Squeezing More Out of the Seas

As oceanographers view it, there is something unreal about the debate over who owns what in and under the sea. Says Manik Talwani, director of Columbia University's famed Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory: "Mankind knows more about some aspects of the moon than it does about some of the land right off its coasts."

Fortunately, marine scientists from many countries are busy sampling, probing and testing the seas and the seabed in many areas, using some dazzling gadgets (see color pages). Off the Azores, French and American scientists are diving to depths of almost two miles in three tiny submersibles, including the U.S. Navy's little Alvin, for a closeup look at the jagged, volcanically active mid-Atlantic ridge. Farther south, 38 ships and 13 planes from ten different countries have assembled for a massive United Nations-sponsored study of how the sun-drenched tropical seas and atmosphere affect worldwide weather.

Working in a joint program called NORPAX (for North Pacific Experiment), Russian and American scientists are making new discoveries about ocean currents. Among their findings: the periodic invasion of a warm southerly water flow off South America called El Nino, which recently had all but wiped out Peru's valuable anchovy harvest, is apparently linked to the great north equatorial countercurrent that sweeps from the Philippines to Central America. British and American scientists have been taking part in a similar study in the Atlantic, concentrating on the mysteries of undersea eddies, or storms. Meanwhile, oceanographers aboard the U.S. deep-drilling ship Glomar Challenger, which has been poking into the sea bottom for the past five years, have come up with hard evidence for a revolutionary new theory called "global tetonics." It holds that theory the continents are drifting ever so slowly (at a rate of inches a year) on top of half a dozen or so giant, ever shifting plates that form the earth's outer surface -- a concept that could help in predicting earthquakes.

Such discoveries are no mere intellectual curiosities. They are not only shedding light on the hidden processes at work in the earth, but are also establishing the wealth of the oceans and their new role as an international political battleground. Major areas of research and exploration:

MINING: HOT POTATOES

Deep-sea miners are hauling up tin off the shores of Indonesia and Thailand, diamonds off South Africa and sulfur from the Gulf of Mexico. Mining combines also hope to take the plunge into hot (up to 140DEG F.), muddy waters at the bottom of the Red Sea, believed to contain some $3.4 billion worth of copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold. But the hottest new item in undersea mining is manganese nodules--strange, dark chunks resembling badly charred potatoes that literally litter the ocean floor. The nodules contain significant amounts of manganese, essential for making steel, as well as other valuable metals, including copper, nickel and cobalt. One theory of their origin: dissolved in rain water, these minerals are carried off the continents by streams and rivers until they reach the seas. Eventually the particles settle to the bottom, where they tend to collect on such solid objects as rocks, sharks' teeth and even old naval shell casings. The floor of the Pacific alone is estimated to be carpeted with about 1.5 trillion tons of nodules (today worth up to $200 a ton). One particularly rich belt runs east-west just south of Hawaii. Unlike oil and gas, the nodules form quite rapidly--at a rate estimated at 6 million to 10 million tons a year in the Pacific belt alone. John Mero, a deep-sea mining consultant in La Jolla, Calif., predicts that some nodule-mining operations will be in full-scale production by 1980 and that it will eventually be possible to begin shutting down some of the existing nickel and copper mines on land. "There is enough down there to keep us all stuffed for 200 or 300 years."

About 100 companies and half a dozen governments are now actively working on nodule-mining technology. Billionaire Howard Hughes seems to be ahead of the pack. With characteristic Hughes secrecy, his Summa Corp. is testing a specially built, 36,000-ton, $100 million deep-ocean mining ship, Glomar Explorer, off Hawaii. The ship stations itself over a potential site, then lowers its TV-equipped mining apparatus, along with connecting pipe, through a large well in the hull. Once the mining gear hits bottom some two or three miles down, it slurps up nodules from the ocean floor like a huge vacuum cleaner.

Neither Hughes nor his competitors are talking about the scale of their investment. But experts reckon that a venture like his would require a commitment of about $250 million in a ship, a barge and a processing plant just to get started. A Hughes-type hydraulic mining operation using one ship could expect to process metals (mainly copper and nickel) worth $67 million annually.

The profit could come to about $27 million a year, for a reasonably attractive return on investment of 21%--competitive with conventional mines. Evidently Hughes has no intention of actually becoming a miner: Summa plans to sell its nodule technology, once it is perfected, rather than use it.

OIL: BLACK GOLD ROUND THE GLOBE

Oil and gas turn up where organic sediment has been left to pile up on the sea bottom for many millions of years.

Those sediments are being found round the globe--in troughs running along the continental shelves and around the deltas of major rivers. Recent expeditions of Massachusetts' Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution pinpointed possible oil deposits off the mouths of China's Yellow and Yangtze rivers, among other locations.

Offshore wells supply about 20% of the world's oil and 7% of its gas needs today, and their importance is rising fast. K.O. Emery, a senior geologist at Woods Hole, reckons that offshore oil production "will probably surpass that being recovered on land within a decade." In 1973, the world consumed about 20 billion bbl. By U.N. estimates, proven reserves currently total 640 billion bbl., including at least 115 bbl. in offshore deposits. But many scientists believe that the world's undersea oil supplies are far more extensive.

The controlling factors are technology and cost. Until recently, commercial drilling was feasible only to depths of about 300 ft., but now oil companies are extending their underwater reach. One new U.S. ship called a SEDCO-445 can drill at underwater depths of 6,000 ft., unfazed by huge waves and hurricane winds. Yet exploratory drilling in the stormy North Sea, for example, costs up to $5 million per hole--with no certainty of a strike. Price tags for drilling platforms range from $1 million to $2 million in such accessible areas as the Gulf of Mexico, to as much as $15 million in Alaska's Cook Inlet. The tab will climb even higher as oil companies explore farther offshore. Contrary to popular opinion, there is a possibility of oil finds in the deep oceans. Geophysicist Mahlon M. Ball of the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science says that there are "hundreds" of promising sites, some buried under 10,000 ft. or more of water.

ENERGY: HARVESTING HEAT

Eventually, mankind may be able to use the energy stored in the seas themselves, rather than in the oil and gas deposits beneath. As early as the 11th century, the ebb and flow of tides in the coastal inlets of Europe were tapped to turn water wheels. Today, the plant that France built in 1966 to tap the 27-ft. tides at the mouth of the Ranee River faithfully produces 240 Mw. of electricity a year--about one-third the output of the average nuclear generating plant.

Recently, scientists have begun to look into a different form of sea energy.

Covering 70% of the globe, the oceans trap a huge amount of solar heat. But much of this heat lies near the surface; sunlight cannot penetrate to lower depths. Thus there is a temperature differential that scientists like Physicist Clarence Zener of Carnegie-Mellon University think can be used to make electricity. For instance, he says, an easily vaporized liquid-like ammonia or the commercial refrigerant Freon could be passed through a closed loop of pipes submerged in the sea. In the warmer water near the surface, it would be vaporized; at depth, it would be liquefied again. The result: a continuous flow that could drive a turbogenerator. And the system would be pollution free.

FISH: DOWN ON THE AQUAFARM

The global seafood haul has more than doubled since 1950, and the sustainable catch limits have already been reached in some species: the American lobster, halibut, haddock, tuna, cod and salmon. French Diplomat Michel Lennuyeaux-Comnene, a spokesman on fisheries policies, says that the seas are being so badly overfished that there may well be "no more fishing" in only 20 years. He warns: "We're literally eating our capital."

But others are not so pessimistic. At present, the seas supply only 13% of the world's animal-protein intake. Fisheries Expert Roland F. Smith of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), believes that protein from the sea could feed 1.5 billion people -- almost half the world's population.

Smith notes that the 65 million metric tons of fish caught annually represent only one two-thousandth of the oceans' yearly fish production. One way to squeeze more out of the sea, he suggests, would be to wean people away from the 55 most popular species and get them to try some of the 30,000 to 40,000 underutilized varieties -- an effort that might mean changing the names of such potential delicacies as the cancer crab and the rat-tailed flounder.

Some fisheries experts are putting great faith in aquaculture, or sea farming. In Washington, Biologist Jon Lindbergh, son of the aviator, is pioneering in the farming of salmon. After the fish come home to spawn, their eggs are collected and hatched in incubators. The fry are then raised until they are large enough to be kept in offshore pens for harvesting. On St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Lamont-Doherty scientists have successfully grown oysters, clams and scallops in artificial ponds, using nutrient-rich water piped in from the depths of the Caribbean.

Woods Hole Marine Biologist John Ryther has devised an even more ingenious aqua-farming scheme using partially treated sewage water from the Cape Cod town of Wareham. In his ponds, Ryther raises a thick harvest of plankton, which is then fed to baby oysters. To remove whatever ammonia, phosphates or nitrates the oysters and plankton may have left behind, he runs the sewage water over beds of seaweed, which also thrives on these chemicals.

In the future, Ryther also plans to raise abalone as well as brine shrimp, which could be used to nourish rainbow trout.

The remarkable thing about Ryther's ponds is that in addition to purifying the sewage, almost everything produced in them is potentially marketable -- even the seaweed, which contains a widely used chemical stabilizer.

The main problems facing aqua-farmers are economic rather than technological. The University of Miami, for instance, manages to grow some 13 million baby shrimp a year in experimental ponds. But it takes 4 lbs. of expensive feed (soybean and fish meal, vitamins and mixed grain) to produce a single pound of cleaned shrimp, and the cost comes to over $3 per lb. That is hardly the answer to feeding the world's hungry, admits Miami Marine Biologist George Krantz. Other scientists argue that more emphasis should be placed on the harvesting and preparing of plankton, the protein-rich microscopic organisms on which both shrimp and whales feed. That should be another challenge for technology. By one estimate, a plant would have to process more than 260 million gal. of sea water just to produce a ton of plankton.

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