T he research ship Kosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. By Tom Foley ict : a teberg Cuts its facets from within. pactely from a grave only Me itself Perpetually and adorns Which a Perhaps the snows Good kplan us lying on the sea. 1 We say, goodbye, i Re y, goodbye, the ship te Waves give in to one another's Waves Clouds run in a warmer sky. — Elizabeth Bishop, “The Iceberg.” Whe: And Tie cot war” at sea was like an 2nd prog Tg, endangering everything lOW the «v8 nothing, the bulk of it be- Soviet yp onc out of humaan vision. The Studies = agreement on cooperation in ington es world ocean, signed in Wash- ‘cold ane 19, does not mean the Ne icebe at sea is over, but does mean Mosphere © has come into a warmer at- Public orcinary person in the U.S., all Us. aa Polls show, favors Soviet- {eg ogr Peration. But cooperation in "levant aphy may not seem especially fact, ie a him and his daily concerns. In lathom May think of it as one of those un- “ pen intended — fields of ; nave onl - mis daily life. y a remote bear ean i 4 mistaken view, however. The “| hae important single factor 0% of S weather, since it takes up " e heat fr arth’s surface, absorbs most nk Of the Tom the sun, and gives off the ain 9 Moisture which later falls a8 n nt 3 eat Weather, good or bad, has Ore g Sah blag and there- e Ss supply. . ie U says meat and food crises in teq lit elsewhere are directly re- ; ie tle-understood changes in a hnea} See In ‘April, 1972, Peru’s Warm oge ustry was devastated when Usual an current, E] Nino, replaced ate wie. The Humboldt current in the me ade Pek of anchovetas, which agnt to ne poe meal, declined to al- ed f°). Meal is widely ysed mete, ie livestock and ae in its | Cont: feeds zveans, corn, wheat, and in tibutin f d to be used. This was a bea Cost or gong” it the worldwide rise re and wheat” Particularly beef, soy- 01 . s which . factor was the unusual weath- many ped most of the U.S. it- St few years — dry, warm a Novosti winters, and springs marked by torren- tial rains. This has caused enormous .damage to crops. Jerome Namias, for- mer chief long-range forecater for the U.S. Weather Service, now with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at La Jolla, California, .says this peculiar weather is due to changing ocean tem- peratures: in the last two years, the cen- tral Pacific has got warmer and the eastern Pacific’.colder, thus changing the usual wind patterns, so that the eastern U.S. is getting the warmer air that used to flow over the west. Nobody can explain why these things are happening. It isn’t possible to say why an ocean current changes direction or whether this will be a temporary or a per- manent phenomenon. The reason is that understanding such changes requires the very latest and most expensive scientific equipment, used ona very large scale — covering the whole ocean, as a matter of fact — and no single country in the world is in the position to mount such an effort. Perhaps it’s clearer now why Soviet- U.S. cooperation is absolutely essential in studies of the ocean, and why such studies are of direct relevance to people whose main interest in life right now is the price of hamburger. The June 19 Soviet-U.S. agreement provides that “‘in their studies of the World Ocean the Parties (the U.S. and USSR) will direct cooperative efforts to the investigation and solution of impor- tant basic and applied research problems. Initially, cooperation will be implemen- ted in the following areas: ee “‘a) large-scale océan-atmosphere in- teraction, including laboratory studies, oceanic experiments and mathematical modeling of the ocean-atmosphere sys- tem; and other questions of ocean dynamics; ““e) geochemistry and marine chem- istry o the World Ocean, se “d) geological and geophysical in- vestigations of the World Ocean, includ- ing deep-sea drilling for scientific pur- Besse re ree e “e) biological productivity of the World Ocean and the biochemistry of the functioning of individual organisms and whole biological communities in the World Ocean; “f) intercalibration and standardiza- tion of oceanographic instrumentation and methods.” The agreement also provides for a “b) ocean currents of planetary scale ~ We agree under the sea . joint Soviet-U.S. committee on oceanog- raphy to meet at least once a year, alter- nately in the Soviet Union and the USS., and for extensive joint planning and re- search work, exchange of scientists and information, etc. Joint Soviet-U.S. ocean studies are: going on right now. On July 2, the Soviet oceanographic research vessel, ‘‘Aka- demik Kurchatov,’’ sailed into New York harbor to pick up U.S. oceanographers for joint studies of the ocean floor around Iceland. The ‘‘Akademik Kurchatov,”’ one of more than 100 Soviet oceanographic research vessels, is bigger than any U.S. research ship. It is one of seven oceano- graphic ships built in the Wismar ship- yards of the German Democratic Repub- lic for the USSR, weighs 6,800 tons, is 405 feet long and draws 21 feet. of water. It has a crew of 137, of which 62 are scien- tists (including 20 women scientists). One of the most interesting develop- ments in joint ocean studies took place this March 22, when the Soviet Union agreed to help finance and participate in the U.S. Deep Sea Drilling Project, cen- tered on the ‘‘Glomar Challenger’’ drill- ing ship of the Scripps Institute at La Jol- la. The USSR will contribute $1,000,000 annually, or about 10% of project costs. The Institute of Oceanography of the So- _ viet Academy of Sciences thus has be- come one of the six scientific institutes sponsoring the ‘“‘Glomar Challenger” and its work. U.S. scientists and officials have had nothing but praise for the Soviet Union’s vast program of ocean studies. Last Oc- tober 30, Dr. Robert A. Frosch, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research and Development, told a Washington news conference of the results of his three- week tour of the USSR’s oceanographic installations. Dr. Frosch said, “The So- viet ocean research effort is clearly very large. Large pieces of it are as sophisti- cated as ours, and in some cases more sophisticated. My impression is that they have more research ships than we do, certainly more large research ships ‘that we have.”’ He related that he and the seven other U.S. ocean specialists who accompanied him were “particularly impressed’’ by the USSR’s Gelendzhik oceanographic institute in the Crimea, with its staff of more than 1,000 ocean research scien- tists, its underwater laboratory called Chernomor (‘Black Sea”’) in which four Soviet aquanauts were living, and its development of remote control devices F. Grinder; Soviet hydrophysicists set up a buoy : which will transmit radio signals. for exploring the ocean floor at great depths. Dr. Frosch said the whole Soviet effort is being guided by ‘‘first-class. ideas’ on ocean research. Dr. Andrei S. Monin, Director of the Institute of Oceanography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, in. an interview ’ with the Soviet newspaper Izvestia on the Soviet-U.S. agreement, pointed out, how- ever, that ‘‘the world ocean is great and it is beyond the capacity of any one coun- try, even such industrial giants as the So- viet Union and the U-S., to study and make use of the ‘Blue Continent’ by its own forces alone. This can only be done by the efforts o many countries. Close cooperation of the two great ‘oceano- graphic’ powers will certainly help all of mankind to make early and effective use of the world ocean and its wealth.” @ __ Dr. Leonid Brekhovskikh, Secretary of the Soviet Oceanographic Institute, has noted in several interviews to the Soviet press, that the USSR is now involved in large-scale ocean research jointly with the U.S., Canada, France, Sweden, West Germany, India and other countries, par- ticularly in the study of ocean currents and weather phenomena. Ten Soviet ocean research vessels are to take part in 1974 studies of the entire tropical At- - lantic region and have already synchro- nized instruments with U.S. oceanograph- in ships. ~ : One reason for this vast 1974 study is that Soviet oceanographers discovered that there are ‘‘underwater storms’’ in the ocean like cyclones in the atmos- phere — something never suspected be- fore — and these storms may affect ocean currents and temperatures. The ocean, it - seems, is not at all the ‘‘silent,’’ dead, un- moving world it was once pictured as being. It is entirely possible, in the opin- -ion of some scientists, that cyclones in the atmosphere may be directly related _to the “whirlwinds” of currents under the ocean’s surface, discovered by Soviet research. These peaceful cooperative studies promise great benefits for mankind as a whole, in sharp contrast to. the billions the Pentagon has spent and intends to spend in maintaining an utterly useless, unproductive fleet of nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. You can’t even fish from a Polaris submarine. It is like the iceberg in the poem, like “jewelry from a grave.” It’s about time the money of U.S. et i began to be spent on something useful. ‘WORLD MAGAZING ~~“ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7,'1973—PAGE 3