OCR Text |
Show given sea area. Ocean crops fish, mammals and plants migrate or are moved by ocean currents, complicating com-plicating the harvesting. A 10,000-generation crop develops one generation every 49 minutes. Life-Promoting Power. Such productivity, says Dr. Claude E. ZoBell, Scripps micro-biologist, is due to the matchless life-promoting power of the oceans and because be-cause sea water and even the ooze at the bottom have been teeming with bacteria since the beginning of life. The seas, says Dr. ZoBell, produce pro-duce five times as many animal species, spe-cies, exclusive of insects, as live on land, and several thousand plant species. Ocean temperature is more even than continental, which means sea plants and animals never suffer from extremes of heat or cold. Drouth is unknown. And the water is heavily "spiked" with minerals and other food materials. "Moreover," Dr. ZoBell adds, "only the top few feet of soil produce pro-duce plant and animal life, but the sea produces down to the limit of sunlight penetration, 200 to 600 feet "Finally, while the land might yield five to ten useful crops, the sea could produce possibly 10,000 generations of life-promoting bacteria, bacte-ria, maybe 100 generations among various classes of slightly larger organisms, or-ganisms, and still other things at undetermined speed. "Crops on land, at any one time, are on the average larger than crops in the same area of ocean, but we do not know how many crops of all kinds the ocean produces in a year." Microscopic miners they work while they eat. Big Storehouse Found in Ocean Essential Materials Needed By Man Are Produced In Abundance. LA JOLLA, CALIF. A storehouse of natural riches, probably great enough to supply all mankind with a perpetual abundance of most of the essential raw materials, has been found by scientists. It occupies a large part more than 330,000,000 cubic miles of the earth's outer layer. Despite its size, its many riches were discovered one by one. The reports of many scientists, when put together, are just now beginning to disclose its almost fantastic potentialities. poten-tialities. It is such a prolific producer, the scientists say, that it could replenish replen-ish most of its resources faster than humanity could possibly use them, provided the consumers avoided waste and practiced intelligent conservation. con-servation. It is the world's greatest reservoir of life, and at the same time the largest graveyard on earth. It can foster some living things, 'lie experts state, at the rate of perhaps per-haps 10,000 generations a year. It is the sea. Stocked With Food. Reports of numerous oceanogra-phers oceanogra-phers are beginning to show that the seas are heavily stocked with food, medicine, the makings of petroleum, with iron and an array of other minerals, min-erals, and even the things needed to produce dynamite, anti-knock gasoline gaso-line and garden vegetables. Most of this wealth is due to the activities of countless billions of tiny plants and animals, working throughout the ages with the help of sun, tide, current and other natural nat-ural forces. The story of these findings lies in the records of the University of California's Cal-ifornia's Scripps institution of oceanography, ocean-ography, through which much of the work was done. The discoveries have led some experts ex-perts to conclude that the sea is more productive per unit of surface area than the land. And there is nearly three times as much of ocean surface as there is of terra firma. But no way has been found to harvest har-vest the total annual crop from any |