The Reason Why
By MAURICE GOLDSMITH
We know less about the floor of the ocean than we do about the surface of the moon. There are detailed maps of the heavens, but the sea depths have so far remained shrouded in darkness. Scientists are familiar with the major features of the ocean bed—the 35,000-feet-deep trenches, the 2,000-mile-long fracture zones, the flat-topped undersea mountains, the broad ocean-long ridges, and those abyssal plains as flat as a calm sea. They recognise that the underwaterscape is different from anything on land or on the moon. But they do not know why..
Where do the waters come from, where do they go? In the last few years four great sub-surface ocean currents—rivers in the heart of the sea one thousand times greater in flow than the Mississippi —have been discovered. There may be many others. We do not know. We do not know either how many fish there are in our seas. Nor do we understand what causes fish populations to vary from region to region and from season to season. Yet millions now must look to the sea as an important potential source of protein to meet the growing demand for more food as world popula- tion surges up.
Our weather patterns are determined in part by the way the sun's rays evaporate seawater. But once again we know little about the basic mech- anisms involved. Our ignorance about the waters which cover two-thirds of the earth's surface is staggering. That is why the first International Oceanographic Congress, held recently at UN in New York, is so important. At last the one remain- ing frontier of this planet is to be systematically investigated. The International Council of Scienti- fic Unions is completing plans for its first com- bined operation in the least-known of the world's sea masses—the Indian Ocean. During 1962-63 twelve nations, including this country, will carry out there a carefully prepared programme of scientific observation. The total cost to the nations involved will be about £33 million.
Although the Indian Ocean, which stretches from Indonesia to South Africa, has been crossed by traders for centuries, their vessels kept strictly to clearly defined sea lanes. The Indian oceano- grapher, N. S. Krishnan, believes that the present site was occupied by land in Permo-Carboniferous times—that is, about 300 million years ago, when amphibians were the main forms of creature life and there were primitive plants on land. He calls this Gondwanaland (which is also the historical name for a large tract of hilly country correspond- ing roughly with what we know as the Central Provinces). Australia was separated from this region about 200 million years ago, when ilk. Indian Ocean began to form.
This is, therefore, a rich and promising region for the scientist, a hidden country left untouched by the foot of man for millions of years. All kinds of paheontological survivals must be waiting here to be found. It was, for example, in the volcanic Comoro Islands, for years avoided as the domain of slave traders, that a coelacanth was found. Thi' creature has had a continuous existence for some 70 million years, and ichthyologists were staggered when the South African scientist, Professor J. L. B Smith, made its existence known. It is, perhaps unlikely that we shall come across the dinosaur or the flying reptile, but a throng of other wonders may be awaiting us there.
I discussed this the other day with Sir Rudolph Peters, the Cambridge biochemist. He feels cer- tain that man will discover again the sea-serpent, or tinnin (as it is known in Arab legend). He is inclined to agree with the theory that this creature has been driven into the depths by the noise and smell of the modern ship. With careful observa- tion and patient laying-to, this monster should be seen again as it undoubtedly often was during the days of the sailing ship.
What causes those long waves which cross an ocean to wreck shipping in ports hundreds of miles away from their origin? Why are tides so different in different areas? And what is the exact connec- tion between the wind and the wave? The Indian Ocean. is a unique spot in which to study these problems because the winds there reverse their direction every six months in tune with the mon- soon period. When the monsoons cause these reversals in the ocean currents, they shift the location of the up-swelling waters which are rich in the basic materials for the nutrition of fish. We need to know more about this, for the need to har- vest sea crops is especially urgent in those under- developed countries which border the Indian Ocean. That is why the FAO is to be involved in this investigation. Its aim is to replace the present wasteftil haphazard 'hunting' of fish by systematic planned 'farming.'
Oceanography is no longer the Cinderella of the sciences, though it still needs to develop new re- search tools. ,Most, oceanographic ships, for ex- ample, are obsolete and inadequate to meet the needs of the investigators. Deep-diving vehicles are needed to penetrate into 'inner space.' The bathyscaphe and the mesoscaphe, a new under- water helicopter which is the brain-child of the fabulous Professor Piccard, will enable scientists to observe the ocean depths directly. The prob- lems are great, for men must be able to descend at ease and in safety through the waters, nearly seven miles to the deepest point.
With such tools, they will be able to collect data to help to find solutions to many such unsolved questions—whether life may have originated not in the sea, but on the underwater clay surfaces and shallow bays when the atmosphere was poor in oxygen but rich in hydrocarbons and ammonia; and where the salt in the sea comes from—for it is likely that the sea's chemical make-up .has not changed for some 250 million years, and so the salt could not have come from washing out of the continents by rivers.
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