OCEANOGRAPHY

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27664, 21 May 1955, Page 3

OCEANOGRAPHY

The J5 e ? h , aust l W «S“- By Hawthorne Daniel and Francis Minot. Macdonald. 239 pp. of “Tbe Inexhaustible bea start from the same point as many recent books on food problems—the possibility that the world’s food suPP I ?. niay not be able to keep pace with its population. Their contention is that any difference between supply and demand can be made good if the resources of the sea are exploited to ® f uH. Both speak with some authority. Francis Minot is director of the Marine and Fisheries Engineering Research Institute of Woods Hole in America, and Hawthorne Daniel is a curator of the American Museum of Natural History. To give strength to their theses the authors discuss in some detail j all the factors that bear upon the productivity of the sea ocean currents, the sea bed, the vital microscopic life of the ocean, methods of studying the sea and the design of fishing ships. The result is a popular work on 'oceanography that simplifies its subject without underestimating it. This is emphatically a book for the general reader and will provide him with an interesting and thought provoking approach to the subject wnether or not the authors’ suggestions for increasing the productivity of the sea are practical or not is out of the competence of the average reader of this book to decide. But their claim that the sea, that covers three-quarters of the earth’s surface, should be used to the full must obviously claim attention. By its very clear and able exposition of some of the problems involved, this book should help intelligent consideration. Quite* apart from toe authors’ contentions, the chapters on the history of oceanography are so interesting that they are worth reading for their own sake.