European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 14, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse                                J Knap is photo by Gus Schuettler Ocean farming is in infancy confined shrimp like Krill is a resource of huge mostly to raising fancy foods like oysters. Potential although tapping it is difficult. V it Sas maa Asam a Sam be Sasia Sisask  am map the concept of permanent underwater laboratories has largely been abandoned. It the 1970s, u h cd history May Mark As fhe decade of i in deep could open a new age of scientific discovery and economic Benefit surpassing the returns from the just ended decade of space  William a. Nierenberg head of the Scripps institution of oceanography september 1970. By Robert Locke associated press t was to have been the decade when Man would become master of the Ocean Depths and the seas would surrender their treasures. But economics chipped away at the vision. Poli tics created further obstacles. The limitations of Man and machine diluted much that survived. As the 1960s ended americans saw Neil Armstrong s footprints on the Moon and Many searched for new fron tiers. Some scientists and politicians looked to the Ocean. They called it inner space and talked of a wet Nasa a National commitment to open the resources of the  were visions of Man made islands and Ocean floor colonies of Mineral Rich nuggets that could be gathered from the Bottom of the seas of fish ranches and seaweed farms to feed a hungry world. Now another decade is ending and the treasures still studied and coveted remain largely untouched. The optimism of the 60s did t really pan out said oceanographer Wheeler North of the Cali fornia Institute of technology. But that s no reason to Stop  he said. What looks very unfavourable now might look very Good indeed years from now when we be used up a lot of our re  did we have a decade of the deep0 Well yes and no says Scripps Nierenberg one of the world s top oceanographers. Certainly we did in a scientific sense he says. The difficulty has been that the political Side is going badly. It s become a hopeless  for several years Many nations have been meeting to develop a Law of the sea to govern that no Man s land. Nierenberg is an adviser to the . Delegation at the United nations sponsored conference. Beset by constant haggling Over How to Divide the Ocean s riches this whole Law of the sea thing has been nothing Short of a disaster Nierenberg says. Tie whole Drift of the conference has been kind of anti Sci ence. They re restricting the ability of scientists to do re search on the  Nierenberg says the last decade saw the first really scientific exploration of the deep Ocean floor performed by Scripps sophisticated deep sea drilling ship the Slomar challenger. We have some clue now of the very Large Mineral re sources in the oceans that Are going to be available some  he says. But getting at them is another matter. A big stumbling Block of the Law of the sea conference has been one of the Ocean s most enticing Mineral resources Metal Laden manganese nodules scattered Over much of the Ocean floor. Nierenberg says the conference saw this wealth. As the heritage of Mankind whatever that Means. The whole thing seems to founder on an inability to agree on How to set up an International organization to do the  a typical nodule might contain nearly 30 percent Man Ganese Iva percent Nickel 1 percent Copper Cobalt and traces of Lead Zinc molybdenum Vanadium Silver and other metals. Nierenberg doubts the nodules will be significantly exploited in the next decade or two. He sees even less likelihood for undersea mining soon of the thick layers of Copper Iron and other metals buried in 1, 000 feet of sediment 15,000 feet beneath the Ocean surface. There Are huge deposits he says. It s Nice to know. They Are there but they la be much longer in coming  Nierenberg notes that Scripps designed islands that could carry smelters and factories for mining operations but they never got beyond the drawing Board. They would be very expensive he concedes. But they would also make the United states Independent of other nations in a number of crucial metals. Just As there Are no floating islands on top of the sea neither Are there permanent laboratories nor colonies anchored within it a vision the . Navy once proposed for the mid-1970s. The Navy appeared to be moving toward that goal with sea lab a series of widely publicized experiments in which aquanauts lived for several weeks on the Bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But the third of the sea lab experiments was aborted in 1969 because of equipment problems the death of a diver involved in the program and because the Navy found out that we did t really need people living on the sea floor says Howard r. Talkington head of Ocean tech i ology at the naval Ocean systems Center in san Diego. Talkington explains sea lab just became too expensive As you tried to support people deeper and deeper. It just was t economically  he says Money had much the same effect on undersea vehicles the Navy shifted its emphasis to putting machines rather than men in the sea. L tiny Marine plants magnified 200 times represent Only part of the riches of the Ocean. Machines with television eyes and mechanical arms can do 80 to 90 percent of the jobs that need doing deep in the Ocean he contends and they re less expensive. He Points to the Rich Oil Fields of the North sea where three years ago there were no unmanned vehicles. This year there Are about 18 working and 30 More under con  most scientists agree that the wealth of Oil and Gas being coaxed from beneath the seas is a Mere hint of the riches in Waters covering 70 percent of the Earth. But controversy begins with questions of when and How or if this potential can be transformed into practical Power. Nierenberg says the most attractive store of Energy is in the Waves that Ripple the surface. Waves Are caused by the wind so you be got a Natu ral Windmill out there he says. And when the wind Dies Down the Ocean swell keeps going. That s natural Energy  he figures it s simple to make a wave device that will go up and Down and generate  As with most new technologies however doing that economically and reliably against the corrosive Power of Salt water is a continuing problem. Wave Energy devices Are being designed however and a few have reached the testing stage. Another entry in the Energy sweepstakes is Ocean Thermal Energy conversion. Otec uses the tempera Ture difference at the then Nowline the sharply defined Point where the layer of water warmed by the Sun meets the deeper and colder water below the surface. Most Otec designs would circulate a fluid such As am Monia through a closed Loop. Cold deep water condenses the ammonia to a liquid which is pumped upward and heated to a vapor by warmer water near the surface. The vapor turns a Turbine to produce electricity then repeat the Cycle. Try inc., of Redondo Beach calif., has a . Energy department contract to provide experimental Otec components in the Early 1980s. And Robert h. Douglass try s director of Ocean and Energy systems projects says we believe we could probably build an Ocean Thermal system now that would be competitive with a conventional Energy  but a Federal study released in june cited technical and economic shortcomings and predicted Otec will probably not become a viable part of the . Energy Supply system in this  and in any event Douglass says government funding and encouragement for Ocean Energy systems does not signal a revival of the decade of the deep. Notlno�a7 in spy ship Slomar explorer now is the most advanced vessel for deep sea mining afloat. Up it gets Energy from the Moon. All it wants is the  but besides producing Energy a system such As Otec could help realize another Long discussed and largely unrealized Way of exploiting the sea through mariculture or Large scale Ocean farming. That would entail lifting microscopic nutrients from sea Depths to nearer the sunlit surface. By duplicating natural up swellings Otec might greatly enlarge the food Supply for fish and the Supply of fish for people. Cal tech s Wheeler North is working on an artificial up swelling in an Experiment in raising kelp seaweed used in products from Beer to textiles. He Hopes to float a Quarter acre kelp farm off Southern California and fertilize it by pumping water from the Bottom. Well use three diesel pumps but this is just a test North says. In an actual farm you d use some kind of wave Energy  Small scale mariculture has been under Way for years but it s mostly to produce High priced fancy food clams oysters and lobsters for example. That Nierenberg notes does t help in feeding Large populations. There s another Marine resource of huge potential Krill though like so much in the quest for Ocean treasures tapping it abounds in difficulties. Krill Are shrimp like animals that live in enormous schools in the Antarctic Ocean. There s an outside Chance that Well be Able to fish the Krill and that s a huge resource if we can learn How to use it says Nierenberg. Conflicting National claims May present obstacles and so says Scripps Walter r. Schmitt May the psychology of  Japan Russia and West Germany arc experimenting with Krill sometimes using it in the form of a protein Rich paste or As animal feed an important Fate shared by much of the Ocean Harvest. Dan Brown an Ocean going Engineer at Scripps notes that whales feed on Krill and it used to be that you could just Harvest a whale and get All those tons of product in a Nice concentrated package. But we have just about used up that cheap resource. Now we have to spend All that time and Energy running around concentrating these things ourselves. And the Cost is just too  the problem As Brown and others see it is that the Ocean s resources food minerals Energy and almost everything else Are spread out so thinly within that immensity. The resources Are All there Brown says. But everything is so dilute. And a lot of these things Don t look so attractive now As they did at first glance. Reality has finally caught up with the  Page 14 the stars and stripes thursday 14, 197& the stars and stripes Page 15