To Save the Seas

After rising steadily for 25 years, the world fish catch dropped 2% last year, the first decrease in 25 years. The loss represented $160 million. Worse, it suggested that ocean harvesting--one of the great hopes for curbing world hunger--may be endangered by ocean pollution.

In Rome last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization tackled the problem by inviting 400 scientists from 40 maritime nations to discuss man's abuse of the seas. The biggest and most important such conference to date produced more than 140 papers describing the danger. For example, two French scientists, Georges Bellan and Jean-Marie Peres, expressed alarm about the Mediterranean. Not only is human waste soiling beaches from Tel Aviv to Trieste, they said, but the "self-cleansing" power of the sea itself can no longer cope with the volume of untreated excrement and industrial waste now pouring into it. As a result, the scientists told their colleagues, "The Mediterranean is rushing toward complete pollution."

Mercury and Oil. Bruce McDuffie, a bearded chemist at the State University of New York at Binghamton, is the man who recently discovered mercury in U.S. canned tuna (TIME, Dec. 21). In Rome, he reported also finding high mercury levels in commercial swordfish. Reason: according to an American paper presented at the Rome conference, industry is now dumping 5,000 tons of mercury into the oceans each year. Because fish hold mercury in their systems for as long as 500 days, the contamination can travel over vast areas.

Dr. Max Blumer of Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution told the conference that "major catastrophes in production and at sea, unburned fuel, spent lubricants, and a significant hydrocarbon contribution from the land [municipal wastes] contribute about 10 million tons of oil to the world's oceans each year." According to Blumer, the immediate effects of oil spills--dead fish and birds--are followed by long-term damage to marine ecology. "Compared to the size of the accidents," he said grimly, "the present countermeasures against oil in the oceans are inadequate."

Global Watch. The scientists underlined Blumer's hard-hitting report, and scores of others, by recommending an immediate international survey to measure the extent and degree of marine pollution. They also urged establishment of a global monitoring system.

Such a system would involve a fleet of ships and a chain of automatic sensing buoys, plus aerial photography and satellite observation. The system would be used to spot the source of pollutants like oil, mercury and lead. It would also monitor oxygen levels in the seas and "red tides," the abnormal growth of phytoplankton that can choke out other forms of marine life. Obviously, such a system will need the political support of nations that now exploit and degrade the seas.

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