Clean-up association

Mermaids in Danger According to a report received by the World Wildlife Fund, the survival of Manatees (sea mammals which are believed to be the origin of the mermaid legends) is threatened by the increasing human population in Florida. Motor-boat propellers constitute the greatest threat to the Manatees, followed by vandalism, poaching, and the general destruction of their habitat. Manatees have been protected since 1907 by Florida state law and, more recently, by the Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which extended protection outside Florida's coastal waters and imposed severe penalties for attacking these animals. However, enforcement of the law is at present inadequate, and the federal law does not encompass protection from power boats. Dr Daniel S. Hartman of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has sighted nearly 1,000 Manatees during a one year study sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund; he coneluded that their status distribution had changed little in the past 30 years. Dr Hartman has estimated that there are between 800 and 1,300 in the United States, and that the populations on the east and west coasts of peninsular Florida, although isolated, are approximately equal in number. Also found in the Caribbean, South America and in West Africa, Manatees, like the Dugongs (their Old World cousins), graze on coastal water vegetation. Nursing mothers are sometimes seen on the surface, cradling their young to their breasts, a sight which is believed to have led to the stories about mermaids. The Dugongs are also under pressure from the human population along the coasts of Africa, Asia and Australia. The World Wildlife Fund, together with its scientific sister organization, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), are striving for the protection and conservation of both these species.

Resources of Antarctica Evgeny Tolstikov, deputy chief of the Soviet Hydrometeorological Service and himself a Polar explorer, has pointed out that international geological and geophysical research has revealed considerable mineral wealth in Antarctica. The time is not far off, he says, when Antarctica will play its part in contributing to world economy. The assessment of the continent's resources has previously been based on the similarity in geological structure of the Antarctic platform to that of other explored areas of the ancient Gondwana continent, and, in the case of Western Antarctica (particularly the Antarctic peninsula) to the folded structures of the South American Andes. These assumptions are now gaining support; it has been estimated that Antarctica has a coal-bearing area exceeding one million kin2, and that the coal reserves in the continent's interior constitute 11~o of the world's total. Oil resources may surpass those of Alaska. Attention has been drawn to two oil and gas basins showing particular promise: the eastern coast of the Antarctic peninsula, including the Filchner shelf (about 700,000 kin2); and the region of the Ross Shelf Sea and inter-

continental depressions in the central part of western Antarctica (about one million kin2). A third basin, the region of troughs along the transantarctic mountains' eastern seaboard has also aroused interest. Considerable mineral deposits have either been reported or estimated. Antarctic ice (up to 32 million kin3) holds as much as 95~o of earth's fresh water resources. About 1,000, or sometimes even 2,500 kin3 of fresh water are split off from the Antarctic coasts every year, compared with not more than 0.4 kin3 yielded annually by all the world's fresh water production sites. Tolstikov stresses, however, that any future utilization of resources must be carried out within the framework of the Antarctic agreement, and other measures for the protection of flora and fauna.

Clean-Up Association A new non-profit making trade association, the Oil Spill Control Association of~America, has been formed following recent charter meetings in Detroit and New York. The Association is intended to represent those corporations and individuals in industry and government in the United States and Canada who are primarily concerned with the control and clean-up of spills, both of oil and other hazardous substances. Membership of the Association is open to all interested parties and includes (so-called) third party contractors who are asked to carry out actual clean-up and containment work; manufacturers of equipment such as containment boom, oil skimmers, absorbents, marine clean-up craft and vacuum pumping units; individuals in private or governmental capacities who are actively involved with problems associated with control operations. Among the immediate objectives of the association will be the establishment and maintenance of liaison with appropriate local and federal government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Coast Guard and the Navy. In order to co-ordinate and make full use of the control industry's resources in any given situation, the Association hopes to develop equipment specifications and standards, and to maintain a centralized listing of equipment available for emergency use.

Call for Ocean Protection in Practice The Director of the Soviet Institute of Oceanography, Mr A. Yushchak, has called for the immediate organization of the international observation and investigation of marine pollution. In a recent article in Pravda on Soviet scientific expeditions, he points out that in considerable areas of the high seas in the north Atlantic, such harmful substances as oil, mercury and detergents have been detected in concentrations often substantially exceeding the permissible limits. 'The concentration of harmful substances is particularly high in coastal waters and in vast, comparatively still, regions of the (Atlantic) ocean, where they become caught up in the Gulf Stream a n d the north Atlantic 67