Environment: Squeezing More Out of the Seas

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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 Niño, 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:

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