R.D. Gerard and J.L. Worzel of our laboratory have recently suggested pumping cold sea water from 1,000 meters depth through large diameter pipes into a condenser area located on shore to intercept the flow of moisture-saturated trade winds. This air, when cooled, condenses much of its moisture, which will be conducted to storage tanks for use as drinking water, avoiding brine pollution of the sea caused by conventional desalination systems. The deep cold water of the ocean is many times richer in inorganic nutrients necessary to initiate the photosynthetic process than the surface waters of the euphotic zone. The deep sea water, which has been utilized as a source of cold for moisture condensation, will flow into closed-off lagoons near shore, where it will act as a fertilizer to stimulate primary production. A pilot scheme is now under way on the north shore of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where deep water is less than one mile offshore and where we have conclusively established that the waters from the nutrient maximum (700 to 900 meters deep) will create a phytoplankton bloom. This, in turn, could sustain commercial yields of organisms such as shellfish, crustaceans, fish, etc. The cost of pumping could be offset by the production of energy by the Claude process and by other cooling applications, such as air-conditioning, ice-making, cooling of conventional desalination systems, nuclear reactors, etc.
As population growth increases the pressure on our resources, we should more and more look towards the oceans for many of our needs and attempt to use their enormous potential in a rational way. A thorough understanding of the meteorological, oceanographic, geological and biological factors in the natural environment can help us in utilizing the sea to advantage rather than struggling to overcome the natural conditions and further pollute the oceans and adjacent shores.
Just as mankind in its history on land has gone through a hunting stage and has then slowly turned to agriculture for its food production by domestication of animals instead of hunting wild ones, and by cultivating crops rather than picking roots and berries growing wild in the forests, the day is here when we have started to plan marine harvests in a rational way.
The culture of mussels is now a large industry in Spain. Oyster culture has been introduced with varying degrees of success in different parts of the world. Shrimp farming is here, and fish are raised in many places now. The selection of breeding stock is a well-established science. However, to grow mussels, shrimp or fish, these animals must be provided with adequate food, usually algae. An early attempt to grow phytoplankton was made by the Pfizer Company in the New York area: Thacker and Babcock (1)* built a pilot plant for the mass culture of algae, which gave trouble-free operation over a period of almost a year (Fig. 1).
