years. At least 5,000 tons of mercury, carried by the rivers, is pumped into the oceans every year and has produced several mass poisonings. One million tons of petroleum is leaked or pumped into the sea annually from tankers, with the result that there are increasing reports of fish tasting of oil, of whole catches being thrown back. And there is a growing concern that the introduction of these hydrocarbons into the marine food chain might have a devastating and lasting effect on the finely balanced cycle of marine life.

Man's political disinterest in the sea is matched, then, by his scientific neglect and abuse of it. And as a result some dramatic readjustment in thinking and in practice is called for.

President Nixon's bid for supranational agency to exploit the resources of the seabed for the benefit of all-a proposal that was given short shrift in the pressis one of the most dramatic moves of his administration. Coming from a major maritime nation, one that is in the best position to exploit the oceans for its own benefit, it is a proposal that has been taken seriously throughout the world. There is a good chance that it will form the basis of the most far-reaching and constructive multinational venture ever undertaken.

At the same time, and with an even greater sense of urgency, man must abandon the assumptions and the myths that he has accumulated about the oceans. This country spends billions on space research and years on the study of lunar particles. But the oceans, which gave us life and which offer a hope that the explosive increase of life may be sustained, remain largely unstudied and almost as little understood as they were at the turn of the century. We must learn— and learn quickly-whether the ocean can tolerate the abuse we are inflicting on it. And we must hope that such knowledge does not come too late.

[From The New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970]

MINING OCEAN FLOOR: A NEW METAL SOURCE?

(By Robert Walker)

GLOUCESTER POINT. VA.-Out in the Atlantic the other day, in about 3,000 feet of water and about 120 miles east of Charleston, S.C., a converted cargo vessel dropped a string of nine-inch-diameter steel pipe to the ocean floor. Operating somewhat like a vacuum cleaner, it began to suck into the ship a thundering stream of air, water and nodules-smooth, apple-sized lumps-of rich metallic

ore.

From the Research Vessel Deepsea Miner, a jubilant crew of scientists, engineers and sailors flashed the word here to the headquarters of Deepsea Ventures, Inc. "It works," they reported, "Beyond expectations."

Headquarters is a neat, single-story, russet-brick office building, surrounded by trees and grass on the edge of this Virginia coastal town, not far from Newport News and Norfolk.

This successful first test of a revolutionary technique for mining an untapped source of four important metals was only a single step in a long march, much of which still lies ahead of Deepsea Ventures. The ocean-research concern is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tenneco, Inc., a diversified pipeline, petroleum, realestate, shipbuilding and manufacturing complex, with total 1969 revenues of $2.5-billion.

The test, however, was one of the biggest strides so far in a program that has absorbed about eight years and $15-million.

Company officials indicated here last week that the success probably had answered favorably the major questions about the mining technology involved. Questions that remain concern the international legal status of the widespread ocean-bed deposits, the processing and refining of the unique type of ore they contain and the economics of marketing the manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper that would be produced.

If Deepsea Ventures, Tenneco and their existing or potential partners should decide to spend the $150-million or more that it would take to get into commercial operations, the implications could be enormous, not only for the world's metal markets, but also for other economic and scientific sectors.

For example, Christopher Garside, a British-born oceanographer from New York's Columbia University, was in Charleston last week, waiting impatiently for the weather to moderate so that he could travel by fishing boat with his own test equipment to the research vessel.

"We wish them luck with their mining venture," Dr. Garside said, “but frankly we couldn't care less about it. We're interested in the effects of bringing so much cold, dense water from the bottom to the surface.

"It will be rich in nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, which might generate plankton growth, which might provide food for fish. Suddenly, if this happens, you've got a fish farm and part of the answer to the shortage of food for humans." It is unlikely that this will happen in the foreseeable future without a sound economic reason for pumping bottom water to the surface, but John E. Flipse, the 50-year-old marine engineer and naval architect who heads Deepsea Ventures, is convinced that the ocean-bed deposits-usually called manganese nodules even though the phrase is not perfectly accurate are an economic proposition. More important, Mr. Flipse has convinced officials of Tenneco and a new West German partner, Metallgesellschaft, A.G., that the program is worth continuing, at least through more exploration, testing and evaluation stages.

To operate commercially, a consortium, which probably would include additional partners, would have to begin in the Pacific with a specially built, fullscale mining ship, capable of recovering nodules at depths of 15,000 feet or 18,000 feet. Pacific deposits are richer and more likely to prove economically feasible than the Atlantic ore that was recovered near here in the recent exercise, designed strictly to test the recovery technique.

Also, the mining ship would probably have to be served by transports-as in the accompanying diagram-which would take the ore to a refinery ashore. This refinery, moreover, would have to be a pioneering project, because conventional processing techniques would not work on manganese nodules.

These considerations and others-the need for orderly markets and adequate international agreements on underwater mineral rights-have made some economists, both academic and industrial, rather pessimistic about the future of ocean mining, except for a few existing operations in extremely shallow water where conventional techniques and ores are involved.

OTHER CONCERNS DISCOUNT IT

But Mr. Flipse, who concedes that the proposition has in the past been examined and discounted by such giant concerns as the United States Steel Corporation and the International Nickel Company of Canada, Ltd., insists that none of the doubters "are what you could call qualified authorities."

He contends that they tend to be naive, not fully informed or even apologists for special interests, hostile to the development of new sources of metal. "We're the opposite," he also admits. "We're enthusiasts. If we were a musical group, we'd be called The Believers."

Solidly built, sunburned and blond, resembling Jack Nicklaus in an applegreen, short-sleeved shirt, Mr. Flipse would be an unusual figure in Wall Street, but he fits this place perfectly.

WORKED WITH NEWPORT NEWS

He was a research director with the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company when it was acquired by Tenneco in 1968. He had been trying without notable success to persuade Newport News to push ahead with a wellfinanced project to mine nodules.

The origin of the oceanflow deposits is uncertain, but they probably were formed 10 million to 30 million years ago through a natural process somewhat like the electro-chemical technique used to manufacture nickel or copper cathodes. They always have a nucleus, such as a pebble, a shark's tooth or a whale's ear bone.

Thus, in broad terms, the atomically bonded elements can only be recovered by reversing the electro-chemical process, which Deepsea Ventures already is doing on a limited scale in a small pilot plant here. A bigger pilot plant-to use the same jealously guarded techniques-is under construction a few yards away.

In any event, after the Tenneco acquisition of Newport News in 1968, the Houston-based conglomerate, formerly known as the Tennessee Gas Transmission Company, was sufficiently impressed by Mr. Flipse and his proposal to a finance the first small experimental ship, the R. V. Prospector. Tenneco also created Deepsea Ventures as a research subsidiary, separate from the big, conventional shipbuilding operation.

While Tenneco and its many subsidiaries have about 62,000 employes, only 60 of them work for Deepsea Ventures. Most of them are scientists, engineers and

technicians, the complement one might expect of a small, research enterprise that has yet to market its first pound of metal and probably will not do so before 1975 at the earliest.

CLOSED-CIRCUIT TV USED

However, these men have developed an exclusive capability to see the ocean bottom and the nodules-as well as large obstacles like boulders-by means of powerful lights of closed-circuit television.

They have designed a dredge and a sled to carry it, capable of raking and feeding to the dangling pipe the desired size of nodules. They have, as they demonstrated in the Atlantic the other day, perfected a means of pumping air to the ocean bottom and into the pipe, causing the air, the water and the mineralshelped by hydrostatic pressure-to hurtle toward the surface.

They also have designed a simple circular separating device for the ship, which drops the nodules into a storage area and pours the cold water back into the sea. Mr. Flipse said last week that, to build a full-scale mining ship, this equipment would only have to be enlarged by a factor of about five, considered a small jump by the usual engineering standards.

MARKET STUDIES GUARDED

Deepsea Ventures did not disclose all the details of its study of the markets for manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper. Mr. Flipse said, however, that "all calculations are extremely conservative."

That is, the concern has assumed there would be good mining weather for only 200 days a year; taken a relatively pessimistic view of the growth in metals consumption; allowed for declines in the prices of various metals, and admitted that its cost estimates, $40-million for the first ship and $100-million for the refinery, might prove too low.

Mr. Flipse has urged the Federal Government to seek international agreements on ocean mineral rights, but he emphatically said he did not believe in competitive bidding for leases on given areas, as is the practice in most existing oil and mineral developments.

"There are so many nodule deposits," he declared, "in relation to the number of companies that will have the desire and the money to enter the field, that bidding won't be necessary. The Government will collect its share in the form of taxes."

[From The Washington Post, Aug. 11, 1970]

BRITISH EXPERT CITES PERIL IF OCEAN BEDS ARE POLLUTED

(By Stuart Auerbach)

A leading expert on food and population problems warned yesterday that the world's last great untapped food resource-the ocean beds-is being ruined by pollution.

The food from the ocean floor, both animal and vegetable, is needed if man is to feed the estimated 7 billion persons who will inhabit the earth by the year 2000, Lord Ritchie-Calder told the third annual Congress of Food Science and Technology meeting here.

"I still believe we can husband the creatures of the sea as we have husbanded the creatures of the land," he said.

"I still believe we can enhance the world's food supply from the ocean, but we are rapidly reducing our options if we tolerate the kind of irresponsible and avaricious ignorance which is threatening the living waters of the sea as it has destroyed so much of the living waters of the land."

Ritchie-Calder said "grim warnings about the impairment of marine biology" were given at a conference on the international uses of sea resources held at Malta.

He said the thin film of oil spreading over all the world's oceans is cutting the amount of sunlight reaching the bottom depths and disturbing the natural process of photosynthesis-the way land and sea plants grow.

He called the Army's plan to dump 66 tons of deadly nerve gas on the ocean bottom "shocking" and "reckless." Using the ocean bottom as a dumping ground for munitions, he added, could interfere with future mining activities.

The British peer, a professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, long has advocated the cultivation of "the food riches of the seas" with "sea pastures, sea farms, sea ranches and sea stud farms."

He proposed putting electric fences around areas of the ocean as big as Texas to form huge ranches to grow fish, which could be bred specially, much the way cattle are now bred. These areas, he said should be under international control. With the world's population growth-a doubling of the present 3.6 billion in 20 years these resources will be needed to feed residents of the earth. And the ocean's resources must be shared, he said, since three-fourths of all the people on earth will live in underdeveloped countries by 1980.

While he praised the "green revolution" that is producing greater grain yields across the world, Ritchie-Calder said cereals can't fill nutritional needs.

Saying that people need more protein, he declared, "There is a great danger that this belly-filling will be regarded as the answer to the food problem to the disadvantage of better nutrition."

But Dr. George W. Irving Jr., administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Research Service, said that new foods with protein supplementation are winning favor all over the world.

Agriculture Secretary Clifford M. Hardin told the conference that the United States is beginning to win its fight against hunger. He said 10.4 million Americans-50 per cent more than a year ago-are now on food assistance programs and food stamp distribution has risen 64 per cent in six months.

There are now only 15 counties or independent cities in the nation without federal food supplement programs for the poor, he said.

OCEANS AND PLAN No. 4

[Speech given on the floor of the Senate by Senator Nelson, Aug. 21, 1970, and related articles submitted for the record]

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, one of the most rapidly developing environmental crises of this Nation today is the pollution of the sea. As yet, the American public has only the Santa Barbara and other oil spills and such incidents as the Army's dumping of nerve gas in the Atlantic off the southeastern United States to remind us that the oceans are not the invulnerable resource we had once imagined. But many distinguished marine scientists are convinced that if we continue on the present course, the Santa Barbara tragedy is only a prelude to continued marine disaster-and that in 50 years or less, we could well destroy all productive life in the sea.

As was pointed out recently by marine scientists testifying before the Senate Judiciary Antirust Subcommittee, it is urgent that this Nation establish as a high priority a national policy to protect our vital ocean resources. Our efforts in this regard are as yet only in their infancy. This is why Reorganization Plan No. 4, which proposes establishing a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the development-oriented Department of Commerce, is to me a very disturbing step. In all that I have seen to explain and justify this proposal, there is little evidence that NOAA in Commerce will sharply separate Federal programs for development of ocean resources from Federal programs for protection of the coastal and ocean environments. But in my view, such separation is absolutely essential. In proposing the Environmental Protection Agency in plan No. 3, the President said that an important reason for this independent agency is that it would "insulate pollution abatement standard-setting from the promotional interests of other departments." Why should not this same reasoning apply to our coastal and offshore marine programs?

In the meantime, the devastation continues. The scientists testifying before the Senate subcommittee estimated that up to 10 million tons of oil are being dumped into the sea every year-and they pointed out that no Federal agency monitors, or is equipped to monitor the buildup of byproducts of this oil, including hydrocarbons of a kind known to cause cancer in both man and animals. Then in dramatic demonstration of another serious gap in Federal Marine enviroment policy, the U.S. Army admitted at a Federal court hearing recently that it is not sure what will happen when its shipment of nerve gas hits the bottom of the Atlantic. What Federal agency is responsible for being sure? It is not clear.

In this situation, it is understandable that environmentalists across the country would be and are deeply concerned about the possible consequences of putting

the lead agency for Federal oceans policies in the Department of Commerce, as is proposed by plan No. 4. In a telegram to the President on plans Nos. 3 and 4, a large group of environmentally-concerned organizations made clear their support of the plan No. 3's Environmental Protection Agency, but stated their strong opposition to plan No. 4's NOAA in Commerce. Those signing were the American Forestry Association, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Association, the National Association of Conservation Districts, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sport Fishing Institute, Trout Unlimited, and the Wildlife Management Institute. In addition, plan No. 4 is opposed by the Izaak Walton League, the American Fishery Society, and the Wildlife Society.

Despite the environmentalist concern for putting marine environment responsibilities in the same agency with marine development responsibilities, there are very strong indications that such a marriage is exactly the course that is being set. The latest instance of this that has come to my attention is the June-July newsletter of the National Oceanography Association, a strong supporter of NOAA in Commerce. Reporting the association's next objective if Plan No. 4 is allowed to go into effect, the newsletter said:

“Additionally, we hope consideration will be given by Congress and the Administration to assignment to NOAA of responsibility for coastal zone management and coastal zone laboratory programs.”

There is little doubt in my mind that unless our national ocean policies are put into much better focus now, NOAA in Commerce will quickly acquire the coastal zone management program proposed in legislation now pending before Congress. Yet such a program is perhaps the key to whether our seacoasts and their myriad resources will be managed in such a way as to avoid their complete destruction by hasty development-coastal zone management is one of the most important environmental proposals before this Congress.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following items be printed in the RECORD at the end of these remarks: The Washington Post article reporting the shocking testimony by distinguished marine scientists; the Post story reporting the Army's admission in court that it does not know the consequences of dumping its nerve gas in the Atlantic; and the portion of the National Oceanographic Association's June-July newsletter reporting this group's strong support for putting environmental responsibilities in the U.S. Department of Commerce, a step which I strongly oppose.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record.

[From The Washington Post. Aug. 14, 1970]

MARINE SCIENTISTS CITE DANGERS OF CANCER BUILDUPS BY OIL SPILLS

(By David Hoffman)

A team of marine scientists charged yesterday that no federal agency monitors, nor is any equipped to monitor, the buildup of cancer-causing petroleum byproducts in the flesh of edible sea creatures.

Testifying before the Senate antitrust subcommittee, the three scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution recommended that oil at sea be considered a powerful poison. They said perhaps ten million tons are being dumped each year in the ocean and that pollution is on the increase as companies move drill rigs farther out to sea.

Drs. John M. Hunt, Max Blumer and Howard Sanders based their report on first-hand study of a 650-ton oil spill off the southern coast of Cape Cod, a few miles from Woods Hole.

They concluded that the oil killed about 95 per cent of all bottom creatures immediately and that ten months after the spill the oil, though invisible, is still spreading outward. Hydrocarbons of the sort known to cause cancer in man and animals remain, ordorless and invisible, in the tissues of oysters and mussels— even after frying.

As marine scientists see it, dumping nerve gas off the coast of Florida poses a lesser health hazard than spillage of oil.

Hunt points out that nerve gas in liquid form has a 12-hour half life, that 99 per cent of it will decay in five days. By comparison, he said, the half life of hydrocarbons in crude oil, while not precisely known, can be measured in years. Hunt is chairman of the Woods Hole chemistry department.