Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau: Oceanographer

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"I tell you very briefly what I believe will happen in year 2000 in the sea. I think that, before that, all the nations, reluctantly at the beginning and enthusiastically later, will contribute to the ocean science as much on an equal basis with space. That's the first point. 1 believe that very soon, within 15 or 20 years, the ocean in its integrity, except for a narrow hand along the shoreline, will belong to mankind, not to a nation, and will be administered by a group. I don't know if the United Nations will still be in existence in 2000. If not, there will be something else, but there will be an international organization. 1 believe that the main product o/' oceanography is weather-making, not forecasting. In year 2000, an international body will decide if there will be rain tomorrow morning in Idaho for the potato growers, or if there will be sunshine in Miami for the tourists. The mechanics for this are all ready to go. It's a matter of money.

"I believe that fishing will be entirely replaced by farming by the year 2000 and that, thanks to this, the productivity of the ocean will be increased greatly to an untold factor because farming includes increasing the basic fertility of the water as well as growing such-and-such species. I believe that the ocean will have a narrow escape. I think that the change in the public opinion and in international regulations will save some of it. There will be no national parks there because the destructions will be too great, but there will be acclimatation parks after the pollution is stopped. It means that man will create new environments, biological environments, new biological complexes. Some of the damage will be repaired. Some of it will not be repaired. I believe that man is going to invade the oceans in all the ways we've talked about – vehicles, saturation diving stations, mobile manned undersea stations, and so forth.

TRAINING VITAL

"I also believe that most of the scientific aspect of the marine sciences will be more and more [taken over] by huge outfits, international and national, and this will have the effect of increasing the possibilities, but of decreasing the individual initiative. But I also believe that . . . in the ocean, there will be a substantial area of activity for private initiative, individual concept, and small firms and small groups. I don't think that it is a good thing to monopolize all the small labs and the small initiative and creative minds into huge concerns; and I think that this will be recognized and taken care of in the future.

"Now, to finish, I urgently ask for a claim. I claim that more sailors invade the labs and the marine sciences because at the moment, too few people know what the sea is and too few people are capable of thinking in terms of marine craftsmanship. The knowledge of such a training as the Naval Academy does . . . is absolutely vital to the development of marine sciences. We have almost too many scientists in marine sciences that stay in their lab and go occasionally a few days a year at sea. We want them to participate and to be fully aware of the difficulties and of the problems of seamanship."

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