Evening star., 1933-11-12

cupboard gradually accumu-
lating pile of potential meat
and bread, so fixed that neither man nor beast
nor fish nor plant can ever make use of it?
Will the sea, which many believe to be the
original cradle of life, eventually become the
grave of all life?
Questions pointing in this direction were re-
Gently asked before an international meeting
of scientists in Chicago by Dr. August Krogn
of Copenhagen, noted physologist
How much energy that can be used for the
purpose of life, Dr. Krogh inquired is to he
found in the ocean, and how large a fraction
of that total is unavailable''-locked up in
such forms that living things cannot get hold
of it?
The figures for the "lost" food in the ocean
which DR.. Krogh has reached through ex-
pertinent and calculation astonishing, and
may well be alarming. The Atlantic Ocean
alone, he estimates has the equivalent of
10000 times the whole worlds annual wheat
crop locked up in dissolved foods which 10
known plant or animal life in the sea can
make use of.
The method by which this astonishing total
was reached shows an interesting combination
of experimental ingenuity and sweeping lnl-
agination in the mind of the Danish scientis..
ERST, he analyzed samples of water
from the Atlantic, until he found that their
chemical makeup was very nearly uniform, no
matter at what depth they were taken. That
simplifed matters considerably; he did not
have to allow for depth changes in his later
calculations
Then determined by quite difficult chem
ical processes, how much combined nitrogen
or protein material there in cubic meter
Of it. "a cubic meter is little more than
cubic yard)
The total protein-stuff in a cubic meter fig
ured out, DR.. Krogh next subtracted all of it
that was represented by animals and plants
that could be strained out, ranging in size
from microscopic one-celled creatures to good
sized fishes He allowed also for such mon
sters as whales and sharks. that not found
in any given average cubic meter of sea water.
The difference between the total protein ma
terial and the organized" protein in the Or
ganisms represented the 1ife-stuff actually
dissolved in the water, and. for the time being
at least, not in by anything anybody.
This figured out as is grams (about 1-20 Of
an ounce) to cubic meter-not so very con-
centrated.
BY a similar process, DR.. Krogh determined
that the average amount of carbohydrate in
ocean water is SO grams (about 2-15 of an
ounce) to cubic meter. If we figure portein
as meat and carbohydrate as potato-really a
pretty close representation of their chemical
nature, at that-it becomes pretty obvious why
the dissolved foods in the sea water are rot
being used. One-twentieth of an ounce of meat
and two-ffteenths of of potato in
over cubic yard Of water make mighty thin
soup Not much nourishment in it for any
body, even tiny germ.
But there is a most appalling quantity Of
that thin soup. The Atlantic Ocean alone has
an area of about 10000. 600 square kilometers,
or $4,000, 900 square miles Its mean depth is
1000 meters, or roughly $4,000 feet
Put that through your calculating machine.
and you come out with something like a
quadrilion "a million times milhon) cubic
meters. All that cold salt water holding dis
solved, in each cubic meter, nibble of meat
a small bite of potato!
h lot remarkable, then, that the old Atlantic
has locked up in its meager cupboard the
food-equivalent of 10000 world wheat harvests
If you like to juggle with endless strings of
ciphers, you might try adding in the much
bigger Pacific and the rest of the oceans.
Is all this dissolved food actually useless?
Isn't there anything, any class of animals in
the whole vast ocean that can get some good
out Of it? The very notion of 10000 wasted
wheat harvests runs against the streak CT
Scotch that is in even the least thrifty of us.
1t doesn't look as though there were. Other
scientists besides DR.. Krogh have puzzled their
heads over that problem of the apparent awful
waste of the ocean, and some of them have
suggested various types of animal life
protozoa, sponges, even fshes-as able to soak
up their nourishment directly out of the dis
solved foodstuffs in the water.
DR.. Krogh will not commit himself to a
declaration that they can't. But he remains
skeptical. Some experiments of his own have
indicated that certain forms of water life can
take up dissolved foods directly from the
water but they also threw in a joker: The
same animals lost food materials to the water
faster than they took food out.
What is the source of this vast store of
"lost" food? Where does it come from-how
is is made?
For the most part it is made in the ocean
itself and by inhabitants of the ocean IT Is