Boom In Oceanography? INTEREST IN INVESTIGATING SEA’S NEGLECTED RICHES

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30978, 7 February 1966, Page 12

Boom In Oceanography? INTEREST IN INVESTIGATING SEA’S NEGLECTED RICHES

I By

DR ANTHONY MICHAELIS.

In the ■•Daily Telegraph," London J

(Reprinted bp orronpement.l

Speaking at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society. Lord Florey, the retiring President, asked: “Could not this country really make a great mark in exploring the underwater world rather than make pathetically inadequate efforts to compete with the great rocket Powers in space? “Could not the country that mounted the great Challenger expedition foster oceanography and the exploration of the possibilities of the sea, its water and what is beneath it so that it would be our national pride and joy?”

There can be no doubt that the expedition of H.M.3. Challenger marked the beginning of modern oceanography. During her voyage of 69.000 nautical miles around the world in the 1870 s she produced, by trawling and dredging, such a mountain of specimens and data that the leading scientists of the world were needed to analyse them.

A series of massive volumes was published. Before this expedition, life in the deep seas had been virtually a closed book. • President’s Plea Lord Florey has not been alone in urging a new approach to oceanography. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, President Kennedy said shortly before his death: “Our goal is to investigate the world ocean, its boundaries, its properties, its prophecies. It is time to drive back the frontiers of the unknown in the waters which encircle our globe.” How great is the need is shown by the paucity of oceanographers in the world: a mere 2265. This compares with hundreds of thousands of physicists, chemists, biologists and astronomers. We know almost as much about the surface of the moon as about the oceans of our owh planet. Photographs of pretty girls in diving suits, the chartering of private submarines and signs of American big-business interest are the first indication that the “underdeveloped” science of oceanography is at last winning some popular and financial support in some countries. In Britain there is the usual tale of devoted amateur work but little official support.

“Inner Space” Oceanography, or “inner space," as the Americans already call it, is one of the broadest fields of science. Over 70 per cent, of the earth’s surface is covered with water,' 139 million square miles with an average depth of 12,500 ft. Yet the sea remains a mystery. Enormous benefits could come from the oceans. They literally teem with protein and this could feed the hungry all over the world. But our present knowledge of the wider movements of fish is abysmally poor, and our fishing techniques are at the stage of development of the Stone Age hunter. An idea from America is to sink a complete atomic power plant to the bottom of the sea. Its large heat output

would produce an upward current of salt-rich bottom sea water, which in turn would greatly increase plankton life on the surface. Fish would multiply there, feeding on the microscopic shrimps and plants that make up the plankton. Suction devices beneath ships could harvest these new riches of the sea economically. An American businessman. Mr G. T. Schargenberger of Litton Industries, said recently: “Within 10 years the annual oceanographic market will be about £2OOO million, approximately the current annual budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.” His company is doing research in oceanography.

Big Business General Motors has set up a sea operation department; Westinghouse is developing a whole fleet of research submarines; similar submersibles are being built by North American Aviation, the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, and Lockheed. Many other firms are finding that diversification is essential. What better field could they find than this—particularly if their knowledge of space technology can promise rich dividends? Perhaps it needed the example of Commander Scott Carpenter, of the United States Navy, who turned from astronaut to aquanaut to show that space and oceanography have much in common. In both, man must take his environment with him; an air-bubble in the sea does not differ much from one In a spacecraft. Sealab I’ was such an air bubble, anchored 205 ft down, a mile off f.e Scripps Institute of Oceanography at La Jolla, California. Thirty scientists and Navy men lived in it, most of them for a fortnight, leaving it daily for prolonged inderwater exploration’. The experiment showed that man can adapt to the conditions.

He can train the porpoise as a dog. Tuffy, a male bottleneck porpoise, 7ft long and 10 years old, responded to whistles, took a guide-line to a diver and learned to carry packets. Seals, sea-lions and porpoises are in training for Sealab 111. But Sealab 11 served another purpose in attracting worldwide attention. From it. Commander Carpenter talked to the astronauts Cooper and Conrad during the Gemini V space mission; to President Johnson m Washington and to French scientists in Conshelf 111, a similar underwater house, 350 ft deep off Cape Ferrat in France. In Plymouth Sound While these activities were as well known in America as the Gemini spaceflights, who in Britain knows much about Project Glaucus? In September two British aquanauts, Mr Colin Irwin and Mr John Heath, lowered their underwater house. Glaucus, to a depth of 30ft in Plymouth Sound and lived in it for a week.

In spite of appalling weather conditions, creating difficulties in getting food down to them, they were fit and healthy when they resurfaced. Another example of American initiative concerns the steel industry. It has realised that steel will remain for

many years the main constructional material of underwater research. It has now sponsored a World Centre of Oceanography—a combination of research laboratories, university, industrial pilot plants, popular underwater entertainment and a yacht marina. The British National Institute of Oceanography, housed in a small red brick building at Wormley, Surrey, has made outstanding scientific contributions, considering the small means at its disposal and the staff shortage. In the design and manufacture of instruments to measure waves and find underwater currents and in ils buoys with radio stations for broadcasting results, it is leading the world. Sales of these instruments in various parts of the world produce an income of £20,000 a year—a welcome addition to the Institue’s budget. An increase has now been promised by the Government.

Wave Height Forecast One brilliant result is Uie forecasting of wave height on the Atlantic shipping routes. Many ships can now save fuel and time by choosing routes which will give them a smoother and hence speedier passage.

The mineral riches of the sea are just beginning to be tapped. Diamond bearing gravel off the south-west coast of Africa is being dredged at a production rate of five carats per ton, five times the yield of mainland diamond fields. The Japanese have due seven million tons of iron-rich sand from the bottom of Tokyo Bay in the last four years. Tin, titanium, thorium and chromite sands are lying ready to be dredged in parts of the world; manganese nodules are scattered widely over the sea floors of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

The greatest resource of the oceans is water itself. With the increasing shortage |of fresh water, desalination of' sea water now has high priority. A grant of £1,500,000 has recently been made to the Atomic Energy Authority to see if atomic power stations can be combined with sea water desalting plants. Britain has been leading in oilfired desalting plants for many years and to hold this advantage full Government support is needed. Russia’s Vessels Russia has in recent years become as interested in oceanography as America, and she has built the only wooden, therefore non-magnetic, research vessel, the Zarja. She has converted a submarine for underwater fisheries research, and is now building a bathyscaphe to go down 6000 ft in polar waters for studies of marine life.

France, perhaps, has been the leading European oceanographic country, since Commander Cousteau made his first underwater film in 1942. His ideas have often been imitated, proving themselves in an underwater survey for oil in the Persian Gulf. Germany, with her new research vessel, the Meteor, contributed much of value in the recent International Indian Ocean Expedition. One hopes Britain will take a leading role in the exploration of inner space. She should not neglect it, as she has outer space.