahead for the selective breeding of this sort of fish in order to expand food production from them. As a matter of fact the total world catch of all salmonoid fishes declined from 5.3% of the world fish catch in 1938 to 1.5% in 1962 and in ac- tual volume from 0.85 million tons in 1938 to 0.55 million tons in 1962. It never provided a substantial part of ocean food production, and never will. Total salmon and trout resources of the world are too small to be of much significance f rom this viewpoint. Most of the publicity'respecting ocean fisheries arises from the North Atlantic, where commercial fisheries as we know them today had their origin and where the nations surrounding it have long been reputed as principal fishing nations of the world (Norway, Portugal, Iceland, England, Spain, etc.,). As a matter of fact the entrie fish catch of all countries in the whole of the North Atlantic was only 7.1 mil- lion tons in 1938 and increased to only 12.06 million tons in 1962 (Moiseev, 1964) and a major contributor to this increase was a country considered as a land-@locked state in 1938 - Russia. -27- In 1938 most scientists and fishery experts, whose knowledge derived principally from these northern seas, considered tropical seas to be essentially barren. A good many still do. In the intervening years the catch of a single species of fish, the anchovy (Engraulis ringens) inthe tropical waters of only two countries (Chile and.Peru).has in- creased from about 50,000 tons in 1954 (substantially nothing in 1938) to about 10 million tons in 1964, which will compare favorably with the total catch all countries will make of all kinds of fish in the entire North..Atlantic in 1964 and be considerably more than all the European countries will take from the whole Atlantic this year. From.these statistics emerges a view of world fisheries other than is normally considered, composed of the following parts: 1) The most important products from the aquatic realm by value .and volume are the living resources (about 50 million tons per year at the present). 2) The dominant part of this production is fish (86%). 3) The'dominant part of the fish catch.is from the ocean (88.4%) . 4) The major component of the fish catch from the ocean, and the most rapidly growing, is that provided.by.the herring-like fish (at least 41.M.of the total in 1962, and perhaps somewhat more than 50% in 1964, having more@than doubled since 1955). 5) The rapidly growing fisheries are not in the northern seas, nor in.southern seas, but in tropical seas (the tropical fisheries of Peru and Chile having come from less than one half per-cent of world marine fish production in 1954 to nearly 20% in.1962 and probably somewhat over 20% in 1964). 6) The production of animal protein from the ocean is increasing at a much more rapid rate than is the human population of the world (a-growth rate of about 8% in the marine fisheries from 1957 to 1962 versus agrowth rate in the human population in the neigh- borhood.of 2 1/2%) (NAS/NRC, 1963). Thus we note: (a) One of the prime social and economic needs of the human population of the world to be animal protein.in the diet; -28- (b) the ocean itself is producing more animal protein than 10 times the present human population could use, although most of it now dies a natural death and returns to the web of life in the ocean unused by man; and (c) the ocean fisheries of the world are responding to this need of humanity by a much more rapid rate of growth than the human population is undergoing. THE DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMAL PROTEIN FROM THE SEA One might say upon hearing these things that the prime dietary crisis of mankind (shortage of animal protein) will shortly correct itself and all will soon be right with the world so far as food is concerned. While this could be true nothing on the present world scene indicates that it will happen quickly. A very large amount of fish that is c aught is discarded and not landed. This is true of all trawl fisheries whether for molluscs, crustacea or fish, where the "trash" fish are ordinarily discarded at sea. The actual fact is that most of the increased production of food from the sea that is landed is being consumed by the industrialized coun- tries (where there is already adequate volume and great variety of animal protein available in most places at most times) and not by the developing countries (where the need for animal protein is great and urgent). There are a great many complicated reasons for this which are difficult to disentangle, and seemingly impossible to correct quick- ly, but the biggest one is purchasing.power. The people'of the industrialized countries have adequate di sposal in- come with which to buy any and all foods they want from anywhere. In the United States, for example, the total part of the consumer's bud- get spent on all foods is presently a little less than 20%, the first time in history that this has happened to a numerous people. As the disposable income of the inhabitants of the industrialized countries increases they tend to eat more protein and less carbohydrates. The average daily intake of 66 grams of animal protein per capita in the. United States as contrasted with 6 in India is a case in point. The situation is much the same, however, in industrialized Europe and is trending in the same direction in Japan. Furthermore, the strong trend in the use of fish in the industrialized countries is not directly in the form of fish as it comes from the sea but as fishmeal used in the more efficient production of animal pro- tein from poultry, swine and cattle. The greater portion of the rapidly -29- increasing fish production in Peru, for instance, is consumed not as fish in Peru but as chicken in North America..Europe and Japan, (and increasingly in the rest of the world too as scientific chicken rais- ing proliferates geographically into the developing world), andin- creasingly as pork and.beef as well. Very little needed human food.value is lost in this process. The thing that is really short in supply in the world is not calorie food or protein food, but the lysine and sulphur containing amino-acids found in good.proportions in fish and theflesh of other animals but poorly in seed crops of plants. (Sunflower seed is high in sulphur containing amino-acids but is not used as a protein supplement on a large scale). Chickens are able to convert these amino-acids from 5% level of fishmeal in diet almost at a one to one ratio into chicken flesh. The small per- centage of fish@neal in the chicken diet produces a sufficient increase in the chicken's rate of growth and its efficiency in converting grains to animal protein to more than pay for the extra cost. The result is an.even.greater supply of cheap, readily acceptable animal protein food Jor humans. It is chickens, rather than humans directly, that are stimulating the important part of the increase in the world fish pro- duction. While this is the actual situation in the world today, it is not quite so black as it is painted here, probably it is inevitable, and quite possibly it is all worki'ng out for the best-about as quickly as anyone could otherwise devise. 'While most of the fish catch of Peru (for instance) goes to the indus- trializedcountries as fish..neal to be fed to chickens, and.there is great.dietary need for animal protein in Peru, the per capital fish consumption inthat country is increasing rapidly and perhaps more swiftly than could be arranged in any other way.. The rapid growth of the fisheries has stimulated the coastal economy in Peru enormously. This hasraised the purchasing power of the local inhabitant sharply so that he can afford.more protein in his diet. Also it has drawn large numbers of ill-nourished people in the Andes down to the coast where income and fish are available. The great volume fisheries in turn have made the fish price in coastal Peru cheaper than could have ever been done through small fisheries developed.solely for local con .sumption. At the present time the fishing industry of Peru and the Peruvian-Government are launching a massive joint internal campaign to stimulate the use of fish in Peru among those sectors of the popula- tion most in need of added animal protein in their diets. Such a cam- paign would not be possible if there were not a large fishing industry supported by exports. -30- Again, in West Africa, a similar thing seems to be going on, in a less organized, but.still substantial manner. This is the type locality of the protein deficiency disease,.kwashiorkor, and perhaps its intensity in the heavily populated jungle in from the West African.coast is greater than elsewhere in the world. The.very rich fish resources are presently being.developed most intensively by foreign fishermen (Russian, Japan- ese, Spanish, French, Italian,etc.,) for foreign markets. But the for- eigners want selected fish (tunas, bream, snappers, shrimp, etc.,) that are sufficiently high priced in the world market to warrant the cost of freezing and shipping them overseas. The catch of fish ' less desired in the industrialized countries (sardine,,herring, mackerel., shark, etc.,) is disposed of locally. By this means the amount of fish available for local consumption in West Africa is increasingsharply (Chapman, 1964). At the same time local fishermen are learning and.adapting more modern fishing methods for the supplying.of fish locally. This process is going on particularly rapidly in Ghana, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. This same thing is a'lso beginning to occur on a smaller scale in .Northeast Africa where the beginning Russian fishery in the Gulf of Aden is already supplying badly needed fish to Egypt and the Sudan.' It is quite probable that this same process will be repeated else- .where as the great unused.fish resources of tropical seas are devel- oped one by one. Another major benefit for t@e developing countries is arising.from .the sharp developments.that have been taking place in the improved efficiency of chicken production,in the industrialized countries. These.scientifically sophisticated methods of providing live animal protein cheaply near the point of consumption.from dry foods which ..can-be obtained, transported and stored cheaply are being transferred lock, stock and barrel to tropical countries, and where this has been done a revolution in the human diet is proceeding. Also as this is done these count ries' are increasingly importing. fishmeal 'from Peru, Chile orSouth Africa and considering ways and means of build- .ing up their own local herring-like fisheries so that they can have their own local sources of fishmeal for chicken production and thus conserve foreign exc'hange. Examples are provided by Colombia, Venezuela, India, Pakistan, etc Fish Protein Concentrate. Lastly, a considerable amount of research is now going on respecting the use of fisbmeal as fish protein concentrate directly in the human diet. The great promises that this holds include the following: -31- 1). Fish proteins contain all the amino-acids required by the human body in proportionswell adjusted to keeping the body in vigor- ous health. Vitamins, calcium, traceminerals, poly-unsaturated animal oils, etc., contained in the fish are plus dietary fact- ors as well. 2). The proteins of all fish are substantially the same. Thus a fully dehydrated and defatted product, made of a considerable variety of "ocean run" fish mixed together, is as valuable nutritionally as that made from selected high priced fish. 3). Fish proteins can be dehydrated.cheaply.and the proteins not damaged in the proces.s if reasonable care is used. 4). Dehydrated fish proteins can be packaged economically so that they can be shipped and stored for long,periods of time cheaply and in a stable fon fi. Considerable technical problems are still.to be solved before much fish protein concentrate can.begin providing a considerable contri.- bution to the world humaii diet directly. Among these are: 1). Present fishmeal plants, practically speaking, cannot be adapt- ed to producing fish protein concentrate under conditions of acceptable hygiene for direct human food. New processes and plants require to be developed and built. Experimental work among these.lines is proceeding. 2). The polyunsaturated,nature of fishoils, which make them unique and particularly valuable in certain usages, are costly to remove in their entirety from the sorts of fish most usable for fish protein concentrate production and, if left inthe fishmeal, can become rancid. Methods have to be developed further for remov- ing the oil cheaply, safely, and satisfactorily, or for sta- bilizing it so that,,it does not oxidize to an objectionable ex- tent. Work along both lines is being conducted. 3). Chickens like fishmeal and accept it readily. Fishmeal which is roughly refined and of a taste not readily acceptable by many humans is providing a very large and rapidly growing world market as supple'mentary'food for@chickens,- pigs and cattle where- as the market (as contrasted to the need) for highly refined fish protein concentrate manufactured to hygienic standards suitable for human food-is, as yet, nominal. In turn humans, as a whole, will accept.chickens in their diet more readily than they will accept fish protein.concentrate. Accordingly industry -32- manufactures the product having best acceptance, lowest cost of production, and highest profit margin. That is fishmeal for chickens. .Much scientific and technological research, as well as engineering .and market promotion study, is presently going into the resolution of the problems concerning fish protein concentrate for direct human consumption and none of them at this juncture appear to be incapable of solution. Conservation and Fishery-Disputes The decade of the 1950's was particularly rife with disputes among nations over fishery jurisdiction growing, assertedly, out of possible conservation problems in the high seas but actually, for the most part, out of economic and political considerations. This led to the two United Nations Conferences on the Law.of the Sea in Geneva in 1958 and. 1960. With the rapidly continuing proliferation of high seas fisheries in the 1960's more actual conservation problems can be expected to arise now and in the near future. These arise in selected places for select- ed species. The worst and oldest have been associated with the whale fisheries of the Anarctic particularly, the salmon and halibut fisher- ..ies of the North Pacific, the plaice fishery of the North Sea, and now in the last few years with the yellowfin tuna fisheries of the East- ern Pacific and the long line tuna fisheries of the world (but particu- larly that for yellowfin in the Atlantic). As noted above, the entire production of all whales, saluion and salmon- like fish, fiat fish, and tunas in 1962 amounted only to'6.54 million tons or less than 147. of aquatic production in that year. Probably less than a tenth of the total available stocks of all such fishes, as a.whole, are affected by any such overfishing problems, or perhaps the stocks of fish presently producing less than 1% of aquatic food on a world-wide basis.and unlikely to be producing half that percent- age ten years from now even if perfectly managed by the best conserva- tion standards. The case of the Pacific salmons, from whence arise most acrimonious disputes among nations over fishing rights (and. have done for twenty-w five years), is particularly curious.- The total production of Pa cific salmons would be not much more than a quarter of a million tons per year if they were perfectly managed by the disputing countries, which is not the case with any and has not -33- been for many years. This is about one half of 1% of the present world production of aquatic food, and not likely to be more than a quarter of a percent of world fish production ten years from now no matter how these disputes are settled. A high proportion of the governmental funds which Canada and the United States devote to fish- .ery purposes is spent attending to Pacific salmon (hatcheries, fish ladders, stream improvements, patrol and.enforcement costs, research, ,political and diplomatic activities, etc.)., and the situation is not much different in Russia.and Japan. Considering the great stakes all four of these disputing countries (Russia, Japan, Canada and the United States) have in access to the abundant resources of the open high seas, and the jeopardy in which their salmon.disputes is putting this access, an outsider might pro- perly wonder if the four countries could be as well off in the long run to simply,*write off these disputatious fisheries and concentrate on developing the more productive fisheries off their coasts and else- where-in the world ocean. The world diet of man,.or the diet of these 'particular countries, would scarcely be affected. Yet man,in whatever race or, country, i s not entirely rational or temperate. The tiny bird in the hand.is often.more entrancing than the great flock inthe barnyard. The forest sometimes cannot be seen because the tree is in the way. Accordingly, such disputes go on,and.they.will continue to increase unless governments decide to abide by the undertakings they pledged in the 1958 "Convention on Fishing andthe Conservation-of the Living.Resources of the High Seas". Whether they do or do not,it is likely that the production of animal protein from the sea,will continue to grow until man's need for it is sated, for there is plenty'in the ocean.for all for the foreseeable future. if one corner of the ocean pasture is closed off,it will more than likely only divert fishing pressure to another less-used.corner. For several years the Japanese have been abstaining from the taking ,of salmon east of 175 degrees west longitude, pursuant to the pro- visions of the International Convention establishing the International Commission for the North.Pacific Fisheries. In the meantime, the .Japanese and Russians have developed.fisheries for o cean perch, flat fish, Atka mackerel, etc., off the coast of Alaska ten'times more productive than the whole American and Canadian.salmon fisheries put together. _34- In doing so they have uncovered other large ocean fish resources in .the area.which they are pushing on to harvest. N OCEAN RESEARCH Most of the information-set forth above was not available twenty years ago and much of it was unknown ten years ago. You may@have noted that in its preparation no publication older than 1959 and few older than, 1963 have been cited,.whereas most citations have been from papers pub- lished in,1964, or still in press, or in manuscript stage. This was neither contrived nor accidental. it just happens that more knowledge and understanding of the ocean has been accumulated in the last few years than in the previous history of mankind. But it was as recently as.1957-1958 that the big boost in ocean re- search and ocean fishery development began. Then with the International Geophysical Year man,for the first time,attempted to look at his plant in one glance. with all his scientific tools and powers. -This IGY was organized by a group of scientists, not governments, through their international professional organization,- the International Council of Scientific Unions. At the same time fou r other events of consequence to ocean production were taking place.. U.S.S.R. was,putting afoot the first concentrated application by any nation of modern science and technology to the pur- pose of harvesting the world ocean. It still is the only country that is doingso on a large scale and its fish catch this year will go beyond 5 million tons (that of the United States will remain comfortably in the neighborhood of 3 millions where it has been for 25 years. Secondly, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States appointed another of its committees on Oceanography (NASCO). This one, however, did.its.w'ork so dynamically that: (a) in @he course of a few years the Government had appointed, an.Interagency Committee on Oceanography (ICO) to attempt to correlate the activities of-the 22 agencies and bureaus that deal with ocean research in the United States Government, (b) athing actually known as a National Oceano- graphic Program had emerged-, and (c) the budget for the National Oceanographic Pro- gram had about quadrupled to a level of $124 million by 1963. -35- There have been.great stirrings in.ocean researchin the United States during these brief years with the construction of new-research ships and laboratories being authorized and funded, the training of scientists being subsidized, and exploratory cruises and research initiated in all seas. This was not done to the level.in fishery oceanography.and develop- ment that was being done in Russia, but still it was on a pretty good scale considering past United States oceanresearch history. Thirdly, ICSU appointed its Special Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and it was no accident that the guiding spirits.of it were the same as those of NASCO.: This remarkable body@rather'.quickly did two things: (a) organized, initiated and got funded the'22 nation International Indian Ocean Ex@editiorfwhich (with something between $40 and $60 million) was the largest, most diverse and extensive,-and well ftinded.inves@igation that had ever been, and (b) succeeded in,getting.established the Office of Oceanography and the International Oceanographic Commission in UNESCO. The latter organization (first meeting in,1961) took over the coor- dination of the International Indian Ocean Expedition, sponsored the eleven nation International Cooperative Investigation of the Tropical Atlantic (the field stages of which have been completed), and.is pre- sently sponsoring the "Cooperative Survey of the,Kuroshioll as well as several other notable activities in international research. Fourthly,,in..1958 the Special Fund of the@United Nations came into being. Its function was to aid nations in.planning-and executing pre- development@surveys for industrialization through multi-year projects requiring a.minimum of $250,000 Of Outside money (provided by the Special Fund). it initiated.the Peru Fishery Project, then the Ecuador Project, the Chile Fishery,Project, the India Fishery Project, the Nigeria Project, the Philippine Project, the,Korea.Project and,the Aden Project. In the immediate future are the Ghana, Central-America,, Argentine, East Pakistan,,and Lake Victoria@Fishery Projects. By this means millions in new-money are being pumped into ocean research and .fishery development each,.year. The results are already becoming pond- .erable. These last two development,s also helped awaken interest in ocean re- search.and fishery development in national fisheries agencies and in FAO of such consequence,that it looks presently as if the FAO Fishery Unit is to be reinvigorated and restimulated.to do adequately the task for which it was originallydesigned. -36- All of these activities have produced much new knowledge and under- standing-of the,ocean and its resources. All are still increasing in .size and competence except that in the United States. Here the budget for the National Oceanographic Program has. stabilized at about $124 million for the past three years, and for this reason the program is beginning to stagnate and get into trouble. Research vessels already authorized and funded are coming off the ways and there is insufficient money,with,which to operate them efficiently. Splendid new laboratories previously-funded are coming into commission but there is insufficient money-with which to operate them effectively. Scientists are coming out of Universities., but there is a federal freeze on hiring new men. Accordingly, the skilled.manpower with which to analyze the data being .acquired rapidly are not being.hired. In consequence the National Oceanographic Program is beginning to jam up pretty badly in the United States. In view of the fact that1we are spending $5 billion per year on.space .research-and eicploration for which no one can express a clear utili- tarian reason.other than keeping up with the kussians, one might think that the Congress might begin some embarrassinginquiries into executive thought 'on the subject of ocean research. However, the 22 agencies and bureaus of the'United States Government that engage in Ocean Research report to,35 Committees of Congress, none. of which.has an ocean scientist on its-staff (Wake'lin,.1964). Thus it becomes a little hard to find where responsibility rests for the National Oceanographic Program in either the legislative or the Executive Branch of the United States Govern- ment. Presumably as long.as.the Russians and.others keep up their ocean.re- search and continue to publish it,.we can to this extent find out whatever they are learning about the ocean which they do not consider to be suffi- ciently important to classify. Accordingly a report.of this nature-written,ten, years from now will certainly be.based:uponmuch more information about the ocean and.its resources than this one has been able to draw upon. If new understanding and.-knowledge flows in during the next,decade as rapidly as it has during the past one, we should have a much better grasp of the kinds and volumes of resources in the ocean and how they may be extracted-for man's use. CONCLUSIONS Thus we have had a look at the resources of the ocean and the potentials they-hold for man. -It has been a too brief look. Many rather important aspects have not been noted at all. A report of this nature written ten .years from now,-will certainly be much different than this one is. The present report can be summed up as follows: -37.- 1). -Energy,is enormously abundant in the ocean. Competition from other cheaper sources of energy (nuclear fission and fossil fuels) makes it unlikely that ocean.energy will be harnessed practically for man's direct use in the foreseeable future, or at least until the derivation of electrical energy from atomic fusion becomes practicable. 2). There is more,fresh water-in the ocean than man can use if he can learn to separate it from the salts and living matter it contains and transport it to where he wants it,at a price he can afford to pay. Multiple stage flash distillation processes already are pro- viding 20 million gallons per day of fresh water in certain areas and that method plus other methods of salt water conversion are sufficiently advanced-in science and technology so that the cost of freshwater from such sources is-becorming economic under a good many other situations in the world. It is@likely,that the next few years will see nuclear-power and salt water conversion plants coupled to- gether in certainilotalities in units capable of producing one to two billion gallons per day per unit. There is reason to think that relatively modest expenditures in ocean research and meteorology might, in time, develop practical methods of weather contro 1 suitable for the transport of water from the ocean through the atmosphere to where it is needed,,Utilizing available planetary.energy. 3). Substantially speaking, all of the metallic elements, and many others, are available dissolved in the ocean in greater volumes than man needs. There does not seem to be much.chanCe that any substantial increase will be made in the variety of dissolved substances recovered from the the near future because the same elements can be had from other sources cheaper than they can be separated from"the water of the ocean. 4). The production of minerals from.the sub-soil of the continental shelf is increasing sharply both as to variety and volume. There is every reason to expect that: this will continue to be the case as new tech- nologies-for extraction in this environment become familiar and per- ticularly,as the techniques for man to live and work in.water depths up to 100 fathoms.become perfected and customary. All of this is proceeding apace now., Aside,from minerals of continental origin, phosphate (and some other) deposits of oceanic origin will be added to this store of utilizable continental resources. 5). Vast deposits of metal.ores of oceanic origin.most useful to man are available,lying on the deep sea bed in profusion greater than man can ever use. They include manganese, nickel, cobalt, zinc, vana- dium,,copper, molybdenum, iron,,aluminum and several other elements. -38- In,some instances these deposits are probably growing more rap- P idly than man.is presently using the metal. There'appears to be a good likelihood that one of these most abundant deposits, manganese nodules, will begin to be worked on a substantial scale in the next few years and that, as a result, manganese, nickel, .cobalt and perhaps even copper, will become cheaper to produce from the- deep sea bed than from.land deposits. 6). The ocean.is, for practical present purposes, a limitless source of animal protein highly suitable for the human diet. when viewed on a.tot-al rather than specific basis. It is presently producing about 2 billion tons of fish and shellfish per year of sizes prac- tical,for man to use. This is well more than the amount of animal protein required to keep a human population 10 times the present size invigorous health., but most of it is dying unused by men and returning to the web of life in the ocean. Man is presently utilizing about 50 million tons of fish.frow. the ocean per year. The production of the sea.fisheries has been grow- ing by about 8% per year for the past: few years or more than three .times as fast as the human.population. Production is increasing particularly rapidly in tropical and sub-tropical seas where large presently unused, or little used, resources are known to exist. The southern (ocean) hemisphere is little fishe4 yet,and very large resources are known to exist in several parts of it. Even in areas .of the northern ocean.that have been long andintensively fished great-latent resources are known to exist. Examples are provided by the pilchard and mackerel of the North Sea, the cape'lin of the Arctic, the anchovy, hake and mackerel of California,.etc., etc. Much research is going on respecting.ocean food production, pro- cessing.and distribution. The process of eradicating protein.mal- nutrition from the world could be much speeded up if a small part of the funds now devoted to space exploration by the United States and Russia were diverted to these mundane objectives. Nevertheless, much progress is being made,and much more can be expected in the near future. 7). The major aspects of the Law of the'Sea have been codified and developed in four conventions arising from the 1958 Law of the Sea Conference. Three of these are in force,and the fourth islikely to come into force next year. If man were a fully reasonable, moderately unselfish, politically mature, and moderately myopic animal, these four conventions would provide an adequate framework of international behaviour under which he could peacefully and -39- profitably harvest these enormous resources.of the sea. Under existing circumstances one can,reasonably anticipate increasing disputes amongnations over these matters, and the field of the Law of the Sea would appear to hold a splendid future for bright young men aspiring to a professional.career. 8). The United States at last has a National Oceanographic Program. This is presently beginning to stagnate while we explore outer space, but it will come to life agai rL in the future. In the meantime,we are learning much about the ocean from the research activities of other nations, particularly Russia. -40- LITERATURE CITED Anonymous 1960 Ocean Sciences.and National Security. Rept. Comm. on Sci. and Astronautics, U. S. House of Reps., 86th Congress, 2nd Session, House Report No. 2078 pp. 13Q Abelson, P. H. 1964 Conventional versus Nuclear Power, Science, 6 Nov. .1964, vol. 146, no. 3645, p. 721 Brown, Governor Edmund G. 1964 California and the World Ocean. Conference on California and the World Ocean, held at Museum of Science and Industry, Los Angeles, California, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 1964, pp. 5-("') Chapman, W. M. 1964 Ocean Science and Human.Protein Malnutrition Problems in Middle Africa. Conference on Ecology and Economic Development in Africa, Inst. Intn. Affairs, Univ. of Calif.,Berkeley, June, 1964, pp.35 Costeau, Jaques-Yves. 1964 Conference on California and the World Ocean, held at Museum of Science and Industry, Los Angeles, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 1964, pp. 81-84 Kesteven, G. L. 1962 World Aquatic Biomass - its'future abundance. In Fish in Nutrition, edited, by E. Heen and R. Tr-euz-er, Fishing News (Bc,6ks).Ltd., London, pp. 9-22 King, C. G. 1965 International Nutrition Programs, Science, 1 January, 1965, Vol..147, no. 3653, pp. 25-29 Mc Dougal, M. S. and W. T.,Burke 1962 The Public Order of the Ocean. Yale University Press, pp. 1226 McIlhenny, W. P. and D. A. Ballard 11963 The Sea as a Source of Dissolved Chemicals. Symposium on Economic Importance of Chemicals from the Sea. American Chemical Society, April 2-3, 1963, Los Angeles, California, pp. 122-129 Mero, J. L. 1959 A preliminary report on the economics of mining and pro- cessing deep-sea manganese nodules. Inst. Mar. Res., University of California, January, 1959,,,pp. 96 Mero, J. L. 1963 The Sea as a source of insoluble chemicals and minerals. Symposium on Economic Importance of Chemicals from the Sea. American Chemical Society, April 2-3, 1963, Los Angeles, California, pp. 139-159 Meseck, G. 1962 Importance of Fisheries Production and Utilization in the Food Economy. In Fish in Nutrition, edited by E. Heen and R. Kreuzer, Fishing News (Books) Ltd., London, p. 23-28 Moiseev, P.A.. 1964 The Present State and IPerspectives for the Development of the World Fisheries. Seminar on Fishery Biology and Oceanography for Participants from Asia, Africa, the Pacific Area,,the Mediterranean Countries and Some European Countries, Moscow, Aug.-Sept., 1964, pp. 25 NAS/NRC 1961 Progress in meeting protein needs of infants and pre- school children. National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 19.61, pp. 569 1963 - - - - - - 1963, The Growth of World Population NAS/NRC Publ. 1091,@ pp. 38. 01cott, H. E. and M. B. Schaefer 1963 The Sea as a Source of Organic Chemicals. Symposium on Economic Importance,of Chemicals from the Sea. American, Chemical Society, April 2-3, 1963, Los Angeles, California, pp. 132-137@ -42- Orowan, E. 1964 Continental Drift and the Origin of Mountains. Science, 20 November, 1964, vol. 146, no. 364.7, pp. 1003-1010 Revelle, et al. 1964 (March) An Assessment of Large Nuclear Powered Sea Water Distillation Plants. Office of Science and Technology, Executive Office of the President. .,March, 1964, pp. 31 Revelle, et al.. 1964 .(June) Draft of a General Scientific Framework for World Ocean Stu 'dy. Prepared for the Inter- governmental Oceanographic Commission by the Scientific Committee on,Oceanic Research Of the International Council of Scientific Unions, June, 1964, pp. 217 Revelle, et al. 1964 (December) Economic Benefits from Oceanographic Research, A special report, of' the National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council, Committee on Oceanography, December, 1964, pp. 57 Rusk, Dean 1964 King Crab Fishing Agreement with Japan becomes effective. Bull, Dept. State., vol. LI, no. 1330, 21 Dec., 1964, p. 892 Schaefer, M. B. 1963 Annual Report of the Institute of Marine Resources for the year ending 30 June, 1963, University of California, June, 1963, pp. 36 Schaefer, M. B. Annual Report of the Institute of Marine Resources for the year en ding 30 June, 1964., IMR Ref 64-12, University of California, pp..64 Schmitt, Wilter R. 1962 The Planetary Food Potential, University of California at San Diego, December, 1962, Ms. pp, 94 -44 en, B. K. .1963 Proceedings of the World Food Congress, FAO, Washington, D. C., 4 June, 1963 .Thompson, G. A. and Manik Talwani 1964 Geology of the Crust and-Mantle,iWestern.United States. Science, 18 December, 1964, vol. 146, no. 3651, pp. 1539-1549 Wakelin, J. E.@. Jr. 1964 In National Oceanographic Program -.1965. Hearings, Submcommittee on Oceanography,@Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives, 88th Congress, Second Session, Serial no. 88-23, pp. 718. BUREAU OF COMMERCIAL FISHERIES RECEIVED FEB 25 1965 DIVISION OF BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH DATE DUE GAYLORD No.2333 PRINTED IN U.S.A. NOAA COASTAL SERVICES CENTER LIBRARY 3 668 14107 3710