Washington Academy of Sciences

Founded in 1898

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CONTENTS

HB Ly SENG Ts lero ch at a elle erg iitagch oe ae eee buds). lie hs da a a ee il

PenamceNote: Dr: Richard .D-GilsOm 5.0.64 [eS ce ia Geass oske so oe soe ey Vv

Background: The Charles A. Lindbergh Fund: Hon. Elmer L. Andersen..... 1X

A Lindbergh Family Remembrance: Reeve Lindbergh Brown............... xl

‘““Upstairs/Downstairs” Dinner Speech: Surgeon Vice-Admiral Sir John

RRP RRIS MURR tM Usage Ud wath sal Siy) 9 dedia ea Pel aierk MRS A witake ele RN oanae Gare Ss xill

“Freedom To Move” IMAX Film Presentation: Paul B. MacCready, Jr. ..... XX1

Presentations

WALTER J. BOYNE: The Active Museum: Stimulating Public Involvement in

AEE CTD alg es tates ae een ae Co Re Er eRe ee i

DR. PAUL B. MacCREADY: Biological Flight, Mechanical Flight, and Ef-

ee MMR TALIS POHEARIOM A 4 roll essai aelaysiete ee nem Bistcie ys .u eIavace ance Auaiteye e's 6 ws WZ

DR. ORAN W. NICKS: Aviation Transportation—A Possible Future ....... 15

DR. RICHARD C. FORTUNA: The Emergence of Treatment Technology in

Eeewlanacement Of FlazardOus WaSte). 2.6.6 2.0 bk ee ee eee eet eee ee ee da 21

DR. KENNETH S. KAMLET: The Hazardous Waste Superfund Program:

SEIS WSSU IGRI CS een eae ge ene Ren ae Reema rs pee MS

DR. DAVID MORELL: Responsible Toxics Management: The Silicon Valley

EPUSHIEIGS sical rate ORME O a Hee fap MCR es eect eaten ta Bel RUE SUG" RE one Oe il

DR. GLENN PAULSON and CYNTHIA HERLEIKSON: From Conflict to

Miesanp-wiie. Clean: Sites: Approach accu. 22 es os aie estee cee be be eee se Des 36

J. HOWARD TODD: Waste Reduction: Industry’s Challenge .............. 44

MICHAEL J. BEAN, ESQ.: Biological Diversity and Development: A Legal

UI oy 8 he orcs a3 iat A eats SIV es eae ap susyeate.d wile wd dheon vbatersts wel Slow 48

LANNY H. CORNELL, D.V.M.: Zoological Parks and Aquariums—Bridges

aI ea TMM ETT OU Try oO che sea teata cts RSet US Seva chdvcit said oneal te yahinsne bre ea tall Mad ie Sl

DR. CURTIS H. FREESE: The Role of Sustainable Wildlife Use in Conser-

ane ine Development im the Tropics... ..0. 2.226... e tek eae oa ee ees 55

DR. THOMAS E. LOVEJOY: The Grand Array of Life on Earth.......... 60

DR. PAMELA J. PARKER: Impact of Development on Arid Rangelands... 63

DR. SYLVIA A. EARLE: Sea and Space: Frontiers for Exploration—

Peg AMie BEE CUBUNEC BUCWEL Pm Re peg eB Ss av iac sags ete sea chon seg sy > aya Hip Sven Wis a hrs 68

WALTER CUNNINGHAM: Research and Development of Resources in

SAC CU eer rnc Senctc's s cydilhs x SOc and ler le Gio S! ebaunana ela wrayer ee e'4 ads q2

DR. PAUL M. FYE and DR. KENNETH PAUL FYE: Policies for Exploration

and Use of the Oceans—The Discovery of R.M.S. Titanic.................. fii

GRAHAM S. HAWKES: Technology for Ocean Exploration............... 82

KYM MURPHY 2 The ‘Uiving Seas... - cena ee ee oe ae oe ee 87

DR. DON WALSH: Research and Development of Ocean Resources ....... 89

SIR JOHN RAWLINS: A Synthesis of Presentations): :.......).......- eee 94

Dedication

What kind of man would live where there is no daring? I don’t believe in taking foolish

chances, but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all.

—Charles Augustus Lindbergh

This volume is respectfully dedicated to the crew of the Space Shuttle, Challenger,

men and women who accepted the risks of exploration on behalf of all mankind.

IN MEMORIAM

Crew of Shuttle Mission 51-L, Challenger, January 28, 1986

Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, spacecraft commander. Born May 19, 1939, Cle Elum, Washington. He became

a NASA astronaut in 1978.

Michael J. Smith, pilot. Born April 30, 1945, Beaufort, North Carolina. He became a NASA astronaut in

1980.

Judith A. Resnik, mission specialist. Born April 15, 1949, Akron, Ohio. She became a NASA astronaut in

1978.

Ronald E. McNair, mission specialist. Born October 21, 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina. He became a

NASA astronaut in 1978.

Ellison S. Onizuka, mission specialist. Born June 24, 1946, Kealakekua, Kona, Hawaii. He became a NASA

astronaut in 1978.

Gregory B. Jarvis, payload specialist. Born August 24, 1944, Detroit. He was selected as a payload specialist

from Hughes Aircraft Corp. in 1984.

S. Christa Corrigan McAuliffe, teacher. Born September 2, 1948, Boston, Massachusetts. She was selected

as the primary candidate for the Shuttle Teacher in Space project in July 1985.

The crew of mission 51-L was lost shortly after launch aboard the Shuttle Challenger from NASA’s Kennedy

Space Center as a result of an in-flight explosion.

Editor’s Note

Dr. Richard D. Gilson*

Guest Editor

This volume of the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences is devoted to

a series of invited presentations given at The Charles A. Lindbergh Symposium, held

at the Walt Disney World Conference Center, Lake Buena Vista, Florida, February

2—4, 1986. The Symposium was sponsored by The Charles A. Lindbergh Fund, Inc.,

whose purpose and activities are described by the Chairman of the Board, the Hon.

Elmer L. Anderson, Chairman of the H. B. Fuller Company. A special message from

the Lindbergh family is given by Reeve Lindbergh Brown, Vice President of the Charles

A. Lindbergh Fund.

The Symposium Proceedings represent the Fund’s first endeavor to publish the views

and current research in what the Fund members simply refers to as the “balance” —

between technological growth and preservation of our human and natural environment.

Four points of “balance” were addressed in the following sessions:

AEROSPACE/ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

Dr. Paul B. MacCready, Session Chairperson

(Chairman of Board, AeroVironment, Inc.)

THE TOXIC WASTE DILEMMA: CURRENT STRATEGIES,

FUTURE ISSUES

William K. Reilly, Session Chairperson

(President, The Conservation Foundation)

BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND DEVELOPMENT

Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy, Session Chairperson

(Vice President-Science, World Wildlife Fund)

SEA AND SPACE: FRONTIERS FOR EXPLORATION

Dr. Sylvia A. Earle, Session Chairperson

(Vice President, Deep Ocean Technology Inc.)

In the Fund’s nine year history, it has seeded new research and has highlighted lifelong

efforts for grant recipients and honorary award winners, respectively, but it has yet to

provide a publication vehicle for that work. These papers represent two new endeavors

by the Fund. First, to create a scientific symposium “mid-year” to the traditional grants

and awards dinner held in May to commemorate the anniversary of Lindbergh’s May

20-21, 1927 solo trans-Atlantic flight; and second, to publish the views of interna-

tionally recognized scientific experts at mid-career in their respective fields. The intent

*Visiting Professor, University of Central Florida.

of the latter is to present current exemplary research, pose questions to be addressed

in future global efforts, and to create a positive, non-confrontational format for influ-

encing public policy.

The Washington Academy of Sciences has kindly agreed to create a special edition

of their Journal at the suggestion of Proceedings Associate Editor, Dr. Robert Sweezy,

and with the support of Dr. Robert Evans, also an Associate Editor of the Proceedings.

The timing of this volume is intended to coincide with the May, 1986 Lindbergh Awards

Presentation Ceremonies to be held in Washington, D.C.

The Fund’s Board of Directors extends its gratitude to Gloria S. Perkins, Grae

and Awards Administrator and Symposium Coordinator, for solicitation of papers

from the twenty Symposium Presenters, and to Lisa Gray, Managing Editor of the

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, for her marathon efforts shaping this

collection of work into the Academy’s official format.

The Charles A. Lindbergh Fund also wishes to express great appreciation to the

Lindbergh Symposium Central Florida Host Committee, whose efforts contributed so

much to state-wide participation in the three days of events. Co-Chairmen of the

Committee are:

Major General W. E. “‘Joe’’. Potter,

U.S. Army (Ret.)

Member

Orlando Aviation Authority

Raymer F. Maguire, Jr.

Senior Partner

Maguire, Voorhis & Wells, P.A.

Attorneys-at-Law

Hope Strong, Jr.

Mayor

City of Winter Park

Dr. Charles N. Millican

President Emeritus

University of Central Florida

Tom Heyward, Jr.

President

Greater Orlando Chamber of Commerce

The Lindbergh Fund extends its thanks to the following for their generous assistance

and contributions to the Symposium:

British Airways ee

Central Repro, Inc.

Circus World

Dr. Lewis S. Earle

The Explorers Club

The Florida Academy of Sciences

Florida Audubon Society

Flowerama, Inc.

Greater Orlando Chamber of Commerce

The Human Factors Society

IBM

IMAX Film Co.

William H. Lindahl

Maguire, Voorhis & Wells, P.A.

Mercury Seven Foundation

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Naval Training Systems Center

Orange County Public Schools

Rollins College

University of Central Florida

Valencia Community College

Walt Disney World/Epcot Center

Vii

Background: The Charles A. Lindbergh

Fund

Elmer L. Andersen

Chairman of the Board

The Charles A. Lindbergh Fund was established in 1977 by friends of Charles

Lindbergh who were members of the Explorers Club, New York City, to honor the

legacy of the late, famed aviator and advance his philosophy that true progress for

mankind requires a balance between technological advancement and preservation of

the environment and the quality of life. Each year since 1978, the Fund has made

grants to researchers whose proposed projects offer excellent potential to contribute

to such a balance. The honorary Lindbergh Award has also been presented by the

Fund each year to one individual whose lifetime’s work has made an extraordinary

contribution in this critical area.

The Lindbergh Fund is proud to have sponsored the Lindbergh Symposium, which

we feel made a significant contribution to “the search for balance.”’ And we are further

pleased that, through this publication, the proceedings of the symposium are being

made available to an even wider audience.

Headquarters Office Grants and Awards Office

2100 Pillsbury Avenue South Drawer 0

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404 Summit, New Jersey 07901

(612) 871-3452 (201) 522-1392

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A Lindbergh Family Remembrance

Reeve Lindbergh Brown

Vice President, Charles A. Lindbergh Fund

As a director of the Charles A. Lindbergh Fund and a member of the Lindbergh

family, I felt doubly privileged to participate in the Lindbergh Symposium this Feb-

ruary. I was gratified, as a director of the Fund, to hear our organization’s guiding

philosophy so eloquently expressed by our keynote speaker, David McCullough,* and

to witness the enthusiasm and expertise with which our second speaker, aerospace and

underwater expert Sir John Rawlins, addressed the symposium’s theme: “‘Environment

and Technology: A Search for Balance.”’ I was deeply appreciative of the contributions

of our four panel leaders and the distinguished authorities who presented papers in

each area of concern. It was very clear to me that the Lindbergh Fund had succeeded

in bringing together an extraordinary group of people, each committed to the concept

of balance as envisioned by Charles Lindbergh.

As a member of the Lindbergh family, it was tremendously satisfying to realize on

February 4, 1986, the 84th anniversary of my father’s birth, just what a gift to his

memory the Lindbergh Symposium represented. In the years since his death, my father

has received innumerable tributes, of many kinds, for the work he accomplished during

his lifetime. I can think of no tribute, however, that would please him more than the

knowledge that work is being carried out in his name right now, by those who wish

to carry his vision of balance into the future.

*Presentation not available for publication at this time.

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‘*Upstairs/Downstairs’’*

Surgeon Vice-Admiral Sir John Rawlins

Chairman of the Board, Deep Ocean Engineering, Inc.

Summary

This paper draws attention to some common physiological and human factors prob-

lems in diving and submarine operations on one hand, and in aviation and space

operations on the other, and illustrates the application of underwater techniques to

solve aviation problems and visa versa. It is largely a personal account of work carried

out by the author and his colleagues during 33 years of service in the medical branch

of the Royal Navy.

Introduction

When I tell people that I switched from aviation medicine to underwater medicine

the usual comment is, “Well, it’s all a matter of pressure, isn’t it?” Actually, it’s a bit

more than that.

The problem of hypoxia in flight was first starkly demonstrated by the deaths of the

French balloonists, Sivel and Croce Spinelli, during their balloon ascent to 20,200 ft

in 1875, and here hypoxia was a direct result of the diminished atmospheric pressure.

In diving, there is always an increase in ambient pressure, but hypoxia is much more

common amongst divers than amongst aviators.

Particularly at risk are breath-hold divers such as the Ama, the famous diving women

of Korea and Japan, and snorkel divers. Experienced breath-hold divers, however,

can go to astonishing depths. Jaques Mayol, at the age of 35, baffled physiologists by

making a world record breath-hold dive to 97 m. Last year, at the age of 55, he

extended the record to 105 m!

Military divers and commercial divers, who use artificial mixtures of oxygen and

nitrogen, or oxygen and helium, are also liable to hypoxia if the oxygen partial pressure

in the breathing mixture is allowed, for one reason or another, to fall too low. So here

we have hypoxia, a common hazard for both divers and aviators, often, but not nec-

essarily, related to a fall in the ambient pressure.

*A more complete version of this paper was published as: Rawlins, J. 1985. ““Upstairs/ Downstairs—

Interactions Between Human Factors Aspects of Operating in Hypobaric and Hyperbaric Environments.”

Underwater Technology. 11 (1): 22-27.

Hypoxia and Decompression

In 1920, Professor J. S. Haldane, whose sterling work on the first and second

Admiralty Deep Diving Committees established the principal of decompression em-

ployed by today’s commercial and sport divers, predicted that the “‘bends”’ that plagued

divers and caisson workers could occur in high altitude flight. The RAF medical

hierarchy, however, did not believe him on the grounds that the pressure changes in

flight were too small, and in any case the aviator always returned to maximum pressure,

that is to say, ground level, which for the diver represents minimum pressure. Hence,

although much work was done between Wars on hypoxia and means to prevent it, no

work was done in England on what is now universally known as “decompression

sickness.”

The latter term was coined by Dr. (now Sir Bryan) Matthews, Head of the Royal

Air Force Physiological Laboratory throughout World War II. He and his colleagues

set about proving to the Royal Air Force that high altitude flight could induce de-

compression sickness by exposing themselves repeatedly to low pressures in the de-

compression chamber at Farnborough. In a series of horrendous experiments which

would never be permitted today, they experienced a whole range of symptoms of

decompression sickness. It is remarkable that no one died or suffered permanent

paralysis—such cases have happened since—but they proved their point. It was many

years, however, before the threat of high altitude decompression sickness was finally

overcome by the development of reliable pressure cabins.

In view of the official RAF attitude to decompression sickness, it may seem surprising

that a pressure suit was designed by the diving company Siebe Gorman in 1934 for an

American balloonist, which was subsequently used by Flight Lieutenant Adams in a

flight to the record altitude of 54,000 ft in 1937. Presumably the purpose of the suit

was to provide an adequate partial pressure of oxygen in the lungs of the pilot, rather

than to protect him against decompression sickness, although of course it did this as

well.

It is said that Siebe Gorman easily achieved the suit by adapting a self-contained

diving dress. This was no doubt true in terms of material and method of fabrication,

but it should be remembered that the Siebe Gorman diving dress was flexible, and not

designed to cope with a pressure differential. The suit worn by Flight Lieutenant Adams

was more comparable in principle to the armoured diving dress, Jim, which is designed

to isolate its operator from ambient pressure. At the other end of the pressure spectrum

is the lunar landing suit worn by Neil Armstrong.

When the Royal Navy invited me to rejoin in 1951, part of the inducement was the

promise of an immediate posting to the Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine

where, they said, there would be workshop facilities where I could build diving ap-

paratus to my heart’s content. The bait was irresistible and I swallowed it hook, line,

and sinker. I never dreamed that I would have occasion to use my knowledge and love

of diving in pursuit of official aviation medicine objectives.

Underwater Escape

The pages of my scrap book revive memories of two incidents that changed the

course of my life and had profound consequences concerning certain aspects of aviation

safety. One concerns the first Scimitar aircraft to land on an aircraft carrier, an ap-

XiV

parently perfect landing with subsequent roll up on the deck—and over the side. The

pilot went down with the plane. The other was an accident when another Naval aircraft

crashed into the sea from a carrier. The pilot, Lt. Bruce McFarlane, said that when

his aircraft hit the sea, he was paralyzed with fright and could only move his right arm.

With it he pulled the canopy jettison lever and then the blind of his ejection seat, and

eventually found himself on the surface, in the wake of the carrier, safe and sound.

At the time the Royal Navy was losing 10 air crew a year in what seemed to be

survivable crashes into the water; the United States Navy was losing 50. I was given

the task of investigating the problems of escape from a sinking aircraft, and of finding

out whether it might be possible to use the ejection seat as a means of underwater

escape. After discussions with experts in the Navy on the matter, the conclusion we

reached was that the use of the ejection seat for escape from submerged aircraft was

not feasible. It was on the very next day that McFarlane successfully used his.

Investigations continued using the Admiralty Hydro Ballistics Research Establish-

ment, where there was a million gallon tank, 120 ft long, 30 ft wide and 40 ft deep

with one side constructed entirely of windows of armoured glass. We carried out a

series of trials with a Scimitar fuselage in this tank, and subsequently with other aircraft

types, to try to assess just how difficult it was to escape from a sinking aircraft.

To this end a series of underwater firings were made in a boxed-off end of the tank

at Farnborough. It soon became apparent that McFarlane had been extremely lucky.

The standard firing mechanism simply would not fire if the seat were submerged. We

concluded that in McFarlane’s case, the canopy had unlocked, but had failed to come

off. This had kept the firing head of the ejection gun dry, but only the primary cartridge

had fired. That had been just sufficient to push the canopy off, so that the seat was

able to clear the aircraft. .

The challenge was to make the seat fire reliably underwater. This meant investigating

four variables: acceleration, blast, pressure change, and drag. We looked at drag first.

We constructed a metal trapeze with two bars, one for the subject to hang on to, the

other to brace his feet against. The trapeze lay on the bottom of a 30 ft testing lake

at Portsmouth, and was connected to a Jaguar car driven by a racing driver. The

subject, wearing oxygen breathing apparatus, clung to the trapeze for dear life as the

Jaguar accelerated from a standing start along the tow path. With the Jaguar moving

at 30 mph, it proved possible to cling on for about 20 seconds. The problem of having

the face piece swept off was cured by putting a polythene bag over one’s head.

The drag forces were thus proven acceptable. Next came the problems associated

with blast. After finding a satisfactory way to waterproof the firing mechanism and

conducting a succession of runs with dummies to obtain measurements of blast, ac-

celeration, and velocity, we decided to try the procedure on a real person. For the

dummy, progressive increases in the amount of cordite were used, from an initial 250

grains to the full charge for the Mark II gun being used—1500 grains. For the real

person, 1500 grains were used on the first try.

The ride was certainly memorable. The explosions of the primary and secondary

cartridges were felt rather than heard. One was aware of a great pressure on the body,

and particularly the arms, due to the drag. I believe I lost consciousness momentarily,

for the high speed films showed that my hands were torn from the handle of the blind

of the ejection seat, although I had no recollection of the fact. On arrival at the surface,

there were no after effects other than feeling a little dazed. The next subject’s expe-

rience was similar to my own. We were then instructed by the Director of Naval Air

Warfare not to proceed with further live tests.

By 1950, ejection seats were being used that had more powerful cartridges (2300

grains of cordite) and a peak velocity through the water of 34 ft per second. The peak

g was 7.7. Investigations began concerning the feasibility of underwater ejection with

these seats, and permission was obtained to proceed with further live tests.

The experience of being accelerated through the water at up to 7.7 g, exposed to a

blast from 2,300 grains of cordite and subjected to Q-forces of the order of 7 pounds

per square inch (equivalent to 600 mph through the air) virtually overwhelmed the

senses. Yet, a pilot subjected to such circumstances still had to keep enough presence

of mind to be able to release from his seat and parachute and inflate his life jacket.

For several years I had been working on a somewhat different approach, a method

of ejecting the seat by releasing compressed air into the seat gun. The air supply was

used to inflate a bag in the back of the seat in order to push the ejected subject out

of his seat and inflate his life jacket. At the surface, an automatic dinghy inflated

around the pilot. By 1962 this system had been perfected and a series of escapes were

carried out from submerged aircraft.

Other problems had to be solved, including determining how fast an aircraft would

sink if downed in the ocean. We concluded that the easiest way to determine a craft’s

sink-rate was to sink it. Accordingly, several kinds of planes, including a Scimitar,

were dropped repeatedly into the sea and were tracked with special underwater cam-

eras. These studies made it possible to predict the sink rates for aircraft of various

configurations and weights. In final tests with the underwater escape system, a Scimitar

was catapulted from the deck of HMS Centaur, and in due course, an undamaged

dummy pilot, with inflated life-jacket, arrived at the surface.

New aircraft required modified designs involving a much more powerful seat injection

gun. The much increased blast meant further testing to see what the effects would be.

I undertook this test after trials that convinced me that it could be done safely. The

blast was impressive and sheared 24 quarter inch bolts supporting the back of the test

seat. After effects were minimal, but subsequent trials using sheep indicated that I

had been fortunate. We concluded that underwater ejection with this gun was not

feasible.

Q-force Investigation

Water is more than 800 times denser than air, so that a velocity through the water

of 34 ft per second is equivalent in terms of drag and Q-force to velocity through air

of almost 90 ft per second or 600 mph. The Q-force in both instances would be about

7 psi. My colleague, Captain E. L. Beckman, an Exchange Medical Officer at the

Institute of Aviation Medicine, thought that driving a subject through the water at

velocities of up to 22 mph would be equivalent to ejecting him into air-blast at 600

mph, but the effects on the body and the evaluation of restraint systems could be

carried out in a much more controlled way under water. At 22 mph, the separation

force tending to push the legs apart proved to be 300 pounds. The general sensation

was described as ‘swamping the senses.” It was determined that the limit of tolerance

to ram pressure had been reached.

We have here the first instance of an underwater technique being applied directly

to a solution of an aviation problem. There were to be others.

The Break Off Phenomenon

About this time reports were coming in of Canberra pilots flying at altitudes in excess

of 40,000 ft who experienced a feeling of dissociation, described as “‘flying the aircraft

but not being in it.” There was total silence in the cockpit. All gauges were steady.

The sky ahead and above was a uniform dark blue. Some pilots felt very apprehensive,

and the condition became known as the “‘break-off phenomenon.” At the same time

there were reports of the Russians isolating people in blacked-out, sound-proofed

rooms, as an aid to brain-washing.

Dr. Michael Bennett of the Institute of Aviation Medicine and I thought these

examples of reduction of the sensory environment had something in common. We

decided to produce the most complete reduction of the environment possible. An

underwater breathing apparatus was designed such that a subject could be floated

underwater at a temperature of 93 degrees Farenheit with a silent gas supply, so that

the subject could hear nothing, see nothing, and feel nothing—a sort of back-to-the-

womb experience.

Twenty one subjects found the experience delightfully relaxing and invariably fell

asleep sooner or later. However, two became extremely disturbed within 10 minutes,

fought their way up out of the water and remained hypomanic for the next 12 hours.

Both were convinced that we had been playing tricks with them. One was certain that

we were draining the water from the pool and the other that we were spinning him

round and round. What had happened?

After careful analysis, we concluded that the key factor involved was stress. The 21

contented subjects were divers or individuals who had helped construct the equipment

and were totally familiar with it. The two disturbed subjects were doctors who had

taken part in many experiments but had never before been underwater, and they were

apprehensive from the start.

Reduction of the environment per se is not frightening. You do everything you can

to achieve it when you go to bed—turn off the radio, turn out the light, pull the pillow

over your head to keep out the sound of the church clock striking, tell the other

occupant of the bed to shut up and go to sleep. But if you are in bed alone, in a

completely dark room, in an empty unfamiliar house, and you wake up and hear the

slightest inexplicable noise, your pulse races, your blood pressure elevates, and you

are afraid. Isolation per se is not frightening. Isolation plus stress is a different matter

altogether. Although the physical conditions remain the same, familiarity with the

environment soon dispelled the apprehension of high altitude flight and the illusions

that went with the “‘break off phenomenon.”

Diver Heating Systems

In 1962, Mr. D. Burton of the Royal Aircraft Establishment addressed the annual

meeting of Flying Personnel Medical Officers on a liquid-conditioned garment for the

provision of aircrew cooling. His presentation went over like the proverbial lead bal-

loon. The Institute of Aviation Medicine had been working for years on air-ventilated

suits and were not about to be convinced that a liquid-conditioned suit might be a

better idea.

XVii

Captain Beckman by now was back in the United States working on an underwater

habitat programme called Sealab II. He was trying to find a way of keeping the divers

warm and I suggested that the rejected Burton suit might be the answer by circulating

hot water in it. I had no idea how much heat might be required but on the basis that

it was designed for 300 W of cooling I suggested that he might start by using 300 W

of heating. The U.S. Navy apparently took this as gospel because in 1968 when I was

working there on the Sealab III project, there was a quarter million dollar nuclear

isotope heater, designed to deliver 300 W to a liquid-conditioned suit from a plutonium

238 micro-reactor. I was the only person who ever swam this system which was beau-

tifully fabricated in stainless steel and delivered all its heat to the ambient water and

circulated the resulting four degree Centigrade water most efficiently. As a result it

acted in the manner of a personal refrigeration plant and in addition delivered a not

inconsiderable dose of neutrons and gamma rays!

By 1965, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had built their own

version of the Burton suit, the Apollo suit, which was used as a cooling garment for

the lunar landings. Today, my company, Diving Unlimited International, Inc., markets

a similar design of garment for maintaining thermal balance in commercial divers

operating from lock-out submersibles.

We have here a fine example of what I have referred to as Upstairs/Downstairs.

Movement Control

If you sit in a chair and touch a target with a pencil a few times, then shut your eyes

and try to hit the same point, you will normally come within a radius of ¥2 inch. When

I tried this underwater, my blind touches were six inches above this target.

What this illustrates is that the strain receptors in the tendons learn the force patterns

required of the muscles to touch the intended spot, and in so doing, they automatically

take account of the support required from the anti-gravity muscles.

When the test is repeated underwater, the arm becomes virtually weightless and the

anti-gravity muscles have nothing to do. But the central computer in the brain, which

has been accustomed over a life time to counteract gravity, is temporarily deceived,

and the combined result of support from the water and customary contraction of the

anti-gravity muscles is to place the hand higher than the subject intended. This un-

derstanding of the customary role of the anti-gravity muscles has an important bearing

on the problems of working in space.

Early attempts to simulate lunar gravity involved partially suspending objects by an

arrangement of wires somewhat similar to that employed in training circus riders.

Subsequent experience on the moon showed that quite good simulation had been

achieved.

Later, parabolic aircraft flights were used to provide temporary weightlessness and

trainee astronauts, in full space gear, endeavored to perform simple maneuvers such

as climbing steps or recovering from a supine position. These efforts were hilarious to

watch but no practical progress was made. Today’s space-shuttle crews solved the

problem by carrying out their training underwater, with a full sized space shuttle mock-

up submerged in a tank at the Kennedy Space Center.

XViil

Applications In Submersible Design

The one-man one-atmosphere diving suit, Jim, resembles the suits worn by astronauts

in a number of respects. Although designed to withstand great pressure rather than

the lack of it, Jim has articulated limbs, self-contained life-support, and is muscle-

powered, as are space suits. For underwater exploration, several variations on the

theme of one-man systems have been developed in the last decade, with a general

trend away from anthropomorphic styles. Thrusters have replaced legs for mobility

and metal and plastic manipulators have replaced arms operating in metal sleeves.

The most ingenious and practical thus far developed is a system called Deep Rover,

a machine that combines the advantages of a diving suit (small, agile, portable) with

those of a larger submersible (space to change clothes, carry supplies and instruments,

life support for a week). Deep Rover can descend to 1 kilometer in its Mark I form;

a deeper version will ultimately go to 10 kilometers. The pilot sits within a clear acrylic

sphere in a comfortable aircraft-style seat and controls movements of the sub through

subtle motions of his forearm. Muscle-powered metal sleeves have given way to two

sensory manipulators that simulate touch, force, and motion, can be controlled to

within .03 mm, and can lift more than 200 pounds each.

Discussions are underway concerning the possibility of adapting a design resembling

Deep Rover for use in space, not replacing present systems, but complementing them

with a different approach that already has proven to be valuable in numerous appli-

cations subsea.

Designer of Deep Rover, Graham Hawkes, has advised me that a manipulator closely

resembling one of Deep Rover’s arms, soon will be delivered to NASA for Space

Station applications. This is a clear example of something developed for applications

“downstairs” now being adapted for use “upstairs.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have looked at some common human factors in high altitude flight

and in deep penetration into the ocean. A practical knowledge of diving can be useful

for one engaged in aviation and space research, just as a knowledge of the latter is of

advantage in research into diving and submarine operations.

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AeroVironment, Inc.

The film, ““A Freedom to Move’”’ was provided for the Symposium by the IMAX_

Corporation, and Circus World and its staff generously made available its facility for

the showing. With beauty, breadth, humor, and insight, this theme film of Expo ’86

in Vancouver, gave a dramatic sendoff to the Lindbergh Symposium. The film depicts

a balance between technology and nature, with spectacular images on a 90’ x 60’

screen. Woven through the film was a human story of an Eskimo family using ingenious,

available technology to meet their transportation needs. This perspective, added to

sequences of muscle powered “‘transportation”’ (old and new bicycles, fast streamlined

tricycles, a pedaled hydrofoil, and a pedaled airplane) was melded with breath-taking

views of aircraft, trains, and the space shuttle.

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 1-11, March 1986

The Active Museum: Stimulating

Public Involvement in Aerospace

Walter J. Boyne

Director, National Air and Space Museum

It is a very great pleasure to be a par-

ticipant in the Lindbergh Symposium and

to meet with this distinguished group. I

would like to present some views that may

not have the fundamental scientific im-

portance of some of the other subjects of

the symposium, but may be cogent in the

sense that public awareness is going to be

increasingly important not only in the ap-

preciation of the subjects that will be cov-

ered but also in their funding.

We are all conscious of the spectator

sport syndrome which has afflicted or en-

hanced our country, depending upon the

point of view. The public is bombarded

with media presentations of all types—from

super bowls to presidential elections—and

has in the process I believe, become not

only jaded, but like hardy mosquito sur-

vivors of the pesticide wars, acclimated to

the process. Part of the acclimation is a

disinclination to participate actively, and

one senses that there may be some con-

fusion as to the relationship of a blank

screen to an open mind.

A museum is particularly susceptible to

passive acceptance by the visitor. There

are, after all, and mercifully, no tests given

to measure how much is understood of the

museum experience. Perhaps the most rig-

orous test is repeat attendance; if on a visit

to Paris the wife does the right side of the

Louvre and the husband the left, never to

return, can one say that it was a good ex-

perience, or even that the Louvre—or any

museum in a similar situation, has done

its job? I think not. Museums do not pro-

vide capsules of knowledge that may be

ingested and taken away. They offer in-

stead an opportunity to browse, to sense,

to inspire, to provoke further reading, to

become excited, and the measure of suc-

cess might well be the frequency by which

visitors return to enhance their enjoyment

and their learning. Now the word most

frequently heard that describes the typical

understanding of the way a museum ac-

complishes this is “interaction,” implying

that the visitor has a hands-on experience

which intensifies his enjoyment and his

learning. I submit to you that interaction

is important—but in a different sense.

The National Air and Space Museum

(NASM) has for the past several years at-

tempted to achieve its goals of education

by providing the kind of environment just

described, an atmosphere traditional in the

sense that there are artifacts and labels,

yet different in that there are consistent

and deliberate efforts to involve individ-

uals not just in the excitement of aviation

and space subjects, but into a personal re-

lationship with them. Parenthetically I

should state that there is not, as often as-

sumed, a natural American interest in air

and space that automatically drives people

to museums on the subject. In fact, there

is some good evidence that the reverse is

true, that the hard-edged concepts of tech-

nology may in fact “‘turn people off.’’ One

basis for this comment is the relatively low

attendance at air and space museums

around the world.

In the process of establishing an envi-

ronment of conventional interaction,

NASM was faced with some problems that

forced it to take another look at the con-

cept of “interaction” and to expand upon

it. The problems stemmed from the traffic

and the limits on space even in a very large

building. An “interactive” exhibit of the

kind that is done so well at the Explora-

torium in San Francisco or the Toronto

Science Center, requires that the visitor

spend some time, usually three or four

minutes, perhaps even more; often a do-

cent or a staff person is available for ex-

planations. At NASM the traffic, with vis-

itation ranging from 9,000,000 to perhaps

12,000,000 per year, makes such individ-

ually tailored treatment almost impossi-

ble. We have done it in the past with ex-

hibits ranging from computers to aircraft

simulators, and found that it results in long

queues, prohibitively high maintenance

costs and more often that not, disgruntled

visitors who do not wish to wait in line.

Yet the concept of interaction is terribly

important, and we have over the past sev-

eral years evolved a philosophy which ex-

pands the concept to a scale that is both

manageable by us and attractive and use-

ful to the visitor. It became apparent that

we would have to modify our past ideas

on how a museum should function in re-

lation to “‘the other world’’—the world of

research, academe, and even the world of

business. We wish to root out the idea of

a hat-in-hand approach to the world and

to completely eliminate the idea of waiting

passively for something to happen.

Another important consideration is to

ensure that the expanded concept never

loses its rooting to the public as the most

important aspect of the museum. In this

WALTER J. BOYNE

regard, we consider the public not only to

be the museum visitor, but also the end

user of the research that is done. To achieve

this we must place special demands upon

our curators. It is not unusual in the mu-

seum world for curators to have their peers

as the targets for their research and ex-

hibits; this is only human. However, at

NASM, curators are given a double task.

They must do solid research which results

in publications that are well received by

their peers, and they must do research and

exhibits which attract, entertain, and ed-

ucate the public. The important twist is

that these must also be of a standard that

wins approval from their peers, for aca-

demic and scientific worth, this is very dif-

ficult to do. We’ve found that a casual

visitor will spend as little as twenty sec-

onds at an exhibit unless his curiosity is

piqued. To pique that curiosity and yet

convey the scientific information of which

a scholar will approve is demanding in-

deed. But most importantly, it is also ex-

tremely rewarding, providing a psychic pay

that involvement in exhibits work rarely

does for a scholar.

As an important sidelight on the matter

of exhibits, the museum tries to ensure

that every exhibit is seen in the political,

social, and economic context of its time,

as well as in its technical and historical

context. We feel that this is important in-

teraction also. It is here that the cooper-

ation of the exhibit designer and the cu-

rator becomes critically important, for

sometimes more can be done with the

fragment of a picture or a wisp of a song

than a dozen labels can do. A grand-

mother, totally uninterested in aircraft all

her life, might find new meaning in a racer

of the 1930s when it is displayed in an

exhibit which evokes the Depression, FDR,

Babe Ruth, or Frederick March and Janet

Gaynor (Figure 1).

In dealing with the world of business,

we also made changes in philosophy. One

change was in response; in any intercourse

with representatives of any firm, we try to

be immediately responsive and efficient,

so that in dealing with the museum the

THE ACTIVE MUSEUM

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4 WALTER J. BOYNE

business people feel on familiar grounds.

Another change was in the formula; we

recognized that while many businesses have

a great interest in philanthropy, they all

have an interest in good business. We try

to make a relationship with our museum

good business every time. This doesn’t

mean that we debase the museum or per-

mit its exploitation; it does mean that we

do everything we can to ensure that the

company gets recognition for its assis-

tance, and this ranges from providing

openings for events to giving the red car-

pet treatment to a visiting customer. It is

time-consuming, certainly, but a special

showing to a valued customer can be re-

garded by a business as more useful than

a full page advertisement in the New York

Times, and the company doesn’t forget

this the next time we approach them for

assistance.

But the very most important thing that

we do is make the public involved in the

aerospace business, and in doing so pro-

vide the companies who help us with a

climate in which to prosper.

Perhaps these points will become more

apparent if I run through some of our new

programs and underscore the ideas behind

them.

The large format film—known as either

IMAX or OMNIMAX, depending upon

the type of theater, has for years been a

profitable but highly controversial means

to attract the visitor to a museum or sci-

ence center. The controversy stemmed

from a perceived dichotomy between films

which entertained and films which edu-

cated. In a rather looping expansion of the

idea of interaction, we felt that there was

no reason that a good film should not do

both, even though it could probably not

do so inexpensively. So in the process of

interaction we contacted The National

Aeronautics and Space Administration and

conveyed our interest in flying an IMAX

camera on some shuttle flights. We con-

tacted the IMAX film industry and held a

competition for story boards for a film to

be derived from such flights and we con-

tacted industry for the funding.

In our solicitation of industry we offered

to put up a substantial amount of cash as

a firm indication of our interest and con-

fidence in the success of the program. The

result was a three party consortium, con-

sisting of NASA, NASM, and the Lock-

heed Corporation which decided that the

winning story board had been done by the

IMAX Corporation (Figure 2).

NASM traditionally retained exclusive

showing rights for its films; in this instance

the new philosophy required a more

statesman-like approach, and “The Dream

is Alive” was released for other theater

use as fast as prints could be made. The

result has been the breaking of attendance

records in every theater in which it has

been shown. The general consensus is that

it does in fact both entertain and educate,

while at the same time raising profit levels

in the theater and attendance at the as-

sociated facility, whether museum or a

theme park.

From the business point of view, we again

departed from tradition, for we created a

contract in which the return from the film

was to be divided upon the basis of the

original investment. Now as an elucida-

tion, it should be noted that NASM re-

tained final authority on all matters relat-

ing to the content of the film. And to

illustrate further the business aspects,

NASM initiated a totally new process of

competing for the distribution of the film,

and arranging for a centralized program

for the development of ancillary products.

Returns from the film are distributed on

the percentage basis of the investment,

while returns from the ancillary products

are split on a fifty/fifty basis. The results

have been extraordinary in that the whole

process of funding films like this is far more

attractive to the prospective donor, who

can see an opportunity not only for a re-

turn of his gift for other purposes, but even

the possibility of making a net profit. The

success of the methods used for ““The

Dream is Alive” were directly responsible

for the rapid financing of a second IMAX

film ““On The Wing,” which is to premiere

on June 19th, 1986 (Figure 3).

THE ACTIVE MUSEUM

Fig. 2. Scene from ““The Dream Is Alive,” NASM’s recently released IMAX film about the Space Shuttle.

Shot aboard three separate missions on the Shuttle by the astronauts themselves, this film is described by

them as “The next best thing to being there.”

“On The Wing” offered an opportunity

to once again entertain and educate, cov-

ering as it does the analogies between nat-

ural and mechanical flight. The Johnson

Wax Company joined with us in this ven-

ture on terms similar to that created for

“The Dream is Alive.”’ There was yet an-

other spin-off (Figure 4).

Part of the success of “The Dream Is

Alive” could be attributed to the person-

alities of the astronauts. We sought a sim-

ilar talisman for ““On The Wing,” and it

came about quickly in a conversation I had

with our chairperson, Dr. Paul Mac-

Cready, who had a long and well-devel-

oped interest in one of the most effective

natural flyers of prehistory, the Quetzal-

coatlus northropi. We reached an agree-

ment and the S. J. Johnson Company kindly

agreed to back the creation of QN, as it

quickly became known.

From this discussion, we secured not only

a film star but also immensely valuable

aerodynamic and paleobiological scien-

tific information.

Now the primary result of both films is

an increase in the awareness of the mu-

seum visitor—all over the world—in aer-

Ospace subjects. We believe the interest

stems because we have deliberately com-

bined things of great natural interest: a

relic of the dinosaur and flight.

Another program which does not lead

to a film but does feature a combination

of museum, academic and business co-

operation is the Daedalus Project which

we are conducting in concert with Dr.

MacCready’s friendly rivals at the Mas-

sachusetts Institute of Technology (Figure

5). We have a phased program which will

result, we hope, in a human-powered ve-

hicle which will fly from Crete to the Gre-

cian Mainland sometime in 1987. You will

note that we call it the Daedalus and not

the Icarus Project. Once again we antici-

pate involving an industrial sponsor in a

6 WALTER J. BOYNE

Fig. 3. In June, 1986, ‘““On The Wing” will premiere at the NASM. Produced by Francis Thompson, Inc.

for the NASM and cosponsored by the Johnson Wax Company, this film is a lyrically moving analogy of

mechanical and natural flight.

program which will have important sci-

entific and educational results. And again,

the fundamental purpose is to stimulate

an awareness of the public in aerospace,

this time by a dramatic aviation event us-

ing space age materials and engineering

techniques to replicate a myth.

There are two other programs, both of

which involve all the things we’ve been

talking about.

Later this year, in September, an air-

plane designed by Burt Rutan and flown

by his brother Dick and Jeana Yeager, will

attempt a non-stop, non-refueled flight

around the world in the world’s largest all-

composite aircraft (Figure 6). It is a voy-

age fraught with hazard and bursting with

scientific return, for in its twelve to four-

teen-day journey, much will be learned

about aerodynamics, meteorology, hu-

man physiology and psychology. The air-

plane is described as miserable to fly or

ride in, for it is designed for one thing—

a record that has never before been at-

tempted.

Voyager’s journey will be controlled di-

rectly from the Milestones of Flight Gal-

lery in the museum; upon the successful

completion of the flight, the airplane will

be installed in that gallery as an example

of new materials, new aerodynamics and

old fashioned vision and courage.

Our museum was faced, like all others

with limitations of personnel, budget and

physical space, yet we had a desire to be-

come a genuine archival center for the

world of aerospace. We had a collection

of 2,000,000 photographs of air and space

subjects, and the collection was subject to

all the problems imaginable of conserva-

tion, indentification, access and especially

distribution. We initiated a program of

placing 100,000 photographs—and an in-

dex—on a single video disc which offered

THE ACTIVE MUSEUM 7

Fig. 4. Quetzalcoatlus northropi, an 18 foot radio-controlled replica of the largest mammal to ever fly,

successfully flew in January, 1986. He will star in “On The Wing.”

instant access, no deterioration and easy

transmission (Figure 7). While front end

expenses were high, we found that repro-

duction costs were very low. We found

that we would be able to provide discs at

about $35 apiece and recover some costs:

in other words, we’d be able to distribute

1,000,000 photographs on ten discs for

$350. Response has been fantastic, particu-

larly by industry.

The experience with the video disc made

us determined to find a way to do the same

thing for documents. There are many ar-

chives relating to air and space, most poorly

indexed and difficult to access. We deter-

mined to create a system which would en-

able us to capture those archives, store

them inexpensively, index them automat-

ically and retrieve them easily (Figure 8).

The result is our system for digital display,

for which we have a patent pending, and

which is under license to numerous firms

and museums and major government

agencies.

The system indicates the process, for we

would not have been able to create it with-

out close cooperation with the leading firms

in the industry; the result will be signifi-

cant improvement in archives around the

world.

Perhaps the most obvious example of

our philosophy will be the new Air & Space

Magazine, to be launched in April of this

year (Figure 9). Air & Space will not be

a magazine about the museum, but will

attempt to capture the imagination of the

magazine-reading public in the same way

that the museum attempts to capture its

visitors. The necessary relationship here

between delivery of a product and indus-

trial support is evident; the byproduct of

this collaboration, increased public aware-

ness of air and space will be the bonus for

us all.

There are many more evidences of our

philosophy in our research programs, es-

pecially from our Center for Earth and

Planetary Studies Department, where the

8 WALTER J. BOYNE

Fig. 5. The Daedalus project will attempt a human-powered flight from Crete to the Grecian mainland.

THE ACTIVE MUSEUM 9

Fig. 6. Voyager, designed by Burt Rutan, will attempt the first around the world, non-stop, non-refuelled

flight, the only major milestone not yet accomplished.

10 WALTER J. BOYNE

Shp, “a

ER Sa

Fig. 8. NASM’s System for Digital Display: archival storage, indexing, and retrieval system for collections

management.

THE ACTIVE MUSEUM

SEACE

Smithsonian

the world h S

Fig. 9. Air & Space: The NASM’s new magazine,

minds, will launch its first issue in April 1986.

analysis of remote sensing devices is cor-

roborated by field treks to Southern Egypt

and Central Mali. Each of our other de-

partments has similar active programs

which relate directly to science, industry

and the public.

In closing, | would just reemphasize that

designed to capture the imagination of inquisitive

the role of a museum must change over

time as the role of any organization must;

for a museum devoted to the technological

developments of air and space, it is a nat-

ural consequence to use those develop-

ments to cement the relationship we seek

with the public, academe and business.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 12-15, March 1986

Biological Flight, Mechanical

Flight, and Efficient

Transportation

Paul B. MacCready

Chairman of the Board, AeroVironment, Inc.

Introduction

The broad ecological niche of flight has

been well occupied by nature for over two

hundred million years. There have been

insects, birds, bats, and pterosaurs (and

we can even include flying fish, drifting

spider webs and seedpods, and gliding an-

imals). In the last hundred years man has

authoritatively entered the niche via air-

planes, after edging into it earlier with bal-

loons and kites.

The flight entities which most obviously

provide links between nature and aircraft

are the larger natural fliers and the smaller,

lighter, and slower man-carrying devices.

The seagull, the hawk, and the giant pter-

odactyl are not far from the sailplane, or

the hang glider, or the human powered

airplane. Natural flight also includes the

gnat and grasshopper and wren, and ar-

tificial flight includes the airliner and shut-

tle, but the connection between such dis-

parate creations is more tenuous than for

those which are more alike in size and

function.

Unusual circumstances in the past dec-

ade have gotten me into the human pow-

ered airplane field. Here man must get by

on muscle power, and so is forced into

exploring efficiency and the limitations of

flight more through a birds eyes or brain

than is the case with ordinary aircraft.

For the past year, my associates and I

have been developing a flying replica of

the largest flying animal: a radio con-

trolled, battery powered, wing-flapping-

propulsion reconstruction of the ptero-

dactyl Quetzalcoatlus northropi (QN™).

This tailless creature was bigger in wing

span than some four-person aircraft. To

handle its structure and stability and con-

trol has required modern aeronautical

technology.

Both the human powered aircraft and

the QN replica projects will be described,

representing constructions on the border

between natural and artificial flight. The

projects thus introduce consideration of

the balance between technology and na-

ture.

Human Powered and Solar Powered

Flight

A fit human can develop about one-

quarter horsepower for a few minutes. This

is a sorry performance for a 150-pound

BIOLOGICAL AND MECHANICAL FLIGHT 13

“engine,” inasmuch as the burning of fos-

sil fuel in a modern reciprocating aircraft

engine of similar weight produces some

400 times as much power. Big power, and

stronger structures than obtainable with

bone and sinew, have permitted man’s air-

craft to outstrip dramatically the perform-

ance of nature’s fliers. The designers of

aircraft now have little interest in biolog-

ically powered flight.

In 1959 Henry Kremer put up a large

prize for the first sustained/controlled hu-

man-powered flight. Seventeen years later,

my need to pay off a large financial obli-

gation incurred by a relative drew my at-

tention to this Kremer Prize. The corre-

lation between the prize amount, about

$100,000, and the debt amount, about

$100,000, proved irresistable. By a lateral

thinking process I arrived at a suitable ap-

proach to meeting the challenge. Then in

a year-long intensive ‘hobby’ project, our

team of friends and family won the prize

with the Gossamer Condor (96-foot span,

70 lbs.). Perhaps the most valuable re-

ward, for the outside world as well as for

us who constituted the development team,

is the broadening perspectives which arise

as one pushes into new areas. In the U.S.

the approach to making a better vehicle

has usually involved putting in a more

powerful engine. However, in this case

Henry Kremer provided a very different

challenge. He asked, in effect, for an air-

plane to fly on one-quarter horsepower.

It turned out this challenge could be met

by pushing hard on the frontiers of struc-

tures and aerodynamics. The project be-

came a dramatic example of doing more

with less—less material, and less power—

a useful perspective as expanding civili-

zation struggles into the era of limits on

our non-expanding globe.

After the Gossamer Condor program,

a new and larger Kremer Prize stimulated

our development of the Gossamer Alba-

tross. This more elegant human powered

vehicle achieved a flight across the English

Channel lasting almost three hours. On a

subsequent program our human powered

Bionic Bat won two Kremer speed prizes.

This aircraft serves as a technology dem-

onstrator for some other interests of ours:

a long duration drone to carry a radio re-

peater aloft for weeks at a time, anda safe,

very slow flying sailplane in which you can

join hawks spiralling in a tiny thermal, at

their same speed and turning radius. In

1981 our Solar Challenger carried a pilot

163 miles from Paris to England powered

solely by sunbeams shining on its 16,000

photovoltaic cells. The aim was to stim-

ulate public appreciation for the potential

of solar cells as a future energy resource

(for use in ground installations, not ve-

hicles).

The Giant Pterodactyl

The latest project brings back to “‘life”’

the largest flying creature which ever ex-

isted, a giant pterodactyl with the giant

name Quetzalcoatlus northropi and the

formidable size of a four-person airplane

(a 36-foot wingspan). In common with all

land and airborne animals bigger than about

45 pounds, it did not survive the “great

extinction” 63 million years ago. Our rep-

lica is radio controlled, battery powered,

propelled by wing-flapping, and looks and

flies like the original. It is to help publi-

cize, and be an actor in, a forthcoming,

wide screen IMAX film, titled ““On the

Wing.”

Johnson Wax and the Air and Space

Museum are sponsoring both the film and

the QN replica. The film illustrates the

evolution of natural flight with insects,

birds, bats, and the pterodactyl, and re-

lates their evolution to the development

of aircraft. QN will appear at the begin-

ning, as a natural flier, and then at the end

when the point is made that modern aer-

ospace technology is required for dupli-

cating nature even crudely.

In 1984, a QN feasibility study was con-

ducted which included the bringing to-

gether of paleontologists, aerodynami-

cists, and structures and autopilot specialists

to develop a position about the likely size,

appearance, and lifestyle of the original

animal, and to assess the probability that

a mechanical replica could fly satisfactor-

14 PAUL B. MAcCREADY

ily. The subsequent development project

took place in 1985. In January, 1986, the

spectacular filming of flights of an 18’ span

replica took place at Race Track Dry Lake

near Death Valley. This was the size of an

adolescent Quetzalcoatlus northropi, (and

the same size as a dozen sets of fossil bones

which may have belonged to the same spe-

cies). Being identical in appearance and

flight characteristics to the 36’ one, this

replica served perfectly as the lead actor

in the film; a temperamental actor, but

handsome and talented. The IMAX film

“On the Wing” will be premiering at the

National Air and Space Museum in Wash-

ington in mid June of 1986. Public flights

and display of the 18’ actor are under dis-

cussion, as well as the eventual construc-

tion and demonstration of the ultimate 36’

version.

The radio controlled flying QN replica

has three sensors, 13 electric motor ‘“‘mus-

cles,” and a complex computer brain—but

is still a thousand-fold less complex than

the real thing. The main challenge is that

the creature had no tail but instead a huge

head extending forward on a long neck.

It was unstable and so had to employ ac-

tive control to stay upright. This is hard

to duplicate with man-made mechanisms.

The history of the QN replica program

is given in articles by MacCready in Re-

search Report 1985 of the National Air

and Space Museum, and in the November

1985 issue of Engineering and Science,

published by the California Institute of

Technology. The program is also reaching

the popular media in the spring of 1986 in

articles in Science ’86, Popular Science,

Life, Smithsonian Magazine, etc. Thus de-

tails need not be provided here.

As QN flies overhead, an observer will

be able to “experience” the majesty of

nature’s creation. The flight will combine

the intimacy of a zoo with the historical

grasp of a museum. Each observer will

better appreciate nature’s dramatic flair,

and, in learning about the great extinc-

tion, may perhaps consider if we are now

putting ecological pressures on our fragile

planet similar to those of 63 million years

ago.

Efficiency

There are many ways of defining aerial

transportation efficiency. There are cri-

teria of fuel use, speed, economics, reli-

ability, and versatility and convenience,

and questions such as whether the weight

carried refers to gross weight or a payload.

Nevertheless, for our purposes here, re-

lating biological flight to mechanical flight,

we can ignore definition details and still

make several significant generalizations.

First, the basic efficiency of the pro-

pulsion systems of birds and propeller air-

craft are rather similar. Both wing pro-

pulsion and propeller propulsion

efficiencies are generally in the same range,

say plus or minus 10% from a reference

80%. The efficiency of generating power

burning chemical fuel is also comparable,

whether it is the lipids burned by a bird

during migration or gasoline burned by an

aircraft engine. A bird burning up half of

its initial body weight during a migration

may go 2,000 miles non-stop; an airplane

consuming half its takeoff weight in fuel

may go about four times as far. The better

relative range performance of the airplane

arises because it has a flatter glide than

the bird, (a better lift to drag ratio), a

performance advantage available to the

airplane primarily because of two factors.

One factor is a scale effect: the airplane

Operates at a much higher “Reynold’s

Number” than the bird, and therefore for

the airplane viscous effects are relatively

less critical. The other factor is that the

structural techniques and the non-versa-

tile function of the airplane permit a wing

better tailored to aerodynamic efficiency

in cruising flight (say a higher aspect ra-

tio).

Conclusion

Biological flight, specifically bird flight,

has been the catalyst for the initial devel-

opment of man’s aircraft. As these aircraft

achieved fantastic flight performances, the

role model function of birds tended to be

forgotten. The giant pterodactyl, a much

AVIATION TRANSPORTATION 15

larger animal than aeronautical engineers

of a decade ago assumed could fly, alerts

us to the suspicion that nature may still

have some surprising and valuable insights

for us. As we explore bird characteristics

we are reimpressed with what a magnifi-

cent engineer nature is. A bird’s flight ver-

satility and performance can in some re-

spects be far beyond that of any airplane.

Consider the Guillimot, which operates

very well in the air, on land and water,

and under the water. Consider the Sooty

tern, reputed to stay aloft on one flight

for years (using aerial refueling by snatch-

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 15-20, March 1986

ing up squid without landing). Consider

the Artic tern on its long migration a third

of the way around the world, without in-

struction, reaching a location which its

parents knew. And consider the ability of

birds to take off and land on a confined

spot.

The aeronautical creations of man and

nature are closely related. Each is won-

derful in its own way. We are more fa-

miliar with the features of airplanes than

the features of birds, an inbalance that

deserves correction.

Aviation Transportation—A

Possible Future

Oran W. Nicks

Director, Space Research Center, Texas A&M University, College

Station, TX 77843

ABSTRACT

Air travel across the Pacific has increased markedly in recent years, even though a trip

between the U.S. and Japan or China requires twenty plus hours. Space Shuttle missions

now occurring regularly orbit the entire globe in 90 minutes, so it is obvious that existing

technology could provide faster transoceanic service. More efficient and flexible launch

capabilities for space missions and the need for faster intercontinental travel can both be

served by combining aerodynamic lift for takeoff and landing from large airports, with

hybrid airbreathing and rocket propulsion systems.

As petroleum products are projected to be exhausted in about 30 years, it is desirable

that future aerospace vehicles be designed for alternate fuels. Hydrogen is well established

as a fuel for space missions and also offers many advantages for jet propulsion: it is 2.77

times as energetic as jet propulsion fuel, it can readily be made from water using solar

energy, and its prinicipal exhaust product is water that is non-polluting and recyclable.

Other advantages such as its heat sink capacity are also cited.

Two options for transoceanic transports are likely to evolve, a suborbital transatmos-

pheric vehicle and a hypersonic cruise aircraft. Both would marry airbreathing-rocket

propulsion and aerodynamic lift technologies with space shuttle landing capabilities.

In summary, the next major advances in aeronautical transport could be more of an

offshoot of space developments than an evolutionary step beyond the air transports of

today. Hydrogen will enhance the balance between technology and the environment,

16 ORAN W. NICKS

because of its non-polluting qualities and its inexhaustible supply. Time is the most precious

and irreplaceable resource of man and it is concluded that shortening travel hours using

a fuel produced from water and sunlight is in harmony with nature.

In his book of the 1880's entitled “Bird

Flight as the Basis of Aviation,’ Otto Lil-

ienthal distinctly stated the challenge of

his day:

“Tt must not remain our desire only to

acquire the art of the bird, nay, it is our

duty not to rest until we have attained to

a perfect scientific conception of the prob-

lem of flight, even though as the result of

such endeavors we arrive at the conclusion

that we shall never be able to transfer our

highway to the air. But it may also be that

our investigations will teach us to artifi-

cially imitate what nature demonstrates to

us daily in bird flight.”

Lilienthal not only issued this charge,

he pursued it with fierce determination until

his untimely death during a test flight of

his own flying machine design in 1896.

Considering the thousands of years man

had envied the abilities of birds, it is un-

likely that Lilienthal expected him to

achieve more than the equivalence or a

semblance of bird flight. His own suc-

cesses provided convincing evidence that

men would fly someday, but it is doubtful

that even his wildest dreams envisioned

the flight of passenger-carrying airliners.

His conservatism was evident when he en-

couraged study of the birds “‘“—even

though—we arrive at the conclusion that

we Shall never be able to transfer our high-

way to the air.”

Only a little more than twenty five years

later, Charles Lindbergh had resoundingly

answered the challenge of Lilienthal. Not

only did he fly like the birds, but he went

faster and farther. Mankind everywhere

was amazed and inspired, but even then

most practical-minded persons asked,

“What good is it?’ One man flying alone

across the Atlantic was certainly a signif-

icant accomplishment, but a dreamer might

not have guessed that before two decades

had passed, 120 passenger airliners would

put 3,000 passenger oceanliners out of

business.

It has been like that since the Wright

brothers’ first successful powered flight in

1903. One must be awed by the almost

unbelievable progress in flight, yet we still

have difficulty envisioning the future. Per-

haps by reviewing some of the key mile-

stones of aviation history, we can prepare

to expect possibilities that could happen

relatively soon.

In December, 1985, we celebrated the

fiftieth anniversary of the first flight of the

Douglas DC-3. Barely ten years after

Lindbergh’s Atlantic crossing, this huge

shiny airliner began making air travel a

reality for millions of people, at the as-

tounding rate of 21 passengers plus a crew

of three. Compared to existing forms of

surface transportation, it revolutionized

cross-country travel, and within a decade

it was followed by bigger and faster models

employing four engines and evolutionary

technologies. It was the 120 passenger ver-

sions of the DC-6’s and Constellations that

took the transoceanic passenger trade away

from the luxury liners in a few short years.

World War II spawned many technol-

ogy advances, but the next hallmark for

aviation transportation was to be the flight

of the Comet jet transport in 1952. Al-

though this first model amazed the world

with its dazzling speed and high altitude

capabilities, many experts doubted the jet

aircraft would succeed as a prime mover

of people and freight, because of jet en-

gine demands for huge quantities of fuel.

But rapid gains in fuel efficiency and the

high productivity of jet transports soon

made them a way of life.

Perhaps this is the time to mention th

relevance of productivity, for this essence

is the often overlooked benefit from higher

speed transportation systems. When com-

paring travel costs of vehicles that travel

AVIATION TRANSPORTATION 17

at about the same speed, it is appropriate

to consider the costs/seat mile as a figure

of merit. When the speeds are greatly dif-

ferent, as for example, between the ship

and the jet airplane, time becomes an im-

portant parameter in the economic equa-

tion. To illustrate, a single 747 jet trans-

port carried more passengers across the

Atlantic last year on a normal schedule

than the Queen Mary carried during a

prime year in its heyday, and at one tenth

the cost. In all, some 22 million people

flew the Atlantic last year.

The past two decades of jet transport

evolution have produced bigger and better

aircraft, but attempts toward efficient

supersonic transports have not fully suc-

ceeded. To give credit where it is due, the

Concorde has established a place for lim-

ited transoceanic routes, and it has just

completed ten years of service by carrying

more than a million passengers about 100

million miles. The Russians gave up on

their SST entry after several bad crashes

and deficit operations from the beginning.

Our own U.S. efforts to develop a super-

sonic transport were thwarted in 1971 by

problems of incompatiblity with our en-

vironment, and a ‘““Who needs it”’ reaction

from many quarters. Other concurrent ad-

vances such as the wide-bodies have served

us well, however, and many would say that

present air travel growth suggests that needs

are being satisfied.

So why would we want anything more?

Well, for one reason, trans-Pacific and other

international trade activities have in-

creased markedly in recent years. This

means that a lot more people are traveling

twenty plus hours by air to do business

with counterparts on the other side of the

world. Not only are more people desirous

of faster transportation, there is a growing

awareness that technologies exist which

could make faster travel possible. As Space

Shuttle flights occur every few weeks, it

is frequent that astronauts make fifteen

orbits around the entire world while a

commercial air traveler spends the same

amount of time traveling from the U.S. to

Japan. Looking back we see that when an

“aviation first” signaled technology read-

iness, opportunity was often coupled with

an obvious desire or perceived need, so

that new capabilities were not long in com-

ing. Accepting this “de facto” premise, let

us speculate on future possibilities.

A historic milestone for space travel oc-

curred in 1961, when Yuri Gagarin suc-

cessfully orbited the earth in one hour and

48 minutes. His flight in some ways pro-

duced the same reaction from people that

Lindbergh’s had: awe for the dramatic

achievement, but the same question, “What

good is it?” A one-place capsule launched

atop a “controlled explosion” called a

rocket, and a relatively uncontrolled land-

ing by parachute could hardly be consid-

ered a harbinger of future transportation

systems. Even after missions to earth orbit

became routine, and Apollo had carried

a dozen Americans to the surface of the

moon, there were still many challenges to

face before realizing commercial viability

of space vehicles.

The Space Shuttle, a composite of aer-

onautical and missile technologies, has

clearly brought us closer with its remark-

able ability to carry passengers and cargo

into space and land at large airports using

aerodynamic lift like an airplane. Many of

you will recall the skeptics who were ap-

palled at the thought of returning from

space to a landing without propulsion, even

though the technologies for gliding flight

have been used successfully since Lilien-

thal’s experiments. But rocket launches

that must now occur at Cape Kennedy,

and the requirement for ferry flights from

the landing to the launch site, severely limit

the application of shuttle technology for

transportation between points on earth.

Furthermore, space commercialization and

military missions would benefit greatly if

launches could occur from existing airport

facilities instead of specialized launch

complexes.

This assessment suggests that aeronau-

tics and space technologies will soon be

blended further. The reason is simply that

technologies appear ready for new appli-

cations, and now there are TWO basic

18 ORAN W. NICKS

needs to be served: intercontinental trav-

elers sorely need a means of going six

thousand nautical miles in less than three

hours, and space missions need launch and

landing capabilities from airport facilities

around the globe. Both needs can be served

by combining aerodynamic lift for takeoff,

climb and landing, with airbreathing and

rocket propulsion technologies.

As airplanes have always exploited the

atmosphere for both propulsion and lift,

future generations will not question this

method for improving the operational ef-

ficiency of space travel. Various hybrid

propulsion systems have been envisioned

for years, and while efficient, practical sys-

tems are yet to be built, there is ample

evidence that turbo-ramjet-rocket com-

binations may be achieved after reasona-

ble development efforts.

What I also suggest is that hydrogen will

become the aviation fuel of the future.

This is not so obvious to our generation,

accustomed to transportation systems that

are dependent on petrochemicals pumped

from the ground. But the application of

hydrogen to space missions has done much

to ensure technological readiness as well

as economic competitiveness, and there

are other compelling reasons for this fuel.

More will be said about tradeoffs in a mo-

ment, but first, let me share basic calcu-

lations using a kind of logic I imagine

Lindbergh might have appreciated.

Last year the world use of petroleum

products amounted to about 20 billion

barrels of oil. If this flow from the ground

were likened to a river of oil, it could be

represented as a stream 100 feet wide, ten

feet deep, flowing with a current of about

three miles per hour. Projections of the

amount of oil left in our Earth’s “tank”

are somewhat uncertain, however, several

respected estimates indicate the world-wide

reserve to be about 650 billion barrels. At

the current rate of use, that supply will

last the world users about 30 years. What

worries me as an American is that we are

the largest user at about 29%, and yet we

have a US reserve of only 4% or 28 billion

barrels. If forced to depend on our own

reserves, we would exhaust our supply

within five years. Whether the exhaustion

date is really five or thirty years from now,

it is apparent that designing our next gen-

eration air transportation systems to use

another fuel not only has merit, it is es-

sential.

The high specific energy of hydrogen

has led to many studies of its application

as a fuel over the years. One pound of

hydrogen offers 2.77 times as much energy

as a pound of JP fuel. Hydrogen is the

most abundant element in the universe,

and its supply is virtually inexhaustible. It

can be readily made from water, although

energy is required for electrolysis.

Successful flight experiments employing

hydrogen in conventional turbojet engines

were conducted in 1957 by the NACA

Lewis laboratory, and it was shown to be

compatible with jet engine applications.

Its high heat of combustion offers major

increases in engine performance, and en-

vironmentally, it is unusually clean burn-

ing, as its primary exhaust product is water.

It has been used effectively in rockets for

years, providing valuable experience and

establishing confidence in our ability to

apply hydrogen as a fuel.

For very high speed flight where aero-

dynamic heating is a problem, hydrogen

offers yet another benefit, because as a

cold liquid at temperatures of about minus

400 degrees Fahrenheit, it has a heat sink

capacity about 38 times that of JP fuel at

100 degrees F. This property can be used

for cooling structures and surfaces, for both

strength and aerodynamic benefits, al-

though complexities in design and weight

penalties result. Another advantage of hy-

drogen as a fuel accrues from its ability to

combust rapidly. It can react with air at

supersonic speeds in combustion cham-

bers of a practical size, with relatively high

aerodynamic and chemical efficiencies.

Hydrogen has been produced for years

using electrical energy to split water (H,O)

molecules. At present, commercial pro-

duction of hydrogen involves costs for

electricity that are greater than the equiv-

alent of petrochemical fuels, however very

AVIATION TRANSPORTATION 19

promising research is underway toward the

use of solar energy obtained from solar

cells immersed in the water being split.

Efficiencies being achieved in the labo-

ratory show promise of production costs

far less than those involving electrical en-

ergy generated by other means.

For completeness, two negative aspects

of hydrogen to flying applications are its

relatively low density and the fact that it

must be stored in special insulated con-

tainers to maintain it as a liquid. The low

density dictates larger tank sizes that tend

to increase aerodynamic drag, and the cry-

Ogenic storage requirements make struc-

tures and tankage more costly and heav-

ier. When all the tradeoffs are considered,

however, studies show big advantages for

hydrogen as a fuel for future air trans-

portation systems. It goes without saying

that an infrastructure must be developed

for a hydrogen economy if hydrogen is to

be widely used as an aviation fuel. The

cost of a change in fuel from a petrochem-

ical base will be borne by a large number

of users, but leadership for the changeover

will be provided by aerospace.

Two options exist for vehicles especially

suited to the trans-Pacific ranges: transat-

mospheric or suborbital aerospace planes,

and hypersonic cruise aircraft. The first

would marry airbreathing-rocket hybrid

space vehicle and aerodynamic lift tech-

nologies with Space Shuttle landing ca-

pabilities. The second would be shuttle-

like aircraft accelerated to hypersonic cruise

conditions using a turbo-ramjet-rocket

propulsion system that would cruise at al-

titudes of 100,000 feet or more. Space

launch requirements may encourage the

earlier development of the suborbital or

transatmospheric technologies, but effi-

ciencies will probably favor the hypersonic

cruise vehicles for intercontinental trans-

ports. Military applications may actually

dictate the timing of advances, but it seems

a Safe bet that both concepts will be tested

within the next ten to twenty years.

In summary, I believe we will see the

next major advance in aeronautical trans-

portation as more of an offshoot of space

developments than as an evolutionary step

beyond the jet transports of today.

In his later years, Lindbergh’s writings

admonished us that our advances in sci-

ence and technology were not being paced

by advances in our social or ethical mores.

His feelings seemd torn between the same

innate drives to improve our technological

position that he exhibited when he was

charting a course for aviation, and uncer-

tainties as to whether men were capable

of continuing without destruction of other

values—even life itself. In an article called

“The Wisdom of Wildness’’, his conclu-

sion was contained in a final, simple sen-

tence: “The Human Future depends on

our ability to combine the knowledge of

science with the wisdom of wildness.”’

Along with most of you, I share his con-

cerns. And yet I believe it is right to con-

tinue flying higher and faster. Man’s crea-

tivity and ability to reason right from wrong

are the attributes which distinguish us from

other creatures, and I believe God in-

tended us to use these gifts to improve the

quality of life. A blend of space flight and

atmospheric flight sciences will give us more

time for creativity, and shortening travel

involving hours of inactivity will afford

better uses of our talents. What matters

is how we apply our technological ad-

vances and how they influence the whole

of our environment and relationships. Real

progress is only to be judged after the har-

mony of our developments with nature is

clear.

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 21-24, March 1986

The Emergence of Treatment

Technology in the Management of

Hazardous Waste

Richard C. Fortuna*

Executive Director,

Hazardous Waste Council

Washington, D.C.

ABSTRACT

Until recently, the management of hazardous waste was largely dominated by various

land disposal techniques, with its attendent uncertainties and predictable failures. With

the enactment of the 1984 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Amendments (RCRA),

a watershed series of new policies and provisions governing the management of hazardous

waste are being instituted which presumtively prohibit the land disposal of all hazardous

wastes; structure the Agency’s discretion to either affirm or override these presumptions

by specified dates; support the prohibitions with a self-implementing program in the event

the Agency fails to implement the prohibitions or establish pretreatment standards; and

to close many of the loopholes in hazardous waste regulations that allowed “legal dumping”

of hazardous wastes. These changes were brought about by a fundamental recognition of

the delay and indecision caused by the lack of structure and direction in existing hazardous

waste policy, and by the fact that no Agency, no matter how well intentioned, could

accomplish all the necessary changes without direct, unequivocal directives from the statute

itself. The article examines the conditions and terms that must exist for permanent pro-

tective treatment technologies to exist in a world and a marketplace where land disposal

has previously been the order of the day.

*Richard C. Fortuna is Executive Director of the

Hazardous Waste Treatment Council, a Washington,

DC based trade association representing commercial

hazardous waste treatment firms that are distin-

guished by their common commitment to the primary

use of treatment technology and the restricted use

of land disposal in the management of hazardous

waste. Mr. Fortuna is also the author of the soon-

to-be-published ‘‘Hazardous Waste Regulation: The

New Era’’, an analysis and guide to RCRA and the

1984 Amendments.

There are two Federal statutes that gov-

ern different aspects of the nation’s haz-

ardous waste management activities. The

“Superfund” law, which was first passed

in 1980 to cleanup waste releases from past

mismanagement, and the Resource Con-

servation and Recovery Act (RCRA),

which was first passed in 1976 and is in-

tended to prevent the creation of future

problem sites through a series of controls

22 RICHARD C. FORTUNA

on daily management. The 1984 Amend-

ments to RCRA, also referred to as the

Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments

(HSWA), is the most significant rewrite of

any environmental law; restructuring our

national policy and the regulatory deci-

sion-making process. While these changes

have their roots in a period of unparalleled

EPA turmoil, the major impetus was de-

rived from a universal and mutual recog-

nition of data, studies and conditions that

argued for a complete change not only in

the way in which wastes are managed, but

also in the manner in which they are reg-

ulating them. In fact, fundamental change

to the decision-making process is perhaps

the greatest single contribution of the 1984

Amendments.

We are now in the midst of an unpar-

alleled transition in the management of

hazardous wastes, 10 years after the orig-

inal enactment of RCRA. Relative to the

Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act pro-

grams, controls on hazardous waste man-

agement are 10-15 years behind the prog-

ress of these early 1970 laws. Going back

to early 1982 when the reauthorization

process began, it was a confluence of po-

litical and technical voices and findings that

helped forge the consensus as represented

by the 1984 Amendments:

* new abandoned or problem sites (Su-

perfund sites) were being discovered

at a faster rate than we could clean

them up; this dismal picture was com-

pounded by the discovery that the

regulations under the RCRA pro-

gram, which governs the daily man-

agement of hazardous waste, was in

fact the leading cause of our future

Superfund sites. That is, the “legal

dumping” of present day wastes was

an equal if not greater danger than

the illegal dumping of the past; more

waste generators and facilities were

exempt from regulation than were

subject;

ninety percent of all generators were

exempt from regulation on the basis

that they were “‘small generators’’;

* many wastes were not listed as haz-

ardous, including dioxins and ethyl-

ene dibromide;

all “recycling” practices were exempt

from regulation. However, recycling

was so broadly defined as to consti-

tute any reuse of a hazardous waste

that served a beneficial purpose to the

user. As such, activities like the use

of dioxin-containing wastes to oil roads

in Times Beach were exempt “recy-

cling”’ practices;

there were no meaningful controls on

air emissions from evaporation ponds,

or on the placement of hazardous

wastes into sewers (supposedly the

province of the Clean Water Act);

we discovered that there were 250

million tons of hazardous waste being

generated, not 40 million, with ap-

proximately 80 percent of this volume

being land disposed;

there were no restrictions on what was

being placed in the land, and no min-

imum technology requirements im-

posed at land disposal facilities such

as dual liners and leachate collection

systems;

in fact, the tide of continued land dis-

posal was so strong in early 1982 that

even the most outlandish and exotic

proposals by today’s standards were

being entertained. For example, a

major paint and pigment firm was

proposing to dispose of drummed vol-

atile organic hazardous wastes in an

abandoned salt mine under residen-

tial areas in Barberton, Ohio;

In short, the hole was bigger than the

doughnut. At the same time we were also

learning about the business of hazardous

waste management, and the necessary

regulatory and marketplace conditions for

treatment technologies to exists:

it was clear by early 1982 that unre-

strained by regulation, hazardous

wastes were like water running down-

hill, being disposed of along the path

of least cost and least control. We rec-

ognized that technology cannot be

HAZARDOUS WASTE TREATMENT TECHNOLOGY 23

forced to compete against unre-

stricted land disposal, where cost alone

dictated management choice;

the Congressional Office of Technol-

ogy Assessment and the National

Academy of Sciences concluded that

there was no shortage of techniques,

ingenuity or methods to properly treat

or render wastes non-hazardous.

Rather, the real problem was with the

regulations and loopholes them-

selves. The regulatory disparity be-

tween land disposal and treatment in-

troduced significant uncertainty into

the market for technologies. This lack

of controls to ensure that all methods

of management “‘played by the same

rules” and provide equal certainty in

protecting public health indirectly

subsidized land disposal, and forced

many firms to withhold additional in-

vestment in treatment technology;

from the treatment industry’s per-

spective, the real problem was not with

the avaiijability of methods to per-

manently treat hazardous wastes, but

rather with the regulations them-

selves. The existing regulations gov-

erning hazardous wastes would have

one believe that the universal maxims

of “no free lunch” and “‘getting what

you pay for’ applied to everything

but the management of hazardous

wastes;

we discovered that you cannot sepa-

rate the desire for increased protec-

tion from the increased costs of waste

specific, constituent specific treat-

ment. There is no one step treatment

process for every waste;

In short, the period from 1976 when

RCRA was first passed to 1984 demon-

strated that we had learned from or about

the nature and causes of our hazardous

waste problems then we instituted solu-

tions to them. The 1984 Amendments

closed these loopholes and marked the end

of the beginning of the RCRA program

by establishing the beginning of the end

for unrestricted land disposal.

The heart of the 1984 Amendments lies

not in any one provision, but rather in its

approach to the regulatory process itself.

We discovered that no administration, no

matter how well intentioned, could ac-

complish all the necessary tasks without

direct assistance from the statute itself. In

addition, rather than simply directly EPA

to go issue necessary regulations, the stat-

ute establishes a statutory presumption that

prohibits land disposal of all wastes while

allowing the Agency to selectively over-

ride these presumptions by establishing

“pretreatment” conditions. The bill sup-

ports this presumption with a self-imple-

menting statutory provision (frequently

termed “hammers” or “minimum regu-

latory controls’) that impose the prohi-

bition without exception if the Agency fails

to act in a timely manner.

It was clear by the end of the reauthor-

ization process that discretion had become

its own worst enemy; too much was as bad

as too little. These new provisions and the

fundamental restructuring of Agency dis-

cretion and the decision-making process is

not intended to be punitive. Rather, they

have two primary aims: to allow the Agency

and the regulated community to focus its

efforts on specific exceptions to a general

prohibition rule, rather than to burden the

Agency with justifying each restriction for

each waste under a generally permissive

scheme; and, it was intended to create in-

centives for the regulated community to

become constructively involved in regu-

latory development, or live with a prohi-

bition that has no exceptions.

If the heart of RCRA is its restructuring

of Agency discretion and the decision-

making process, the soul of RCRA is the

search for certainty: certainty that wastes

will be properly managed in the first in-

stance; certainty that future generations

will not have to bear the cost of current-

day land disposal expediency; and cer-

tainty that the transition to permanent and

protective methods of treatment will in-

deed occur on a timely and predictable

basis. While these Amendments were in-

stituted less than eighteen months ago,

24 RICHARD C. FORTUNA

there is clear and convincing evidence that

the scheme is working. The Agency is for

the first time meeting many of its dead-

lines. A program office that previously

could not meet a single regulatory dead-

line is now making more than it misses.

The Amendments have provided the nec-

essary certainty for firms to invest in and

expand treatment capacity. New technol-

ogies and new applications of existing

technologies have emerged to a significant

degree, particularly the use of portable

treatment technologies that can be brought

to the site of a cleanup action or waste

management site. Generators are making

significant strides in reducing the volume

of the wastes generated, particularly for

aqueous organic wastes, many of which

are now being recovered.

However, as T. S. Eliot was fond of

saying, “Humankind cannot bear too much

reality.”” In a field where there is a lot of

reality to live up to, there surely will be

many difficult days ahead: the early phase

in implementing the land disposal ban has

been far from smooth; pretreatment stan-

dards must be established that do not sim-

ply bless the status quo; critical decisions

must be made on the future role of deep

well injection; and creative use of waste

codes and manifest data cannot be used

in a way to evade the ban.

In fact, before the final transition is

over, many firms will be put out of busi-

ness, thousands of impoundments will be

closed, major process changes will be in-

stituted, and overall managers will be forced

to take their waste management activities

more seriously. In many ways, the 1984

Amendments bring to light a third fact of

life: death, taxes, and no matter what we

do wastes will be generated. It is my firm

belief that the mutual recognition of the

hard realities ahead, punctuated by a high

level of participation stimulated by the 1984

Amendments should yield a program that

is second to none, one which we can even-

tually look on with pride rather than look

back on with chagrin.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 25-31, March 1986

The Hazardous Waste Superfund

Program: Goals Versus Practices

Kenneth S. Kamlet

Environmental Program Director,

URS Corporation

1730 M Street, NW, Suite 701

Washington, DC 20036

ABSTRACT

Superfund’s major objective, as expressed by the Senate Environment Committee, is

“to provide an incentive to those who manage hazardous substances or are responsible

for contamination sites to avoid releases and to make maximum effort to clean up or

mitigate the effects of any such release.’’ Although the dominant thrust of the original

Superfund law was to promote and advance the clean-up of sites, the pending 1986 amend-

ments are aimed primarily at either eliminating perceived inefficiencies in or at expanding

the scope of the present program. Among the controversial amendments discussed are

provisions setting a mandatory schedule for various site inspection, study, and clean-up

priorities; creating new Citizen Suit authority; limiting permissible uses of the Fund; ex-

tending of “fund balancing” requirements to privately financed clean-ups; precluding re-

mediation plans from addressing contamination from non-Superfund sources; limiting the

need for otherwise required Federal and state permits; and requiring states to guarantee

twenty years’ capacity for all their hazardous wastes before they can receive Superfund

remedial action money. It is noted that the principal delay in enacting a new and reinvig-

orated Superfund law relates more to ideological tax policy differences than to issues

involving hazardous chemicals, industry responsibility, or human health and welfare.

Neither the current Superfund law nor

the pending 1986 amendments to the Act

contain a statement of the legislation’s

principles or goals and objectives. The 1985

Committee Report (S. Rept. No. 11, 99th

Cong., 1st Sess., p. 3) accompanying the

bill approved by the Senate Environment

and Public Works Committee (S. 51) does

set forth what is said to be the Act’s ‘‘ma-

jor objective,” along with four supporting

“basic principles.’’” However, much of the

controversy and debate which continue to

swirl around the Superfund program re-

main a function of major differences of

opinion as to what ought, in fact, to be

the goals of this program and on how these

goals might be most effectively and effi-

ciently achieved.

No one disputes the need to remedy

hazardous substance releases from sites

which imminently threaten health and en-

vironment. But there is lots of debate over

what constitutes an imminent or signifi-

cant hazard, how much clean-up 1s suffi-

26 KENNETH S. KAMLET

cient, and what sort of balance should be

struck between making the best use of fi-

nite clean-up resources and optimizing the

clean-up of particular sites.

No one seriously debates the general

proposition that those who pollute should

pay. However, this principle becomes fuzzy

where the “‘polluting”’ activities were nei-

ther illegal nor recognized as polluting at

the time they occurred. It is no easy matter

to decide when measures intended to en-

hance deterrence and accountability end

up producing uncertainties so large and

potential liabilities so crushing that resis-

tance, delay, and counterattack seem more

attractive than compliance and coopera-

tion.

Finally, no one begrudges people the

right to be free of unreasonable chemical

hazards in their homes and workplaces and

the opportunity to play an informed role

in decisions which affect their health and

welfare. On the other hand, some fear that

undue public involvement in the process

could paralyze the Superfund program by

placing non-negotiable and unmeetable

demands for total clean-up in the path of

forward motion toward what is attainable.

I will discuss some of the specific ele-

ments and provisions of Superfund in light

of these issues and concerns which con-

tinue to be central features of the debate

in 1986 on reauthorization of the Act.

Basic Principles and Objectives

The four basic principles embodied in

Superfund, according to the Senate En-

vironment and Public Works Committee,

are:

(1) To provide ample Federal authority

for cleaning up releases of hazardous

substances;

(2) To assure that those responsible for

any damage. . . from hazardous sub-

stances bear the costs of their actions;

(3) To provide a fund to finance response

actions where a responsible party does

not clean up, cannot be found, or can-

not pay; and

(4) To provide adequate compensation to

those who have suffered economic,

health, natural resource, and other

damages.

Implementation of these principles pro-

motes, in the Environment Committee’s

view, the accomplishment of Superfund’s

major objective, which it describes as being:

“To provide an incentive to those who

manage hazardous substances or are re-

sponsible for contamination sites to avoid

releases and to make maximum effort to

clean-up or mitigate the effects of any such

release.”

Senator Alan Simpson’s (R-WY) “‘Ad-

ditional Views” (S. Rept., supra, pp. 75-

76) make clear that the issues are far from

so straightforward. He highlights three is-

sues. First, he cites his “‘overriding con-

cern,” that “Superfund may be asked to

do so many things that it will not be doing

its greatest task as expeditiously as it

might’”—namely, cleaning up hazardous

waste sites. Second, Senator Simpson voices

the concern that the Act’s approach to the

liability issue ‘“may well come (back) to

haunt us,” referring to the disturbing in-

dications that “‘transaction costs” (legal

fees, administrative costs, etc.) in some

Superfund cases are ‘‘approaching or sur-

passing the projected clean-up costs at

sites.” And third, Senator Simpson ex-

presses “great” concern over the pro-

posed insertion of ‘“‘Citizen Suit” language

which he sees as posing the potential to

disrupt the Superfund program without

there having been any showing that there

was a need for this new provision in the

first place.

Let us now turn to a discussion of Su-

perfund’s major issues considered from the

standpoint of each issue’s significance in

accomplishing one or more of the follow-

ing:

(1) Does it promote or impede the clean-

up of sites?

(2) Does it impair or enhance the work-

ability, efficiency, and effectiveness of

the Superfund program?

SUPERFUND 27

(3) Does it increase or decrease real pro-

tections for health and the environ-

ment?

Promoting Clean-Up

The dominant thrust of the original Su-

perfund law was to promote and advance

the clean-up of sites. It required parties to

provide prompt notice of releases (Sec.

103); it established comprehensive gov-

ernmental response authorities (Sec. 104),

enabling the government to take rapid

emergency removal action and later re-

cover costs from responsible parties, as

well as to select more extensive remedial

actions; it provided for abatement actions

to address imminent hazards (Sec. 106);

it established broad liability exposure for

responsible parties (Secs. 107, 302(d)),

hopefully providing an incentive to co-

operate with the government rather than

gambling on being overlooked; it specified

broad uses of the Fund (Sec. 111), en-

abling government intervention to accom-

plish needed action; and it authorized nat-

ural resource damage claims (Secs. 104,

111, 112) both against responsible parties

and the Fund to restore damaged natural

resources.

By contrast, the pending amendments

tend to deal much less with promoting site

clean-ups than with either eliminating per-

ceived inefficiencies in the existing process

or with expanding the scope of the pro-

gram.

In addition to some effort to pare back

on allowable uses of the Fund (e.g. to pay

natural resource damage restoration costs),

seemingly in an effort to focus Fund re-

sources on the task of cleaning up sites,

only a few of the proposed amendments

are really geared to promoting clean-up.

They include: the ‘“‘mandatory schedule”’

provision of the House bill; provisions

aimed at enabling response action con-

tractors (who do the actual clean-up work)

to obtain the liability insurance or indem-

nification necessary for them to operate;

and provisions aimed at facilitating the

formation of risk retention groups and

purchasing groups to acquire insurance

coverage in the absence of commercial in-

surance.

Probably the most controversial of these

amendments is the one establishing ‘‘man-

datory schedules’—an innovation which

has been vigorously opposed by the Ad-

ministration. Although carefully crafted

not to establish rigid deadlines for the total

completion of remedial actions and pre-

serving substantial administrative discre-

tion to set inspection, study, and clean-up

priorities, critics fear that this approach

will cause EPA to place excessive atten-

tion on bean-counting and meeting sched-

ules and too little on accomplishing high-

quality clean-ups and maximizing true

health protection. Critics are also con-

cerned that strict timetables, coupled with

new citizen suit authority, will cause a pro-

liferation of ‘“‘deadline”’ lawsuits resulting

in the diversion of EPA Superfund re-

sources to defending these suits.

I find the latter objection unpersuasive.

I don’t foresee a great flurry of citizen suits

in this area; citizen suits are among the

least burdensome to adjudicate; and the

mandatory deadline provision was drafted

to allow deadline suits to be brought very

infrequently. Although the concern about

‘““bean-counting”’ is a little harder to shrug

off, the embarrassingly limited number of

completed Superfund remedial actions in

the program’s more than five-year history

argues in favor of trying another ap-

proach.

Enhancing Program Workability

Fine-tuning the Superfund program to

enhance its efficiency and effectiveness has

clearly been one of the driving forces be-

hind the effort, beginning in 1984, to amend

and reauthorize the Superfund law. How

well some of the proposed amendments in

fact promote this objective is open to de-

bate, however.

28 KENNETH S. KAMLET

One “reform” in the category of im-

proving program workability is an effort

to narrow the scope of the Superfund pro-

gram by limiting permissible uses of the

Fund, presumably in order to focus Agency

priorities into the most critical areas. Re-

stricting access to the Fund was a response

to frequently voiced EPA assertions that

the Agency was capable of managing a

Superfund program no larger than $1 bil-

lion a year. Whether or not one accepted

this argument (and judging by the much

larger appropriations approved by the

House and the Senate, neither House of

Congress did), it was apparent that the

magnitude of the Superfund problem far

surpasses the availability of resources to

address it and that setting priorities was

essential.

The House and Senate bills conse-

quently prohibit Superfund response ac-

tion from being taken to address releases

of naturally occurring substances, such as

selenium and radon, in unaltered form;

releases, such as asbestos, from building

structures that result in exposure within a

facility; and releases of toxic metals into

water supply systems due to deterioration

of the system through ordinary use. The

Senate bill also prohibits use of Fund money

to pay natural resource damage claims in

any year that all of the Fund is deemed

by the President to be needed for response

to public health threats. In addition, the

House bill bars responses to releases re-

sulting exclusively from coal mining where

response action is covered under the Sur-

face Mine Control and Reclamation Act

of 1977. It also bars abatement actions in-

volving the release of registered pesticides

and establishes as a defense to citizen suits

the fact that a release was specifically cov-

ered by a Federal permit.

Additional amendments are aimed at

ensuring greater involvement by poten-

tially responsible parties (PRPs) in defin-

ing the scope of required clean-up studies

and remedial action and in limiting their

liability exposure in relation to other PRPs.

For example, the House bill allows PRPs

to conduct RI/FS studies, which deter-

mine the necessary scope of clean-up, in

appropriate circumstances; to be notified

by the Administrator of their PRP status

and of the identity of other PRPs as early

as possible before selection of a response

action (i.e. to facilitate negotiation among

PRPs); to be authorized by EPA, under

court-approved settlement agreements, to

carry out necessary response actions; and

to be provided with information by EPA

on the identity of other PRPs and on the

nature and volume of hazardous sub-

stances at a site, along with a volumetric

ranking of these substances, as a stimulant

of negotiations among the parties. The bill

also allows EPA to enter into covenants

not to sue with PRPs (as an inducement

to settle), to accept “‘cash-out’’ settle-

ments from de minimis PRP contributors

(to simplify negotiations), and to use ar-

bitration as a means of settling claims. It

also reaffirms the right of PRPs to pursue

actions for contribution or indemnity

against other PRPs and to seek contri-

bution protection (upon successfully re-

solving their own liability to the govern-

ment) against potential contribution actions

by other parties. It clarifies the authority

of the government to enter into “mixed

funding” agreements under which the Fund

and PRPs share certain clean-up costs. It

creates a right to obtain judicial review of

Superfund regulators and of intervention

by interested parties in clean-up-oriented

litigation, including citizen suits, but places

some limits on the right to pre-enforce-

ment judicial review.

One of the controversial provisions of

the present Superfund law, which the

House bill would make even more con-

troversial, is the so-called ‘‘fund balanc-

ing” provision of Section 104(C)(4). This

provision obliges the President to select

remedial actions which strike a “‘balance

between the need for protection of public

health . . . and the environment. . . and

the availability of amounts in the Fund

. . . to respond to other sites which...

may present a threat to public health...

or the environment, taking into consid-

eration the need for immediate action.”

SUPERFUND 29

For Fund-financed clean-ups, EPA has re-

lied on this authority to select remedial

actions which approach, but fall short of,

the level of protection afforded by oth-

erwise applicable Federal requirements to

which other clean-ups are subject. The

House bill would allow similar Fund-bal-

ancing to be applied to privately-financed

clean-ups. This amounts to the authority

to approve privately funded clean-ups

which fall short of normative clean-up

standards where the clean-up is deemed

disproportionately expensive or techni-

cally impracticable from an engineering

standpoint, or a lesser level of clean-up is

deemed to afford substantially equivalent

human health and environmental protec-

tion. I confess to some bafflement as to

(a) why it was considered necessary to ex-

tend a rationale which was designed to con-

serve a limited public fund to the private

sphere; and (b) how it will be possible in

practice to judge the practicability of pri-

vate sector actions using a public sector

yardstick.

While this amendment may simply have

been intended to promote more cost-ef-

fective utilization of Superfund resources,

whether private or public, the mechanism

adopted could turn out to create a number

of new inefficiencies.

Another readily understandable, but

nevertheless problematic, provision of the

House bill is one which specifies that clean-

up standards may be applied only to re-

leases from the concerned Superfund site

and cannot be applied to ‘“‘contamination

from other sources.’’ Where other sources

contribute to the problem, it is unclear

how remedial action is ever to be accom-

plished—especially since there appears to

be no authority provided to use Fund

money to make up the difference in cost.

If PRPs account for 50% of the contam-

ination, the House bill would allow them

to be assessed only half of the clean-up

costs—with the rest remaining unreme-

diated unless the state were able and will-

ing to supply the balance.

I will mention one final provision of the

House bill which is of interest in this con-

nection. For on-site (in-place) clean-up

actions, the bill would eliminate the need

to obtain most Federal or state permits.

Although a state would still be able to

require permits for state standards it had

notified EPA of during the RI/FS study,

it would lose the right to require permits

for any requirements not covered in such

a notification and, in any case, would have

no more than thirty days after completion

of the final remedial engineering design to

issue the permit (or the permit require-

ment would be deemed waived). More-

over, for response actions involving trans-

fer of materials to a facility with a final

RCRA permit, no state or local require-

ment could be applied to the transfer or

disposal activity.

These restrictions on permitting and

regulation are probably defensible on the

basis that bureaucratic red-tape should not

be able to slow down the clean-up of an

imminent hazard. However, there is no

comparable justification for not assuring

full substantive compliance. Frequent ex-

amples of inadequate or non-existent co-

ordination, even among program offices

within EPA, don’t inspire great confi-

dence that adequate coordination and

substantive compliance will in fact occur.

Expanded Protections for Health and

Environment

The House Superfund bill devotes ex-

tensive coverage to the issues of Emer-

gency Planning and Community Right to

Know (Title III) and Oil Spill Liability and

Compensation (Title IV). The Senate bill

has no counterpart oil spill provision, but

it does establish similar (albeit less elab-

orate) hazardous substance notification and

inventory requirements. These hazardous

substance emergency provisions were

clearly stimulated by the Union Carbide

chemical plant catastrophe in Bhopal, In-

dia, in December 1984, and by a rash of

U.S. accidents involving hazardous chem-

icals the following summer, many of them

30 KENNETH S. KAMLET

centered in the Kanawha Valley of West

Virginia. The most controversial Super-

fund issues in this context have related to

whether there is a need for an on-going

inventory of operational and accidental

releases from chemical facilities (as op-

posed to simply planning for and reporting

of emergency releases); the need to ad-

dress no more than a limited list of acutely

hazardous chemicals (as opposed to also

addressing the most dangerous chronic

chemical hazards); and where to draw the

line between providing necessary infor-

mation to governmental emergency re-

sponse officials and public health au-

thorities and safeguarding commercially

valuable trade secrets. An expansive House

bill, covering both chronically hazardous

and acutely hazardous chemicals, was ul-

timately approved on the House floor by

a one-vote margin.

Both bills also eliminate the bias in the

present law against “off-site transport,”

recognizing that in some cases off-site

remedies may be preferable to on-site ones.

They also encourage the design of removal

actions in a way which contributes to ef-

ficient performance of long-term remedial

action. And they require cost-effective-

ness evaluations of remedial actions to re-

flect long-term as well as short-term costs.

The House bill goes further to specify an

explicit preference for remedial actions

which significantly reduce the volume,

toxicity, or mobility of a hazardous sub-

stance. These changes should help offset

the penny wise, pound foolish tendency to

prefer inexpensive short-term remedies

which have no lasting effectiveness and

wind up costing more in the long run.

Another amendment found in both bills

may have unpredicted consequences. Sec-

tion 104(c)(3) bars Federal remedial ac-

tions at Superfund sites unless the host

state first agrees to assure the availability

of a hazardous waste disposal facility suit-

able to accomplish any required off-site

treatment or disposal. The amendments

would require states to guarantee ade-

quate capacity and access for the treat-

ment or disposal for all of that state’s haz-

ardous wastes for the next twenty years.

Although this approach may give useful

impetus in some cases to the development

of sorely needed hazardous waste man-

agement capacity, it could have a negative

‘““double-whammy” impact in other cases.

That is, less responsible states which are

unable or unwilling to make provision for

managing their hazardous wastes will be

penalized by not having their Superfund

sites cleaned up. But their citizens will be

penalized twice: once, by the neglect of

their state; later, by the retribution of the

Federal government. I have some trouble

with an environmental sanction which

leaves the environment worse off when it’s

invoked than it was before.

Both bills also strengthen the controls

on Federally-owned Superfund sites and

create a new citizen suit authority. I view

both of these as positive steps, likely to

stimulate more good than harm.

The bills also make somewhat greater

provision for citizen and state participa-

tion in important site-specific Superfund

actions and decisions.

Conclusion

It could probably be fairly said that there

is something for almost everyone to dislike

in the pending Superfund bills. And stu-

dents of government and public policy will

be horrified at the complex and convo-

luted monstrosity wrought by the world’s

greatest deliberative body.

I believe Superfund will be reauthorized

in 1986 because the alternative is simply

not an option. But, I am not optimistic

that it will be reauthorized much before

the November elections nine months from

now. A delay that long would have cata-

strophic consequences. A large propor-

tion of EPA’s specialized Superfund staff

would have to be fired. The contracts on

which the momentum, and much of the

institutional memory, of the program de-

pend would have to be terminated. The

phased sequence of site studies, alterna-

RESPONSIBLE TOXICS MANAGEMENT 31

tives, evaluations, remedial planning, and

construction work would be thrown into

chaos. And the inexorable seepage of

deadly chemicals would continue una-

bated.

It would be ironic and unfortunate in-

deed if, after coming to grips with most of

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 31-36, March 1986

the thorny technical details of program im-

plementation, the effort to enact a new

and reinvigorated Superfund law were to

founder over idealogical tax policy differ-

ences having nothing to do with hazardous

chemicals, industry responsibility, or hu-

man health and welfare.

Responsible Toxics Management:

The Silicon Valley Experience

David Morell, Ph.D.

Special Assistant for Toxics Management,

Office of the County Executive

Santa Clara County, California

Introduction

What better place to seek balance be-

tween technology and the environment than

in Silicon Valley? Here is the heart and

soul of modern American technology in

this post-industrial age. Here, too, in the

early 1980’s, we learned that production

of electronics equipment and semiconduc-

tors and computers has serious environ-

mental problems. And here too, in the

mid-1980s, we see an innovative attempt

to find the path to responsible toxics man-

agement—a pattern of procedures and de-

cisions and expenditures that balance toxic

risks to public health; growing public cred-

ibility in both government and industry;

long-term availability of groundwater re-

sources; and the continued vitality of the

electronics industry and the Santa Clara

Valley’s economy.

What lessons does this experience hold

for the rest of America?

A Clean Industry

Part of the subsequent problem of pub-

lic fear over toxic risk in Silicon Valley has

its roots in our own expectations. High

tech was different. Silicon Valley had it;

every place else wanted it. This was to be

the magic saviour of America’s rusting old

industrial base—our means of transition

from the past into the future.

And high tech was supposed to be a

clean industry. We all fell victim to the

rhetoric of “clean rooms,” seduced by the

imagery of campus-like industrial facilities

in contrast to traditional factories with their

tall stacks belching smoke. We truly be-

lieved that high tech was different.

32 DAVID MORELL

When we awoke to the contrary reality,

we were confused and angry, full of dis-

trust. Risks to health from environmental

toxics may indeed be very low in Silicon

Valley—at least outside the workplace.

Compare Silicon Valley’s ambient toxics

to New Jersey or Galveston or Niagara

Falls or Los Angeles; they’re lower, by

far. But such risks are now seen to be

present in the Santa Clara Valley—they

are not zero. So the people of Santa Clara

County in 1981 suddenly felt that they had

been had. Their normal, human reaction

was thus to act, even to over-react.

‘“Here the Smokestacks Point Down”

In December 1981—December 7, iron-

ically—we all learned that high tech in Sil-

icon Valley was not so clean. And we

began to use the phrase: “here the

smokestacks point down.” A massive leak

of industrial solvents from an _ under-

ground waste tank of the Fairchild Cam-

era and Instrument Company, in San Jose,

had leaked into nearby groundwater: 60,000

gallons of TCA, TCE, DCE . . . a whole

toxic chemical soup. This groundwater was

used for drinking. Almost exactly half of

the valley’s 1.4 million residents drink

groundwater. Several wells of the nearby

Great Oaks Water Company, serving some

65,000 people, were found to be contam-

inated. Great Oaks Well #13 was highly

polluted, and had to be closed immedi-

ately.

Though these wells were closed, panic

was loosed on the community. How much

health damage had been done? A subse-

quent State of California epidemiological

study in the Los Paseos neighborhood,

across the street from the now-closed Fair-

child factory, found statistically-signifi-

cant excessive levels of birth defects and

miscarriages during the period of unde-

tected well contamination (when people

were actually drinking this contaminated

water). Unfortunately, the scientists could

not prove the contaminated water was the

cause of these tragic health damages, since

other too-high levels were found in a con-

trol group nearby where people drink water

from other, demonstrably-clean wells.

Were the toxics at Los Paseos and nearby

in the air? Was the damage due to occu-

pational exposure? More studies are now

underway, but the fear and anger have

spread from 1981 on.

As we looked elsewhere, we found other

leaks—lots of contaminated groundwater.

The huge IBM complex, near Fairchild,

had a huge plume of TCA, Freon, and

other chemicals. Yet, when industry later

removed many of these tanks, at IBM and

all over the valley, around literally scores

of groundwater contamination incidents,

nearly all of these tanks were found to

have full mechanical and structural integ-

rity. The groundwater contamination had

apparently come from spills onto the

ground: “sloppy housekeeping.” Tank

truck drivers were under such pressure to

deliver pure solvents, for example, that

they rinsed their hoses onto the ground to

eliminate road dirt and even water vapor.

What harm could it do? We have learned

since that even just a few ounces of solvent

can produce a huge groundwater plume

measured in parts per billion.

As we looked, we found—and all the

familiar names were there: Fairchild and

IBM, HP and Intel, AMD... . all of them.

By January 1986, we had documented some

70 episodes of groundwater contamination

from industrial solvents in Silicon Valley,

plus 36 from other industrial compounds

and 540 from the 6,000 fuel tanks. We are

now discovering 5 to 10 new episodes per

day as we look intensively through

groundwater monitoring.Some drinking

water wells have had to be closed. Others

are still in service, pumping water with

low, but detectable levels of organic chem-

ical contamination. EPA has proposed 19

sites in Santa Clara County for inclusion

on Superfund’s National Priority List—

more sites than in any other county in the

U.S. Without doubt, we have a significant

environmental problem in this technolog-

ical center. And we have a public percep-

RESPONSIBLE TOXICS MANAGEMENT 33

tion of environmental risk that far exceeds

what anyone would have predicted.

Initial Responses

In Santa Clara County, the extent and

the quality of response to these environ-

mental problems have been astounding,

by comparison to anywhere else in the U.S.

This response has come in a balanced

manner from government, industry, and

the general public. Perhaps this balance—

in tune certainly with Charles Lindbergh’s

philosophy of a balance between technol-

ogy and environmental quality—helps ex-

plain our relative success, and provides a

basis of optimism for future success in re-

sponsible toxics management—another

prime Lindbergh value.

Government has responded at all levels,

with some success . . . and some confu-

sion. The electronics industry has spent in

excess of $110 million already on cleanup—

identifying plumes, groundwater extrac-

tion, tank removal—and on prevention—

installing new tanks and monitoring sys-

tems.

In 1983, local governments throughout

the area combined to formulate a pow-

erful new Hazardous Materials Storage

Ordinance. Based on work by an ad hoc

task force composed of fire marshals, city

managers, industry representatives, envi-

ronmental and labor group leaders, elected

officials approved a model ordinance. This

ordinance was adopted within one year for

implementation in all 15 municipalities in

the county. The ordinance sets strict stan-

dards for control of all underground tanks,

and of above-ground storage of all haz-

ardous materials. Control over under-

ground tanks spread statewide in Califor-

nia in 1984, based on large measure on the

experience in Santa Clara County. In late

1984, the national hazardous waste regu-

latory law (RCRA) was amended to in-

clude a new section on regulation of un-

derground tanks across the country. In

1985, controls on above-ground storage of

hazardous materials also spread statewide

in California, again drawing on the Santa

Clara experience.

As part of implementing the ordinance,

firms have drilled literally hundreds of

groundwater monitoring wells—thereby

finding more and more plumes of contam-

ination. Cleanups are underway, inade-

quate by some perspectives but astound-

ing by others.

In early 1984, in the midst of all this

activity, EPA began a special new cross-

media risk assessment project: the Inte-

grated Environmental Management Proj-

ect or IEMP. This effort is designed to

compare toxic risk quantitatively—trisk

from different chemical pollutants, indif-

ferent pathways (drinking water, air), and

from different sources. This project lays

the basis for a new style of responsible

toxics management, first in Santa Clara

County and ultimately nationally. Based

on a local risk assessment, priorities can

be set for decisions on regulating and man-

aging groundwater, THMS, air quality, and

so on. EPA’s draft HEMP report issued in

September 1985 found risk from chlori-

nation of surface water supplies of drink-

ing water, and from air toxics, to be gen-

erally about the same as similar risks in

other urban areas: risks were quite small,

though noticeable. Risks from exposure

to contaminated groundwater in Santa

Clara County were found to be much

smaller than risks from air toxics or sur-

face water supplies. That is, groundwater

contamination in this area, and perhaps

elsewhere, does not necessarily equal

drinking water risk. The two are related,

but not identical.

How can this be? With hundreds of toxic

leaks or spills in the Silicon Valley, why is

public exposure to contaminated water

supplies—and therefore risk—so low?

In essence, three factors are at work.

First, several actions already are being

taken by government and by industry to

intervene in the risk/exposure pathway to

protect the public. Regular monitoring

takes place at all 300 drinking water wells

serving large water systems. The county

34 DAVID MORELL

contains 19 such large public systems, which

together serve the overwhelming propor-

tion of Santa Clara’s residents. Their wells

have been monitored at least quarterly since

1985 to detect the presence of organic

chemicals. Wells located near known

plumes of groundwater pollution are mon-

itored monthly or even weekly. Since risks

to health (e.g. cancer) are associated with

chronic, long-term exposure to these kinds

of chemicals at levels typically measured

at a few parts per billion, regular moni-

toring provides an essential protective

shield. If significant contamination is de-

tected, the well can be closed or its water

treated prior to use. A pilot program to

monitor hundreds of private water supply

wells began in 1985.

In addition, control and cleanup of ex-

isting plumes of groundwater contamina-

tion help lessen risk. Groundwater mon-

itoring wells—IBM alone now has more

than 300—define the spread of each plume

and determine its levels of contamination.

Extraction wells remove contaminated

groundwater and purge it of its volatile

organic chemical contaminants, occasion-

ally by carbon filtration but normally by

aeration in storm sewers. The water, mi-

nus its contamination, is then discharged

into San Francisco Bay. Industry has al-

ready expended in excess of $100 million

on all of these cleanup actions since 1981.

In contrast, federal Superfund in 1984 al-

located a $1 million grant to accelerate

groundwater cleanup. As of early 1986,

however, this money was essentially still

mired in the bureaucracy, not yet contrib-

uting substantially to any cleanup.

Second, the groundwater aquifers in

Santa Clara are complex, and provide a

further basis for protection of public health.

To simplify, in much of the valley a thick

layer of clay divides shallow aquifers (where

the contaminant plumes exist) from the

deeper aquifers (from which all of the pub-

lic supply wells draw their water). In sum,

the leaks are shallow but public water sup-

ply wells are deep. Geography and hydro-

geology do matter. Unfortunately, several

thousand abandoned agricultural wells

pierce this clay layer, potentially allowing

some contaminants to reach the deeper

drinking water supplies. Facing this chal-

lenge, the independent Santa Clara Valley

Water District allocated $800,000 to begin

to identify the old wells, and to seal them

to preclude the downward migration of

the chemicals.

Third, when cancer is involved, the best

available science tells us that dilution less-

ens risk. As opposed to conventional kinds

of air and water pollutants, and to non-

cancer health effects from toxics, we be-

lieve that no exposure thresholds apply to

cancer risk (the so-called “‘one molecule

theory’). That is, exposure to a small

amount of a carcinogen is bad, and ex-

posure to more is worse—with no thresh-

old level below which zero risk/absolute

safety apply. Thus the dilution of these

organic solvents into literally billions of

gallons of pristine water in underground

aquifers lessens risks to public health. Since

drinking water wells typically pump si-

multaneously from several different lev-

els, they further dilute contaminated water

with further pristine water. As a result,

the gap between groundwater contami-

nation and drinking water risk—a real gap,

if one not always perceived by a frightened

public—diminishes further with dilution.

Does all this warrant complacency? No.

Definitely not. Several vulnerabilities and

issues are now emerging to dominate the

agenda for responsible toxics manage-

ment:

(1) Private wells are doubly vulnerable.

They are shallow (where contaminant

plumes are found), rather than deep.

And except for the county’s pilot pro-

gram, they are unmonitored rather

than monitored. Santa Clara County

in 1986 is mounting an effort to mon-

itor over 1,000 of the 5,000 or so pri-

vate wells as a way to lessen this vul-

nerability.

The underground tank and above

ground storage ordinances covering

industry’s management of its hazard-

ous materials need to be fully imple-

—_

RESPONSIBLE TOXICS MANAGEMENT 35

mented to protect the public. Given

the fragmented situation with most city

fire department’s operating their own

independent programs, implementa-

tion remains somewhat unknown. As

a result, the Santa Clara County In-

tergovernmental Council has devised

a questionnaire to determine the sta-

tus of ordinance implementation in

each jurisdiction.

(3) Classic resource issues are beginning

to become more evident in responsi-

ble toxics management. Most strik-

ingly, the groundwater cleanup ex-

traction wells are presently pumping,

and discharging to the Bay, some 19

million gallons per day of water (once

the contaminants disperse to the air,

indeed it’s perfectly pure water). This

process was derisively termed “pump

and dump” in a late 1985 House of

Representatives Committee hearing

in San Jose. This is an immense vol-

ume of water. In a state where “‘water

equals politics”, such discharge is un-

likely to be tolerable perpetually. Yet

cleanup of contamination by extrac-

tion wells inexorably leads to such re-

sults when the contamination is pres-

ent in only 5 or 10 parts per billion.

(4) We need to come to grips with how

clean is clean? (Or how safe is ac-

ceptable and affordable?) Can we de-

vise a process to determine that level

of toxic contamination of ground-

water (or air) beyond which it is tech-

nically infeasible or economically un-

acceptable to proceed further with

cleanup actions? And will a frightened

citizenry accept such a determination

(given the zero-threshold concept of

cancer risk)? Again, balance is essen-

tial—but frustratingly elusive. Work

underway in the Santa Clara cleanup

in 1986 should provide the nation’s first,

fumbling answers to this conundrum.

(5) Who pays for cleanup? Polluters, state

tax payers, federal Superfund?

(6) Managing the aquifer—How can we

deal with toxic contamination, and

cleanup, of the groundwater basin as

a whole rather than simply chasing

hundreds of plumes and then pumping

dozens of them through extraction

wells?

As noted, we’re beginning to come to

grips with these issues:

—private well monitoring

—Storage ordinance status. . . pressing

for data through the questionnaire

studies of drinking water

—treatment/chloramination/risk to the

public

—exploring creation of a fund for over-

all aquifer management rather than

plume chasing alone.

The battle ahead pits pursuit of stan-

dards against the values of nondegrada-

tion, and frames the debate over respon-

sible toxics management in the face of

continuing scientific ambiguity standards

offer clarity to industry and the public.

Unfortunately, they tend to mask the fact

that cancer risk exists below standards, at

any level of exposure to carcinogens. Stan-

dards for individual chemicals mask pos-

sible dangers from synergism. And a cyn-

ical angry public is not prepared to allow

polluters to pollute groundwater—“‘oops,

sorry’ —so long as they don’t violate es-

tablished health-based standards. So the

issues are not risk, per se—but equity and

distrust and power and “who pays” de-

cisions—classic political economy.

Can we achieve zero exposure and zero

risk (true nondegradation)? No way! This

is simply impossible. But this remains the

key public policy goal, and the basis for

rebuilding government credibility. Three

tests emerge in pursuit of this goal:

—technical feasibility

—costs of cleanup

—benefits in risk reduction, resource

conservation, and achievement of

other values

In sum, a federal paradigm for risk as-

sessment along the lines of the IEMP—

plus standards—can be combined with lo-

cal authority to make local decisions about

36 GLENN PAULSON AND CYNTHIA HERLEIKSON

acceptable risk. An informed public can

openly weigh the benefits—and costs—of

toxic cleanup. Standards can be used to

ensure adequate public health protection

nationwide, while local areas can go fur-

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 36-43, March 1986

ther in both prevention and cleanup. As

a result, a balance between risk and cost,

safety and equity can be accomplished. That

is, responsible toxics management can b

achieved. |

From Conflict to Cleanup:

The Clean Sites Approach

Dr. Glenn Paulson

Cynthia Herleikson

Vice President, Clean Sites, Inc., 1199 North Fairfax Street,

Alexandria, Virginia 22314

ABSTRACT

Although the Superfund law was enacted specifically to provide a mechanism for pro-

moting the cleanup of the nation’s hazardous waste sites, many factors still hindered the

site remediation process. Some pertained to the complexity of implementing the new

program while others related to the nature of the problems encountered in defining specific

site characteristics and in identifying and implementing proper solutions. Clean Sites, Inc.

was created in response to a study which identified specific needs in the site cleanup

process. This not-for-profit organization has as its sole purpose, the facilitation of hazardous

waste site cleanups by encouraging and assisting private party cleanup efforts. By providing

negotiation and settlement services, technical reviews and analyses and project manage-

ment skills, Clean Sites is able to assist in the cleanup process from beginning to end.

Specific benefits which CSI can provide to site cleanups are discussed. Among these are

cost and time savings to both responsible parties and the government and independent

and unbiased assistance which assures that all parties concerns are addressed. After nearly

two years of existence, Clean Sites has made significant progress at many sites. Current

activities and plans for future activities are summarized.

In the past, our nation has carried out

and even condoned some hazardous waste

disposal practices that we all would now

consider bizarre. Over time, we have im-

proved, but storage, handling and final de-

struction or disposal practices still leave

much to be desired.

In response to growing public concern

about the environmental and Public health

threats posed by abandoned hazardous

waste disposal sites found in every part of

the United States, Congress passed, in 1980,

the Comprehensive Environmental Re-

sponse Compensation and Liability Act,

popularly known as “Superfund”. The

creation of Superfund came amid high

CLEAN SITES 37

hopes that it would be a major step for-

ward in providing protection against the

nation’s thousands of abandoned hazard-

ous waste sites. In particular, grave con-

cern existed concerning the threats such

sites pose to surface water, ground water,

and public health.

Not surprisingly, hazardous waste

cleanup has proven to be a far larger and

more complicated task than many imag-

ined in 1980. The difficulty encountered

reflects in part the fact that the problem

of abandoned hazardous waste site cleanup

developed as a consequence of many years

of ignorance, neglect and, in some cases,

intentional wrongdoing. The hazardous

waste problem is also a result of the

technological revolution that improved

the standard of living for Americans but

also had some unintended consequences

for both the environment and _ public

health.

Ironically, the problem also reflects a

dramatic improvement in scientific ability

to detect minute quantities of potentially

hazardous substances—down to parts per

billion and even lower.

These improved capabilities leave the

scientific community struggling to define

the precise health and environmental

threats—both short and long term—from

minute quantities of hazardous sub-

stances. In turn, the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) is presented with

a very difficult job: proceeding with waste

site cleanup at a time when new research

is changing the nation’s understanding of

the nature of the requirements for cleanup.

EPA estimates there are about 20,000

potentially hazardous waste sites in the

United States, and that as many as 2,000

or more may be serious enough to warrant

placing on its Superfund National Priori-

ties List (NPL) of the nation’s worst sites

(see Figure 1). It may cost the government

nearly $23 billion to clean up sites on the

list. (Other estimates of both sites and costs

are even higher.) Currently, about 850 sites

have been placed on the list.

Consider the Superfund process. After

a site has been placed on the NPL, it must

be determined whether the site will move

toward cleanup through government en-

forcement action, or voluntary action in-

volving the parties responsible for pollu-

tion at the site (see Figure 2). When the

government decides a cleanup is needed

to protect public health and the environ-

ment, the potentially responsible parties

may negotiate a settlement among them-

selves that paves the way for them to con-

duct a governmentally approved cleanup.

LONG-TERM CLEANUP PROJECTIONS

1,741

ae one

a TOW wR

8 PR Rcd

LAs TE

Al on es

fe aS a

228 (gPRTETT

Number 9

6 S

marr

= —$-N

1 rood

1 sab WN

1982 1985 1990

Emergency

Cleanups

fe coi td

Lae he RET

1982 1985 1990 1982 1985 1990

Engineering Construction®

Studies

* includes commitments for construction by responsibie

parties as part of administrative or judicial enforcement action.

Fig. 1

38 GLENN PAULSON AND CYNTHIA HERLEIKSON

THE NPL SITE PROCESS

SITE ACTIVITY

Remedial

Site Feasibility Action

Ranking Study (Surface)

Remedial Remedial Remedial

Investigation Design Action

(Groundwater)

SUPERFUND PROCESS

Identifying Government.

Responsible Parties

Develops Evidence

Negotiation of

Agreement

Government Recovery

Technical Review Litigation

Fig. 2

If the responsible parties do not respond

in a timely manner, EPA may undertake

the cleanup, and then later sue the re-

sponsible parties to recover funds spent

by the government.

It is important to note that the govern-

ment has a powerful enforcement tool at

its disposal, “‘joint and several lability.”

This means that any single individual or

company that dumped hazardous sub-

stances at a site can be held liable for the

bulk of the cleanup costs.

In short, the Superfund law, and gen-

eral government policy (as well as recent

court actions) all work to encourage vol-

untary hazardous waste site cleanups

wherever possible. Moreover, a basic sense

of fairness makes it seem reasonable that

the parties contributing to the problem

should also contribute to the solution.

Progress has, however, been painfully

slow. Federal and state officials involved

in this issue report a common dilemma.

Even while the general public demands

vigorous Superfund activity there is sig-

nificant local opposition to many site

cleanup plans. Another impediment to ac-

tion is the highly complex nature of cleanup

regulation, often involving several differ-

ent layers of government.

This situation is paralyzing action at many

sites, particularly at multi-party sites where

there may be scores or even hundreds of

potentially responsible parties, or PRPs.

Such parties potentially responsible for

waste at a site can include those who pro-

duced the waste and those who trans-

ported it, as well as site owners and op-

erators. They can include a wide range of

private individuals, corporations, and

agencies of local, state and federal gov-

ernment.

It was amid this background that Clean

Sites was established in May, 1984, as an

independent, non-profit corporation with

a single objective: to help accelerate the

cleanup of hazardous waste sites by en-

couraging cost-effective, voluntary private

party cleanups. How did this happen?

In the summer of 1983, a group of cor-

porate and environmental leaders and for-

mer public servants gathered under the

auspices of The Conservation Foundation

to examine the obstacles blocking volun-

tary cleanups and to try to determine how

the process might be expedited. This group

investigated several sites where remedial

actions were being planned or were ac-

tually under way. Their goal was to find

out which approaches worked, which did

CLEAN SITES 39

not, and whether experience could lead to

more practical solutions.

The panel concluded the United States

lacked a single, comprehensive mecha-

nism that is specifically designed to ade-

quately manage the cleanup of individual

hazardous waste sites over the long term.

They discovered that the skills that were

missing from cleanup actions were not so

much technical skills as they were mana-

gerial capability properly focused on the

various pieces of the problem. Specific

questions of legal liability were also found

to be significant stumbling blocks to agree-

ments. More importantly, the panel found

what was missing was an equitable and

effective process that would encourage re-

sponsible parties to allocate cleanup costs

among themselves through negotiations.

Because the group was searching for new

answers to hazardous waste cleanup, it

looked for solutions outside the bounds of

government and taxpayer funds. The study

panel suggested setting up a new mecha-

nism to reduce the types of conflict found

at sites, amechanism that would work spe-

cifically to enhance collaboration among

the parties responsible for the waste and

to facilitate cooperation among all the in-

volved parties. This resulted in the for-

mation of Clean Sites, Inc. (CSI).

Because any new institution that pro-

poses to play an active role in such a com-

plex protess can be misunderstood, it is

important to emphasize what Clean Sites

is and is not.

* CSlis an independent, non-profit, non-

partisan organization committed to

protecting public health and the en-

vironment (see Figure 3). We depend

on financial support from founda-

tions, corporations, organized labor

and private citizens. We also depend

on businesses, public interest groups

and academic institutions for donated

personnel and expert advice.

CSI is a way to extend EPA’s effec-

tiveness in site cleanups. CSI is a fa-

cilitator to help the government, and

the parties potentially responsible for

pollution at a site, accomplish settle-

ments that are in the public interest.

CSI is structured to enter the cleanup

process along its entire spectrum. Fig-

ure 3 shows the number of sites at

various entry points for CSI as of late

1985.

CSI is an additional source of profes-

sional and technical expertise to pro-

vide guidance and interpretation con-

cerning proper cleanup, and an

independent source of project man-

agement talent to direct the agreed-

upon cleanup.

CSI is NOT a replacement for, but

rather a complement to, the EPA. CSI

will not substitute for government in

deciding what is the proper level of

cleanup.

CSI is NOT a replacement for a strong

Superfund law. In fact, CSI’s success

will depend on an amply-funded Su-

CSI POINTS OF ENTRY

\F--\/

Ranking Interim Remedial Measures (IRM)

Remedial Remedial

Design (RD) Action (RA)

*Texas Regional Sites Found Along Entire Spectrum

Fig. 3

40 GLENN PAULSON AND CYNTHIA HERLEIKSON

perfund backed up by strong and con-

sistent federal enforcement activities

that provide the essential incentives

to voluntary cleanup.

CSI will NOT be a source of funds to

pay for site cleanup—potentially re-

sponsible parties and the government

must be that source.

Finally, let me emphasize that CSI is

NOT the sole answer to the nation’s

hazardous waste problems. We are

now involved in various kinds of ac-

tive work at 36 sites. Our ultimate

goal is to be active at 60 sites by our

third year of existence. Yet, even this

level of effort cannot address the ma-

jority of sites the nation hopes to clean

up during this period (see Figure 4).

In effect, Clean Sites is a mechanism to

focus additional resources on the hazard-

ous waste problem. CSI provides a chan-

nel for bringing new resources together,

and targeting them on specific projects that

the government might not otherwise be

able to address in the near term. In doing

so, CSI can help shorten the time between

the identification of a problem and the

implementation of its solution (see Figure

3}.

We believe that the models and meth-

odologies we are using and developing at

Clean Sites can be extremely effective in

facilitating private party cleanups. CSI can

save the parties substantial time and effort

in the legal and administrative activities

needed to achieve a governmentally ap-

proved, environmentally sound settlement

(see Figures 6 and 7).

To help achieve such settlements, CSI

will provide the means to facilitate poten-

tially responsible parties coming together.

CSI can provide private conference facil-

ities and teams of negotiating experts at

the conference facilities in our Alexan-

dria, Virginia, headquarters. Of equal im-

portance, negotiations are also taking place

at other appropriate locations, often in the

areas where the sites are located.

Remedial cleanup projects done quickly

will not replace cleanups done well. Af-

fected citizens, industry, and government

are all concerned that remedies employed

to rehabilitate a site must protect the pub-

lic health and environment. CSI has avail-

able to it—both in-house and through

consultants—a technical review and com-

pliance capability that is both independ-

ent, and of the highest quality. This en-

sures that remedies meet the standards of

a changing technology.

CSI can implement approved cleanup

remedies through its project management

teams. All projects are subject to stringent

DEFINING THE HAZARDOUS SITE PROBLEM

19,668 20,000

ek ig et et wt eth ot ot ot et A)

aNWALUIANOOO .NWLUIMDNDBOO

Number

of Sites

(Thousands)

\N 850 WW

Pee Ee eae eee N Qari eae pmpeta WSS @

12/31/84 9/30/85 12/31/64 9/30/85 12/31/84 9/30/85 9/5/85

Inventory Sites Sites Sites

of Sites Assessed Inspected on NPL

Actual Projected

Fig. 4

CLEAN SITES 41

CAN CLEAN SITES REDUCE THE COST OF CLEANUP?

Fund -

Transaction Costs: Recovery

) Industry

Government

QQ“

WLLL

Technical Costs:

Industry

Government

Construction Costs:

Industry

@ Government

Clean Sites

Settlement

Typical

Settlement

Wa:

MSS

With the Conservative Assumption That Transaction Costs Are

Amounting to One Half of the Total Costs of NPL Sites

Then Full Clean Sites Involvement Can Help Achieve These Savings:

Fund %Saved CSI Savings

Transaction 50% 50-90% 25-45%

Technical 15% 40-70% 7-10%

Construction 35% 20-40% 7-14%

Total 100% 39-69%

Fig. 5

quality assurance/quality control require-

ments, as well as other standards.

Overall, CSI is becoming an increas-

ingly effective repository of settlement,

managerial, and technical expertise—al-

lowing the knowledge gained through

several cleanups to be stored in one in-

stitution, digested, used again by us,

communicated for use by others.

At the root of CSI is the assumption

that the private sector has developed the

experience to carry out complex projects

in a safe, well-managed and cost-effective

manner. Industry has many resources—

managerial as well as material—that often

permit it to accomplish projects at less cost

but with the same quality as the public

CLEAN-UP AND TRANSACTION COSTS

25 PRPs

EPA Private Party csi

$6.9 Million

$8.8 Million

$16.2 Million &) Clean-Up

©) Transaction

Fig. 6

sector. In the waste site cleanup process,

this can mean savings in construction,

technical and transaction costs (see Fig-

ures 5, 6, and 7).

CSI can also reduce the cost of getting

an approved settlement for potentially re-

sponsible parties. These transaction costs

can mount up quickly and contribute little

to getting the site cleaned up. Potentially

responsible parties can waste millions of

dollars duplicating each other’s efforts to

attribute cleanup cost liability.

Conserving public resources is equally

important. Agencies face heavy demands

on their personnel and financial resources.

Using government funds to pursue poten-

tially responsible parties through litigation

is not the most cost-effective or quickest

path to cleanup, especially when settle-

ment is possible.

Allocating costs for site cleanup is a dif-

ficult task requiring good faith negotia-

tions among all the responsible parties.

Issues of fairness, technological and sci-

entific feasibility and economic viability

become major factors during discussions.

Potentially responsible parties will be re-

luctant to undertake voluntary cleanups if

they do not believe the outcome of ne-

gotiations will be fair.

42 GLENN PAULSON AND CYNTHIA HERLEIKSON

CLEAN-UP AND TRANSACTION COSTS

100 PRPs

EPA

Private Party CSI

GP WW,

$7.6 Million

$10.2 Million

ii [) Clean-Up

$24.3 Million C( Transaction

Fig. 7

CSI can offer a more cost-effective pro-

cedure that allows responsible parties more

involvement in the remedial solution at a

site, while still meeting government stan-

dards. CSI, in providing a neutral territory

and skilled negotiators, can help assure

affected parties their views will be heard

and addressed.

As I’ve already discussed, many site

cleanups are lengthy, costly, and complex

projects; some are more simple. The basic

Superfund process outlined by the EPA is

a multi-step one (see Figure 2).

* Ifa site is thought to pose a long-term

threat, it is given a hazard ranking

score, based on its threat to the sur-

rounding population and its ground

water, surface water, soil, and air. If

a site is judged sufficiently hazardous,

it is placed on the National Priorities

List.

Any site cleanup must include com-

prehensive scientific and technical

studies to determine the full facts and

best means of proceeding. The re-

medial investigation involves a field

study that determines the nature and

extent of the contamination. The fea-

sibility study then evaluates the in-

formation obtained in the remedial

investigation in order to determine the

proper, cost-effective response that

assures a site cleanup that adequately

protects public health and the envi-

ronment.

* The next step, the remedial design,

establishes the engineering plan nec-

essary to remedy threats or potential

threats from a hazardous waste site.

The remedial action is the physical

work at the site involving implemen-

tation of the appropriate cleanup op-

tions. |

If ground water is threatened, long-

term monitoring, pumping, and treat-

ing of that water may be necessary.

In such a complex situation, effective,

positive interaction among technical ex-

perts, responsible parties, government

agencies and affected citizens will char-

acterize successful cleanups. Carrying out

this sort of project is a challenge requiring

advanced managerial skills and_ tech-

niques. CSI is working closely with leaders

of industry, government and public inter-

est groups to bring these skills to bear on

solving the hazardous waste problem.

The sites we are now working on cover

a wide range of activities. Whether it is

working on cluster settlements, allocation

mechanisms, remedial studies or actual re-

moval and incineration of wastes, we be-

lieve CSI is showing its value to all parties

concerned about hazardous waste.

Credibility can be a major stumbling

block to public acceptance of particular

site remedies. For the public to believe

that a site is being cleaned up in the best

way possible, citizens must be assured that

effective measures are being taken to pro-

tect public health and the environment. In

this kind of situation, a two-way flow of

information is essential to build this cred-

ibility.

The “public” affected by hazardous waste

sites is broad. It includes community res-

idents, responsible parties, government

officials, public interest groups, and the

news media. To be responsive to these di-

verse groups, CSI has a Public Account-

ability Office that is working with the en-

tire CSI staff and reports to the president

and executive vice president.

It wasn’t too long ago that we at CSI

CLEAN SITES 43

talked about our organization as a “‘con-

cept.” CSI is no longer just a concept. We

are building models for negotiation, ar-

bitration, and allocation that, we believe,

will significantly advance the state of the

art in waste site settlement development.

We are receiving site suggestions from

a variety of affected parties and have been

asked to work at 130 sites. The invitations

have come from industry, government, and

community groups. Since we clearly can-

not work on that many sites, the challenge

we face is to carefully screen and select

them. At present (February 1986), we are

active at 20 site situations, comprising 36

individual sites.

Three site agreements are completed;

five are pending before EPA. One cleanup

will be complete by spring; other interim

remedial work is underway.

We are working with 1,200 responsible

parties. This covers 15 industrial sectors,

all levels of government (local, county,

state, and federal) and non-profits (uni-

versities and hospitals).

CSI evaluation of information has been

the key to allocations at 24 sites. Thor-

ough, unbiased evaluation, sometimes uti-

lizing specially created computer data base

systems to handle thousands of docu-

ments, is critical to derive allocations.

CSI hopes to provide benefits to society

far beyond our direct involvement at sites.

We plan to accomplish this by developing

specific models of settlements and reme-

dial cleanup activities, and by showing the

way toward a consensus-based environ-

mental policy for the 1980s that is less ad-

versarial and more cooperative in nature,

but that still protects the public interest.

This means building relationships with and

among citizens, corporations, all levels of

government and other concerned people.

We have made significant progress already

and expect to continue and broaden our

efforts in the future.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 44-48, March 1986

Waste Reduction: Industry’s

Challenge |

J. Howard Todd

Director, Safety, Health, and Environmental Affairs

E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company

ABSTRACT

Industry has a challenge to both society and its stockholders to minimize the generation

of waste. There are both short and long term benefits which result in reduced costs and

the potential for environmental problems. The 1984 Resource Conservation and Recovery

Act Amendments provide increased incentives to minimize waste. However, the economics

of good waste management practices will continue to drive the effort. Several examples

within Du Pont are cited which demonstrate how advances in technology have permitted

better control of the manufacturing process. The need for high standards for operations,

housekeeping and training are also shown to be key elements in a successful waste reduction

effort.

Du Pont’s organizational structure is described as it relates to environmental policy and

implementation of programs such as waste minimization. It incorporates engineering,

marketing and research functions to identify the best methods to manage wastes. The

government’s obligation to design regulations which encourage reuse and recycle is also

highlighted.

It’s a pleasure to be here today and to

have the opportunity to participate on this

panel. The challenge industry faces in re-

ducing waste centers upon optimizing, for

the common good, the use of the limited

resources that we traditionally devoted

solely to the production of goods and serv-

ices. On a May night in 1927—about half-

way across the North Atlantic—I’m sure

that optimal use of a limited resource, fuel,

must have been uppermost in the mind of

Charles Lindbergh. Like him, if we in in-

dustry are to accomplish our mission of

reducing waste in the most effective man-

ner, we must keep optimal use of re-

sources continually in mind. This frames

the principal challenge we in industry face

as we investigate ways to reduce genera-

tion of waste.

The challenge to reduce the amount of

waste generated is directed by the society

in which we operate and by our stock-

holders. Industry’s responsibility is to both

and they are of equal importance.

Both sectors can benefit from waste re-

duction. Stockholders benefit through re-

duced production costs and a reduction of

potential future liabilities. These increase

both short and long term profits. In short,

waste minimization is simply good busi-

ness.

Society benefits in several ways. The

potential for both short and long term en-

vironmental problems is reduced. And, we

INDUSTRIAL WASTE REDUCTION 45

are able to more efficiently use our limited

natural resources. Finally, reduced waste

will inevitably lead to lower cost for prod-

ucts, and thus, a higher standard of living

for all Americans.

Considering these benefits, it should

come as no surprise that waste minimi-

zation is not new to industry. However,

to be candid, recent government regula-

tions have added an incentive to industry’s

efforts in this area.

In 1984, a Federal law, the Resource

Conservation and Recovery Act, estab-

lished for the first time a national policy

for waste management. The waste min-

imization section of this law can be com-

pared to the energy conservation mea-

sures of the early 1970s. The severe

limitations on land disposal practices in-

creases the economic incentive for waste

minimization. However, it is the consid-

ered opinion of most experts who are fol-

lowing the major developments in waste

minimization policy, that in the long term

it will not be the law, per se, that will fuel

waste minimization efforts, but rather the

basic economics of good waste manage-

ment practices.

My intent here is to provide some his-

tory and background, to develop the cri-

teria for an effective waste reduction pro-

gram, describe how one company—Du

Pont—approaches the effort, and, finally,

cover some of the barriers which tend to

inhibit this activity.

Reviewing waste management from a

historical perspective, past minimization

efforts by industry were driven primarily

by economics. It is, after all, quite basic

to expect the most efficient producer of a

given product to have the best competitive

position and to be the most profitable.

Continuing research efforts devoted to

achieving less waste have been an ongoing

activity in competitive industries such as

the chemical industry. A classic example

of this is illustrated by the manufacture of

polyethylene. Developed about the time

of World War II, this polymer found im-

mediate application as an insulating ma-

terial for electrical cables. At the time,

manufacturing costs were high due to

problems associated with a new process

and product yields from the raw materials

were only 10—20 percent. The selling price

exceeded one dollar per pound.

Research to improve the manufacturing

process led to significant yield improve-

ments over the years. Today, unreacted

raw material is recycled and overall yield

of polyethylene has increased signifi-

cantly. Yields typically exceed 95 percent.

Naturally, the expected happened. Waste

was reduced; cost and, in turn, selling prices

decreased. End uses multiplied and the

benefits to society expanded. Today, uses

of this material are vast and it sells for

about 35 cents per pound. This equates to

approximately 7 cents per pound in 1947

dollars, a reduction of roughly 93 percent

over the past four decades.

This is the most effective method of waste

management, i.e. improving the manufac-

turing process so that what was once waste

is now productive end product.

Advances in technology leading to waste

reduction have not, however, been limited

to process improvements. Some of the most

dramatic advances have been made, and

continue to be made, in the systems used

to control waste generation itself. Ad-

vances have been possible in this area pri-

marily due to the use of improved instru-

ment systems, among them computers.

While the use of large computer systems

is costly and complex, these barriers are

continually being reduced with the rapid

advances being experienced in the elec-

tronics industry. Today, small microproc-

essors are relatively inexpensive, easy to

install, and can be tailored to the needs of

small operations. They continue to hold

large promise in our efforts to reduce waste

generation.

Computers enable us to sample condi-

tions, compare the results with other pa-

rameters and make needed corrections with

much greater sophistication than in the past.

The net result is more precise control of

the manufacturing process; and, there-

fore, reduced energy requirements, better

raw material utilization, and better prod-

46 J. HOWARD TODD

uct quality. All of these ultimately lend to

more pounds of product per pound of in-

gredient and less waste generation.

A good example of this technology ap-

plied to a real world problem is provided

by our LaPorte, Texas, facility. Installa-

tion of a microprocessor on the steam boil-

ers at that site has enabled us to reduce

the amount of wastewater generated by

over 12 million gallons per year. The sys-

tem is simple and reliable. Maintenance

needs are minimal.

It is important to defuse the impression

that waste reduction is solely a result of

technological change. Equally as impor-

tant are high operating standards, good

training and good housekeeping practices.

In this area, opportunities for waste re-

duction are numerous. They include care-

ful cleaning of process equipment to re-

duce quantities of waste, improved

techniques for loading and unloading of

equipment to reduce contamination, and

proper connecting and disconnecting of

hoses and lines to reduce spills and pre-

vent quality problems. These become ac-

cepted practices only if they are important

to management.

Despite the obvious economic incen-

tives, waste minimization programs do not

develop automatically. A commitment from

senior management is necessary. A policy

must be developed; sensitivity and knowIl-

edge of the issue must exist at all levels of

the organization. A program must be es-

tablished by those responsible for each op-

eration. Goals must be set so that per-

formance can be measured. Finally, an

audit system must be established to de-

termine progress and, the progress must

be communicated throughout the organ-

ization.

Within the Du Pont Company, waste

minimization efforts are centralized in ap-

propriate committees of the Executive

Committee of the Board of Directors.

The two most prominent committees

within Du Pont are the Environmental

Quality Committee (EQC) and the Man-

ufacturing Committee (MC). Corporate

policy for safety, health and environmen-

tal affairs is established by the EQC and

implementation of this policy is accom-

plished through the Manufacturing Com-

mittee. The latter is comprised of the

heads of the manufacturing operation from

each industrial department. A subcommit-

tee of the manufacturing committee—the

Hazardous Waste Advisory Committee

(HWAC)—has been established for the

purpose of coordinating activities associ-

ated with hazardous waste. Two principal

objectives of this group are to: 1) to

provide guidelines for waste reduction ef-

forts and, 2) to insure that innovative ap-

proaches are communicated throughout

the company. In addition, the HWAC is

working to define corporate waste reduc-

tion goals and techniques for measuring

and communicating progress toward those

goals. This group has the backing and

commitment of the highest levels of man-

agement within the company. This organ-

izational commitment results in awareness

in all the sectors of the company and high-

lights the importance of waste reduction.

We use our engineering, marketing, and

research functions to identify the best

methods to manage waste. Included are

process modifications to improve yields,

selection of new, different raw materials

to reduce toxicity, improvement of waste

recovery systems and, in some cases, de-

velopment markets for by-product mate-

rials or materials that were once consid-

ered waste.

Let me just highlight three examples of

how this can work:

1. At our Corpus Christi plant we man-

ufacture “Freon” which generates

significant quantities of anhydrous

hydrogen chloride as a by-product.

As a matter of fact, at full production

capacity, it generates about 350 mil-

lion pounds per year of this by-prod-

uct. The conventional method for

handling this material would be to

quench it with water and dispose

INDUSTRIAL WASTE REDUCTION 47

of it as a hydrochloric acid waste.

Instead, for both economic and en-

vironmental reasons, the plant in-

stalled a $16 million conversion unit

to produce chlorine from this by-

product. The chlorine is reused in

the “Freon” manufacturing opera-

tion—that’s 315 million pounds per

year of chlorine. Incidentally, the

hydrogen which evolves is piped to

the boilers and burned safely as fuel.

2. At our Edge Moor, Delaware, plant

we manufacture titanium dioxide

pigment. A by-product from this op-

eration is a significant quantity of

aqueous iron chloride. In the past,

this material was barged to sea for

disposal. As a result of R&D and

engineering efforts, this material has

been upgraded so that it can be used

by water and wastewater treatment

facilities as a coagulant. Marketing

efforts have resulted in the sale of

65—75 thousand tons per year.

3. At our Victoria, Texas, plant, where

we manufacture numerous interme-

diates for synthetic fibers, significant

quantities of nonchlorinated hydro-

carbons are generated as waste. Typ-

ically, these solvents had been burned

in two incinerators on the plant. While

this method did destroy the waste,

and was environmentally sound, it

was costly. Today, the incinerators

have been dismantled and these sol-

vents are being burned in our pow-

erhouse to generate steam for the

manufacturing process. Last year

alone, the plant saved more than $10

million in fuel oil costs by burning

these wastes as fuel.

It is interesting to note that while all of

the examples I have cited result in waste

reduction, different techniques are em-

ployed. There was better utilization of the

primary raw material resulting in an im-

proved yield of polyethylene, and less

waste. Chlorine was generated from a by-

product of the original Freon manufac-

turing operation. It is recycled back to the

beginning of the process as a raw material.

Both of these examples are considered re-

duction of wastes at the source and at the

same time they can be termed recycling of

materials.

In the ferric chloride example in the past,

we had disposed of this material as a waste.

We have converted it to a co-product: In

the Victoria example we have also taken

material, which was being disposed of as

a waste and directed it to a beneficial pur-

pose—a fuel source. While these cases do

not return material to the primary process,

they still meet our stockholder and socie-

tal obligations. We are no longer discard-

ing a resource.

In addition to accepting the challenge

associated with waste reduction at the

source, Du Pont believes government

should share in the effort by designing reg-

ulations so that they encourage sound en-

vironmental practices to minimize waste

generation. I would like to highlight two

areas where this is not the case.

First—the definition of solid waste in

the regulations is such that many facilities

recycling hazardous materials would be

required to obtain RCRA permits. One

result will be significant increases in costs

due largely to the administrative workload

for no improvement in our ability to pro-

tect the environment. Another result will

be the public perception that this benefi-

cial recycling constitutes disposal of waste,

when just the opposite is true.

Second—flammable solvents, which are

by-products of a process, are classified as

a hazardous waste. Due to this classifi-

cation, the freight cost for such materials

is significantly higher than it is on the in-

coming solvent—which, in many cases, has

essentially the same hazard. The original

producer must also have a RCRA permit

before he can receive and purify these ma-

terials for reuse. This inhibits recycle or

reuse of solvents by adding an unnecessary

administrative burden.

Although the intent of the regulations

is good, I question whether they in fact

48 MICHAEL J. BEAN

promote implementation of a national

policy to minimize waste generation. Jf we

truly seek to encourage implementation of

programs designed to reduce generation of

waste, we should make it more attractive

to conduct recycle or reuse activities which

benefit the environment and the economy.

Industry’s responsibility with respect to

waste reduction is multifaceted. We have

a responsibility to continue to improve our

processes and operations so that waste re-

duction results in improved earnings for

our stockholders. More importantly, we

have a responsibility to the society in which

we operate to protect the environment

while continuing to improve the American

standard of living. If American industry is

to discharge these responsibilities, the

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 48-50, March 1986

challenge is to create an organizational

commitment to this effort and a working

culture which fosters sensitivity and

knowledge of the issue at all levels in the

organization. I believe this challenge has

been accepted within Du Pont and within

American industry. As a result, we will

see considerable reductions in the per-

centage of waste generated per pound of

product produced, just as we have seen

reductions in the consumption of energy

over the last 10 years. In order to improve

upon this effort, we must continually mod-

ify the way we operate. Perhaps Peter

Drucker, the business consultant, put it

best when he said. . . “the only means of

conservation— is innovation.”

Biological Diversity and

Development: A Legal Perspective

Michael J. Bean, Esq.

Chairperson, Wildlife Program, Environmental Defense Fund

The goal of economic development,

whether within an industrialized nation like

the United States or the mostly rural na-

tions of the Third World, has often been

perceived to be at odds with that of en-

vironmental protection. That perception,

which causes trouble enough here, where

the common aspiration is to make a very

good standard of living even better, pre-

sents an immense challenge elsewhere,

where many aspire only to improve upon

a bare subsistence standard of living. That

challenge is even more difficult when the

environmental resources at stake are not

clean water needed for human consump-

tion or productive soils for crops, but rather

living wild species offering no immediate,

discernible benefit to human welfare.

Despite this troubling perception, the

scientists on this panel and elsewhere as-

sure us that, in fact, the advancement of

human welfare and the protection of bi-

ological diversity are intimately bound to-

gether. Indeed, the prospects for long-term,

BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND DEVELOPMENT 49

sustainable development depend in part

on our ability to refrain from unraveling

the intricate web of life in which we our-

selves are placed. This is because living

wild resources are the reservoir from which

we will need to draw many of our future

discoveries in medicine, agriculture, and

industry. It is also because collectively they

perform a myriad of ecological services,

from storm water retention and pollutant

consumption to photosynthesis itself, that

are essential for our well being.

If we assume the scientists are right, two

clear imperatives emerge. One is to enact

laws and design and implement programs

for the conservation of biological diver-

sity. There are several such laws and pro-

grams in the United States. Perhaps the

best known of them is the federal endan-

gered species program spawned by the En-

dangered Species Act of 1973.

The Endangered Species Act has often

been described—both in the United States

and elsewhere—as model legislation for

the rest of the world. Its stated goal, quite

simply, is to prevent the avoidable extinc-

tion of wild plants and animals. The means

it uses to attain this goal include prohi-

bitions on hunting and trade, the acqui-

sition and protection of important habitat,

and a rather novel command to federal

government agencies that none of their

actions jeopardize the survival of any

threatened or endangered species. These

are the familiar tools with which legisla-

tors have long attacked wildlife conserva-

tion problems—prohibitions, commands,

and public expenditures for land acquisi-

tions.

How well have these familiar tools fared

in the effort to prevent the extinction of

species? There are, most assuredly, some

signal successes. Two that you may see

near here are the American alligator and

the brown pelican. Restrictions on hunt-

ing have enabled the former to recover,

while the latter, along with the bald eagle,

and peregrine falcon, owes its recent re-

surgence to the elimination of DDT and

other persistent pesticides. These exam-

ples illustrate the very important point that

the road to extinction can be reversed and

that this can be done without significantly

retarding or affecting economic growth.

At the same time, however, the limits

of what can be achieved through such con-

servation programs are becoming increas-

ingly apparent. Today, nearly 400 species

of plants and animals in the United States

enjoy the protection of the Endangered

Species Act. Yet more than twice the num-

ber have been identified as needing the

Act’s protection, but still await the slow

process of adding them to the protected

lists. Many of these have declined dra-

matically while awaiting the Act’s protec-

tion; some have disappeared altogether.

Even for species that have long benefitted

from the Act’s protection, survival has not

been guaranteed. Three of the best known

of these, three species that have been pro-

tected since the very inception of the en-

dangered species program, are closer now

the brink of extinction than ever before.

The California condor, of which perhaps

three dozen birds still survived in the late

1970’s is now down to only five or six birds

in the wild. The black footed ferret had

one known population with nearly 130 an-

imals in it in 1984; now perhaps no more

than three animals survive in the wild. Fi-

nally, right here at Disney World, the last

two specimens of the dusky seaside spar-

row—both males—await the certain end

of their species. Add to these specific ex-

amples the general problem of inadequate

funds for habitat acquisition and other re-

covery efforts, and one can better under-

stand why the model conservation legis-

lation we so often tout here is unlikely to

stem the torrent of species losses now oc-

curring in much of the rest of the world.

If conservation laws and conservation

programs, by themselves, are not suffi-

cient to serve the goal of preserving bio-

logical diversity, what then is the second

imperative in order to heed the scientists’

warning that development, to be sus-

tained, must ensure the protection of bi-

ological diversity. The answer, I think, is

that the full force of our intellectual efforts

must be given over, not to decrying the

50 MICHAEL J. BEAN

adverse environmental effects of devel-

opment, but to promoting development in

ways that reduce both social and environ-

mental costs. To assure you that this is

more than just an abstraction, let me offer

one current, concrete example from within

my own organization.

Southern California, as most of you

know, has the unusual characteristics of

being very dry and very populous. The

region’s potential for growth depends upon

the availability of water. Historically, to

supply water to the burgeoning popula-

tions of Los Angeles and other metropol-

itan areas, the region looked east to the

Colorado River and north to the scenic

rivers of northern California. Dams and

diversions drastically altered the environ-

ments and the diversity of many of these

rivers. Today, growth and the thirst for

still more new sources of water continue.

At the same time, between Los Angeles

and San Francisco, a new problem has come

to be recognized within the last few years.

Through irrigation, the normally arid San

Joaquin River Valley has become one of

the most productive agricultural regions

in the country. But because of the area’s

geology, irrigation water becomes trapped

near the surface unless drained by sub-

surface tiles. These tiles carry the drained

water through conduits that eventually

empty into the large evaporating ponds

that comprise the Kesterson National

Wildlife Refuge. About two years ago,

people began to notice serious abnormal-

ities and high mortality among the water-

fowl using the Refuge. The cause, it was

determined, was selenium, a trace ele-

ment being leached from the soils of the

San Joaquin River Valley by irrigation

water.

The impulse that has perhaps become

too common in the environmental move-

ment was to recommend the drastic step

of cutting off irrigation water to the val-

ley—drastic, because it would put an end

to agriculture itself in the region. Some

environmentalists recommended exactly

that. But we at the Environmental De-

fense Fund searched for a positive alter-

native that might solve the problems of

both the waterfowl at Kesterson and the

fisheries and other wildlife of the northern

California rivers being eyed for future

dams.

What we have recommended is that the

irrigation wastewater be collected and

treated in reverse osmosis desalting plants,

and the resulting brine placed in solar ponds

for electricity production. The technolo-

gies for both of these processes are recent

and tested, though on a smaller scale than

envisioned here. The products of these

processes are clean water and electricity

and a concentrated waste that can be more

easily and safely disposed of. Because the

irrigators are the beneficiaries of the long-

term, low-cost federal water supply con-

tracts, they could, at a substantial profit,

sell the reclaimed water to Los Angeles

for less than the city would have to pay

for the same amount of water from new

dams. One of the jobs for our lawyers has

been to persuade the federal government

that water it supplies to irrigators can law-

fully be resold in this way. Assuming those

institutional hurdles can be cleared, the

net result is that Los Angeles can meet its

immediate water supply needs without

building more dams, productive irrigated

agriculture can continue in the San Joa-

quin River Valley, and the waterfowl of

the valley cease to be threatened by the

hazard of selenium. In short, the goals of

development and protection of wildlife and

the environment can both be served.

The challenge facing all of us concerned

about biological diversity and develop-

ment is to multiply examples like this both

in the United States and in the rest of the

world. Often, as in the example cited, novel

technologies will be needed and, equally

often, the legal challenge of adapting in-

stitutions to faciliate those novel technol-

Ogies will be essential. In this way, we can

perhaps begin to change the perception

that the goals of economic development

and environmental protection are at odds.

By changing that perception, the objective

of preserving biological diversity embod-

ied in our conservation laws and programs

will gain important allies.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 51-55, March 1986

Zoological Parks and

Aquariums—Bridges of Learning

Lanny H. Cornell, D.V.M.

Vice President, Zoological Director, Sea World, Inc.

Charles Lindbergh said “the Human

Future depends on our ability to combine

the knowledge of science with the wisdom

of wildness” .. . nature. Wise words. It

is evident from this gathering of respected

leaders from state and Federal govern-

ment, industry, academia and the envi-

ronmental community, that we acknowl-

edge and agree with the wisdom of this

statement.

The richness and diversity of our natural

resources promote a multitude of uses that

are deserving of responsible stewardship.

Technology has made many important ad-

vances and improvements for mankind

through the manipulation of the physical

and biological elements of our biosphere.

And yet, new technology has brought with

it some problems, i.e., atomic energy/nu-

clear war, pharmaceuticals/illegal drugs,

chemicals/toxic wastes, space exploration/

tragic accidents, and fears that genetic en-

gineering will bring us Aldous Huxley’s

“brave new world.” But the benefits of

technology overcompensate for the neg-

atives. And because progress is an on-going

process, we must continue to monitor ex-

isting programs, increase our research ca-

pabilities, and where necessary, make

programmatic readjustments. We must

prove that technology is not poison.

From experience, we at Sea World know

that constructive progress can best be made

in an atmosphere of mutual concern and

cooperation. The Charles A. Lindbergh

Symposium “‘Technology and Environ-

ment: The Search for Balance,” is a timely

and important dialog on this important

subject. It is my hope that this and other

forums of its kind will be successful in pro-

moting a thoughtful, cooperative and con-

structive discussion of the important

promises that science and technology hold

for the world in 1986 and beyond. Let us

interrelate our areas of expertise and work

with one another . . . collectively, to de-

velop safe, new technologies. We must

never give up our hopes of understanding

and improving our world . . . in striking

a balance.

Zoological parks and aquariums in the

U.S. have an abiding interest in the im-

plementation of Charles Lindbergh’s phi-

losophy. We approach this from a stand-

point of providing to the public education,

recreation and cultural enjoyment through

the scientific study and conservation of

wildlife. In this way we endeavor to pro-

mote a greater awareness, understanding,

and appreciation of wildlife and their en-

vironment. We do this with the hope of

contributing to a more informed and re-

sponsive citizenship in tomorrow’s tech-

nological society. At the same time our

52 LANNY H. CORNELL

roles in biological research, and our very

significant commitment to the provision of

sanctuary for endangered and threatened

wildlife, are undisputably important.

That, you think, seems a bit overwhelm-

ing? Sometimes we think so as well. What,

then, keeps all this in focus? Learning.

The goal of every institution is to become

a bridge between its visitor, staff, and the

natural environment. We cross that bridge

as ‘“‘learners.’’ From the first-time visitor

to the long-time research director, there

are functions at work within these insti-

tutions that motivate learning. These

functions are research, education, and

recreation. Obviously, each function must

be approached within differing perspec-

tives. But because the goal is learning, there

is no conflict in these differing perspec-

tives.

Today I wish to share with you the in-

tegral roles these functions have played in

advancing “‘the knowledge of science with

the wisdom of nature.”’

Research Function

The problems of conserving threatened

species are enormous. The U.S. Endan-

gered Species Act lists a conservative 828

species, 331 of which are found in the U.S.

But the Convention on International Trade

in Endangered Species, the International

Union for the Conservation of Nature and

Natural Resources, and other interna-

tional organizations list even more.

U.S. zoological institutions are making

important contributions to international

conservation through captive breeding

programs, scientific research, and other

types of conservation efforts. These ef-

forts call for coordination and cooperation

among all institutions concerned with a

particular captive species. Increasingly, the

community will work together, as consor-

tiums, to fund large and expensive field

projects, as well. Captive propagation

programs make contributions to interna-

tional conservation objectives by 1) pro-

vision of alternative refuge for species fac-

ing extinction due to loss of habitat, 2)

provision of animals where and when ap-

propriate for repopulation of natural hab-

itat, and 3) when the odds no longer favor

survival, to delay extinction through cap-

tive propagation for the purpose of con-

servation/education programs, 1.e., as liv-

ing monuments to a species extinct in its

free state.

In addition to the intrinsic reasons for

our efforts, species should be saved from

extinction in order to maintain ecosystem

stability. And, of course, the disappear-

ance of any species is a tragic loss of sci-

entific information with potential appli-

cation to future human needs.

Species helped by zoological breeding

projects include the Pere David deer,

Przewalskii’s horse, the European bison,

Nene goose, snow leopard, Humboldt’s

penguin, trumpeter swan, black rhino,

hippopotamus, tapir, okapi, addax, golden

lion tamarin, and Bali mynah. The list

grows as more and more institutions be-

come successful in preserving the genetic

integrity of other species in jeopardy.

Conservation programs conducted in cap-

tive environments require a conserted ef-

fort and expense, and they require time.

In order to be viable for long-term cap-

tive propagation programs an adequate

number of genetically-diverse animals must

be available for reproductive manage-

ment. Because inbreeding is always a po-

tential problem, the species must be re-

productively manipulated on a total captive

basis. Breeding must be by computation

rather than by chance. Breeding by whim

leaves the species susceptible to compli-

cations resulting from a lack of genetic

diversity, and adaptability over the long

run is jeopardized.

While standard breeding procedures are

still practiced by most institutions, we rec-

ognize that high-tech means of improving

reproductive potential will produce im-

portant benefits for some long-term en-

dangered species propagation programs.

The genetic mangement programs so well

demonstrated in domestic livestock are still

in their infancy for exotic wildlife. The

BRIDGES OF LEARNING 53

reason is that captive husbandry must first

be established, followed by basic repro-

ductive and behavioral research. These

programs can only be accomplished when

we understand in biological terms the an-

imals we are trying to preserve. That in-

cludes a knowledge of genetics, reproduc-

tion, immunology, pathology, clinical

medicine, physiology, metabolism, ener-

getics, nutritional requirements, etc. When

these basics are well-understood, we can

move and are moving into the consider-

ation and application of advanced repro-

ductive technology, including artificial

breeding, gamete storage, sexing, and

transplantation. We are confident that the

future for many rare and endangered spe-

cies will be enhanced through advancing

reproductive and other bio-technologies.

We point to the following partial list of

successes:

Artificial Insemination: Giant panda,

gorilla, Speke’s gazelle, Persian leop-

ard, guanaco, Sarus crane, and many

others.

Embryo Transfer: Bongo/eland; guar/

domestic cow; Bengal tiger/African lion;

quarterhorse/zebra; and homologous

transfers with baboons, rhesus mon-

keys, water buffalos, and elands.

In Vitro Fertilization: Primates (ba-

boon).

Cytogenetics: Many look forward to the

day when frozen embryos can be suc-

cessfully thawed. When this is accom-

plished we can begin to consider gamete

retrieval from wild free-ranging animals

for the purpose of improving the genetic

base of those in captive environments

(and vice versa).

Educational Function

We note with dismay that science edu-

cation is deteriorating as an educational

base. Students are taking fewer courses in

science, and fewer courses are being

offered. And regrettably, we are experi-

encing a serious shortage of qualified

teachers. Of course, declines in student

achievement are being documented. Zo-

ological parks and aquariums, as provi-

ders of quality educational resources, are

responsive to the widespread concerns over

educational quality. We believe that the

learning process should build personal

“data bases” through a continuum of ex-

periences found in the school curriculum,

and augmented by a community’s scien-

tific resources. As partners in the educa-

tional enterprise, we are important re-

sources for scientific learning. We are

seeking to fulfill our educational respon-

sibilities in the area of scientific literacy

through the integration of our resources

within the curriculum and other programs

designed for American students at all ed-

ucational levels.

Zoological parks and aquariums act as

living classrooms for some 20 million school

children every year. In these ‘“‘classrooms”’

students are instructed through a “hands-

on” approach.

The educational programs at Sea World

are truly representative of the very best

that the zoological community provides.

As an example of, in our case, the “get

wet” approach to education practiced at

Sea World, consider the following:

Since the development in 1972 of

“Exploration Breach”, Sea World’s for-

malized educational program for ele-

mentary through collegiate levels, over

2.5 million students have had the op-

portunity to directly experience and learn

about marine life at one of the three

Sea World parks as part of their curric-

ulum. Other programs include: “Un-

derwater Friends” for grades K-3; Youth

Awards, for Campfire, Scouts, and other

youth groups; Career explorations;

‘“‘Interworlds”’ for students K—4; and in-

depth studies for high school and col-

lege students (many in cooperation with

the University of California, San Diego;

San Diego State University, and the

University of Florida system.) Sea World

also provides continuing education units

which bring marine science instructors

54 LANNY H. CORNELL

to the classroom, and a preceptorship

program for upper level veterinary

medical students interested in zoologi-

cal medicine.

In recent years, several very popular

special programs have been developed.

Gifted students’ programs are pre-

sented for qualified students in grades

K-6. Three special education programs

are offered for mentally-challenged, vis-

ually-impaired and severely disabled

students. Each is a multi-sensory pro-

gram designed for students who benefit

from the individual approach. Sea

World’s Education Department also of-

fers free curriculum aids and teacher

orientation programs.

In addition to the organized education

programs, trained interpreters/narrators

are stationed at all major animal exhibits

to answer visitors’ questions and present

educational information. Other educa-

tional materials are presented in our award-

winning graphics displays located in ex-

hibit areas.

Recreational Function

As our society become more urbanized

and crowded, zoological parks and aquar-

iums will provide the only available ex-

posure to the world of nature for increas-

ingly large numbers of people. Currently,

these institutions accommodate annually

over 110 million out of a nationwide pop-

ulation of 239 million. We realize that there

are recreational activities that offer the

public encounters with wildlife in natural

settings, 1.e., safaris, oceanic cruises, out-

ings in natural parks, etc. Our programs

are not designed as substitutes for these

experiences, but rather as a complement

to them. However, unlike most wilderness

experiences, where wildlife is only par-

tially visible or otherwise inaccessible, our

programs afford the public with oppor-

tunities to personally experience the beauty,

intelligence, and agility of these wildlife

forms. This exposure is especially signifi-

cant to those visitors who have limited op-

portunities to experience such wildlife in

natural settings—those living in large cit-

ies, the impaired, the young, the elderly,

and the impoverished. Experiencing wild-

life only through one-dimensional photo-

graphs cannot replace the sensation one

feels as the curious trunk of an elephant

grips your fingers, or at the touch of a

satiny-smooth dolphin, glistening before

you. Such experiences form lasting bonds

of affection . . . and they’re great fun!

Whether directly, through the proceeds

of an admission charge, or through other

means such as taxes, the recreational func-

tion is the means through which our ed-

ucational and research functions are fi-

nanced. It is a function that is important.

Conclusion

The purposes for which we exist and

serve are necessary. Our purpose is re-

flected through our focus on research, ed-

ucation and recreation. Through our re-

search projects, we have made important

advances in captive husbandry and prop-

agation programs, while contributing in-

formation vital to basic and applied wild-

life science. In addition, we cooperate with

local, state, federal and international gov-

ernments, and the academic community,

and have a long and impressive record in

the recovery and rehabilitation of diseased

and injured wildlife. Hopefully, these ad-

vances will continually increase our ability

to generate information for the detection

and management of environmentally-re-

lated changes to natural ecosystems, of-

fering better and more widespread pro-

tection of our wild fauna.

In the spirit of combining scholarship

with showmanship, we combine educa-

tional and recreational programs. This is

done with a strong sense of responsibility

for conveying ecologically-sound and im-

portant information to the public. In this

way, we endeavor to promote greater

awareness, understanding and concern for

SUSTAINABLE WILDLIFE USE 55

wildlife and their natural environment, with

the hope of contributing to a more in-

formed public, and thus building a more

responsible society.

Charles Lindbergh knew that nature is

like a “canary in a coal mine.” That its

decline signals our own. He was, and we

are, concerned. We believe he would have

recognized the roles we play in the con-

servation of nature and in our contribu-

tions to scientific knowledge. And we also

believe that he would have endorsed such

sites for public education and recreation,

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 55-60, March 1986

where wildlife can be maintained in set-

tings that give them a good chance for

long-term survival. As bridges of learning

between man and nature, we honor the

spirit and philosophy of Charles Lind-

bergh.

I’ve enjoyed this opportunity to speak

to you, and I hope you will take some time

to visit Sea World while you are in Or-

lando, and observe how the discoveries of

science and the products of technology are

preserving and improving the quality of

life. Thank you.

The Role of Sustainable Wildlife

Use in Conservation and

Development in the Tropics

Curtis H. Freese

Director of Latin American Programs, World Wildlife Fund

Upon reading the theme for this sym-

posium, ““Technology and Environment:

The Search for Balance”, I thought I might

appropriately entitle my talk, ““Technol-

ogy and Wildlife: The Search for Sustain-

able Use”’, for the problems and solutions

to the sustainable use of wildlife exemplify

that search for balance between devel-

opment and biological diversity.

What do we mean by the term ‘“‘sus-

tainable use of wildlife resources’? By

sustainable we mean that the use made of

a wildlife population is at such a level that

the use can be maintained indefinitely; that

is, the use does not exceed or destroy the

population’s ability to reproduce and re-

place itself. Use can mean a broad array

of things, from the hunting or trapping of

animals for food, fur or sport, to bird

watching. Wildlife, in the broadest sense

of the term, can mean any wild animal or

plant, terrestrial or aquatic.

Sustainable wildlife use stands at the

crossroads of wildlands conservation and

human technology and development. In

simple terms, we can think of the sustain-

able use management of wildlife as human

society knowledgeably manipulating wild-

life to produce, indefinitely, any number

of goods and services benefiting human

development.

I would like to focus on wildlife use in

the tropics, where the biggest challenges

are today and where it will have the big-

56 CURTIS H. FREESE

gest impact on both development and bi-

ological diversity. I will specifically talk

about Latin America where I work.

There are three points I wish to make

today concerning wildlife use:

1. The actual and potential contribu-

tion of wildlife to human development in

the American tropics is underestimated by

national and international agencies con-

cerned with human development, and, be-

cause of this, development is bound to fail

in many areas because sustainable wildlife

use iS not incorporated into the develop-

ment plan.

2. The development of wildlife man-

agement in the American tropics will re-

quire innovative techniques and new con-

cepts in natural resource management, for

which the North American experience can

provide only limited models.

3. Wisely implemented sustainable use

programs of wildlife will be critical in

meeting the challenge of conserving the

vast biological diversity of the tropics.

The importance of wildlife in meeting

basic human needs is, of course, most ob-

vious in the case of indigenous peoples.

Native Indians of the American tropics de-

pend on fishing and hunting to meet their

protein requirements, and on a variety of

plant products for food, shelter and me-

dicinal needs. Native peoples are, indeed,

experts at extracting from a cornucopia of

plants and animals all of their basic ne-

cessities and commodities. Unfortunately,

most of this native knowledge about trop-

ical wildlife management has remained

within the domain of indigenous groups

and a few anthropologists. Native exper-

tise has been largely ignored by govern-

ment agencies in charge of natural re-

source management and land use planning,

most probably because it is incorrectly seen

as unsophisticated, unapplicable to cur-

rent societal needs, and producing little of

economic importance for the country.

Colonists that have settled in tropical

forest regions have also become depend-

ent on local forest resources. In rural

Amazonian Peru, more than 85% of the

animal protein consumed by colonist vil-

lages is wild, of which more than two thirds

is from fish (Pierret and Dourojeanni, 1967;

Rios et al., 1973). This dependence by col-

onists as well as indigenous people on wild

sources of protein is a pattern found

throughout Amazonia, both in rural com-

munities and in cities, and to a lesser ex-

tent in rural Central America. Neverthe-

less, technology transfer from indigenous

peoples to colonist populations in the Am-

azon must be enhanced to enable the di-

versified and sustainable use of forest and

river resources practiced by many indig-

enous groups to be more broadly tested

and applied.

Some species also have tremendous po-

tential for providing expendable income

for rural inhabitants and for contributing

to a country’s trade balance. One species

currently under research is a large lizard

of the genus Tupinambis which is found

throughout much of South America, but

is particularly abundant in northern Ar-

gentina where it is hunted for its valuable

skin and meat. Argentine export figures

show that an average of 1—-1.5 million Tup-

inambis skins leave the country every year,

with a total export value of 10-15 million

dollars (G. Hemley, personal communi-

cation). Yet, only within the last 2 years

has any concerted effort been made to un-

derstand the basic biology and economic

importance of this species. Preliminary

calculations indicate that protecting the

chaco forest for Tupinambis management

may produce much greater economic re-

turns for local inhabitants than conversion

of the forest for cattle (D. Werner, en lit.).

One might ask if any mangement is nec-

essary. Can’t these species hold their own?

Experience answers that heavily harvested

species cannot sustain themselves without

management. In fact, many Amazonian

species of potentially great importance for

economic and/or subsistence uses have been

driven close to extinction by overharvest-

ing within the last 50 years. Among the

most important, for example, are the

American and Orinoco crocodiles. The high

value of their skins stimulated intensive

SUSTAINABLE WILDLIFE USE 57

harvesting that has left the Orinoco croc-

odile numbering in the hundreds in the

llanos of Venezuela, and the American

crocodile endangered throughout its range.

With populations of these two species

decimated, the caiman crocodile, with less

valuable skin, is now being heavily ex-

ploited. An estimated 1—1.2 million skins

are taken annually from the pantanal re-

gion of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. The

export value exceeds 15 million dollars,

and the total value of these skins, once

tanned, exceeds 100 million dollars (G.

Hemley, personal communication). If

properly managed, even these harvest lev-

els may be sustainable, but we lack suf-

ficient information to know.

Primates provide another example of the

consequences of ignoring management

needs. Work by myself and Peruvian col-

leagues demonstrated that in forest areas

of Amazonian Peru and Bolivia outside

parks and reserves, numbers of the large

species of primates, such as spider mon-

keys and howler monkey, had been re-

duced to virtually zero over extensive areas

because of hunting pressure (Freese et al.,

1982). Large primates, because of their

low reproductive rate (one offspring every

1 or 2 years), are not adapted to withstand

high harvest rates. Primates could better

withstand low harvest rates required to

supply the needs of biomedical research,

and local inhabitants could reap higher

profits since many species are worth $100-

300/individual. The Primate Project in

Iquitos, Peru has begun such a manage-

ment program.

Examples abound concerning the uses

and importance of native plants. The Bra-

zil nut is a product of South American

forests that is familiar to all of you. It is

not, however, grown in plantations like

most other nuts you eat, but rather must

be harvested from natural forests, a point

I will return to later. Brazil alone exported

over 43,000 tons in 1979, and unknown

quantities of this protein-rich nut are con-

sumed locally (Balick, 1985). The U.S.

imported 16 million dollars worth of Brazil

nuts in 1976 (U.S.D.A., 1978).

On a broader scale, in 1979 the value

of 31 species of native plant products har-

vested in Brazil was $137,000,000 (Balick,

1979). Considerable publicity has recently

been given to the actual and potential

pharmaceutical products extracted from

tropical forest plants. It is estimated, for

example, that 8,000 plant species from the

American tropics have anti-cancer prop-

erties (Duke, 1982).

The science and technology for man-

aging these diverse plant and animal re-

sources are embryonic in Latin America.

Many of the basic principles of wildlife

management developed in North America

can be adapted to tropical habitats, but

several factors will require the develop-

ment of new approaches. The life of the

wildlife manager in the tropics is compli-

cated by the shear diversity of plants and

animals, and the complexity of interac-

tions that must be considered. In a few

square miles of deciduous forest in the

eastern U.S., the manager may have to

deal with only a few dozen species of trees,

mammals and birds, but in Amazonia he

or she must deal with hundreds of species

of each in the same area, many of which

have not yet even been described by sci-

ence, let alone studied in detail. Interac-

tions between organisms may follow com-

pletely different patterns in temperate and

tropical habitats. For example, the flowers

of temperate forest trees tend to be wind

pollinated, whereas tropical trees gener-

ally depend on animals (bees, bats, birds)

to carry pollen from one flower to another

(Prance, 1985).

This basic difference could greatly in-

fluence the management of trees or wild-

life species in the tropics. The Brazil nut

tree provides a lucid example, for it is pol-

linated by only certain large nectar gath-

ering bees (Prance, 1985), which appar-

ently must have other sources of nectar

when the Brazil nut tree is not in flower.

Thus, Brazil nut trees have not been suc-

cessfully cultivated in large plantations, but

rather are best maintained in mixed or nat-

ural forests so that the pollinator bee pop-

ulations are maintained (Balick, 1985).

58 CURTIS H. FREESE

The development of management pro-

grams for Amazonian fishes provides an-

other striking example of how manage-

ment of wildlife in tropical ecosystems may

require major adjustments in our think-

ing. As with terrestrial wildlife, the trop-

ical waters of Amazonia carry many more

species than temperate waters. The Am-

azon and its tributaries contain probably

2,500-—3,000 species of fish, with roughly

only half known to science (Goulding,

1980). Based on our knowledge of Ama-

zonian fishes just a few years ago, we might

have thought that the major question con-

cerning their management would revolve

around the levels of harvest that their re-

productive rates could support. But recent

work on Amazonian fishes by Goulding

(1985) in Brazil has revealed another few

facet about the complex connections within

tropical systems that we must address in

managing Amazonian fisheries. He has

documented that of those fish that are most

important for human consumption, roughly

75% feed on fruits and seeds that drop

into the water in floodplain forests.

Thus the sustainability of the most im-

portant source of protein for Amazonian

people—fish—depends primarily on the

conservation of the floodplain forests that

line the Amazon and its tributaries. This

is the kind of direct link between forest

conservation and human sustenance that

fulfills the wildest of conservationists’

dreams about arguments for saving trop-

ical forests. The case, however, is not so

cut and dry, for these floodplains, because

of the annual deposition of sediments from

the rivers, contain some of Amazonia’s

richest agricultural soils and thus their for-

ests are heavily cut to make room for rice

and other crops. Clearly, a balance must

be reached between these conflicting land

uses, and much more research is needed

to design the best management options.

Besides the biological novelties and

questions to be worked out, new concepts

must be developed integrating human set-

tlements with the management and use of

wildland resources. Among the tremen-

dous challenges to be faced is how to man-

age human use of wildlife resources on

extensive public lands where equal access

by all with minimal control can undermine

attempts at resource management. An-

other major challenge is to ensure that

local people understand and benefit from

wildlife management programs.

This integration of local human popu-

lations with wildlife and wildland man-

agement is being explored with some in-

novative approaches in Latin America that

could affect large areas of tropical forests

in the short term and serve as models for

extensive land use policies in the long term.

An example is the Pacaya-Samiria Na-

tional Reserve in Northern Amazonia Peru.

This reserve covers some 20,000 sq km of

lowland tropical forest, meanderous rivers

and owbow lakes. Thousands of people

live along the two rivers that border the

reserve, many of whom depend on the re-

serve for fishing and hunting, for both sub-

sistence and commercial purposes. One of

the most popular resources of the reserve

is the giant primitive fish, Arapamia gigas,

which reaches lengths of more than 2 m

and may weigh over 125 kg (Goulding,

1980). Increasing demand from markets

as far away as Lima, however, is placing

heavier pressure on the reserve’s re-

sources. The Peruvian government has

designated the area as a national reserve

with the objectives including the wise use

of its fish and wildlife resources and con-

servation of its natural systems. This is the

largest such sustainable use management

area in Latin America. Peru is now pre-

paring a management plan with strong in-

put from local inhabitants which will en-

sure that they continue to have access to

the reserve on a controlled basis to meet

their own subsistence needs, but which will

more tightly control large-scale, commer-

cial fishing and hunting.

Another example is Mexico’s Sian Ka’an

Biosphere Reserve on the east coast of the

Yucatan Peninsula. This 5,280-sq-km re-

serve encompasses a broad diversity of

habitats including tropical forest, man-

groves, large bays and estuaries, extensive

beaches and a barrier reef, with Mayan

SUSTAINABLE WILDLIFE USE 59

archeological ruins scattered throughout.

In Sian Ka’an, the objective is to integrate

the conservation of these habitats with

small-scale human development pro-

grams. One such program involves work-

ing with a small community of well-orga-

nized fishermen who live in the reserve.

These fishermen harvest 40—60 tons of spiny

lobster tails annually from the reserve and

earn a very healthy income in the process.

However, this relatively new fisheries, un-

til recently, was developing with very little

information on the lobster’s population or

biology. A plan is now being prepared to

better manage and monitor this fisheries

to ensure that it continues to be a valuable

economic resource for the region. Mean-

while, reserve managers are looking at

forest resources in the reserve, such as or-

chids, that might be harvested sustainably

without deleterious effects on the re-

serve’s ecosystem.

The wildlife and wildland management

programs just described are part of a clear

message coming out of many tropical re-

gions of the world, a message of impor-

tance to both those primarily interested in

human development and others in the

conservation of biological diversity. For

development-oriented sectors, the mes-

sage is that in many tropical regions, es-

pecially in tropical forests, development

must look towards making use of native

plant and animal resources in natural or

semi-natural ecosystems because conven-

tional systems of agriculture do not work,

and because local people are predisposed

to living off native resources. It must be

realized, however, that for many tropical

forest systems and species, utilization can-

not be intensive, but rather must be prac-

ticed over relatively extensive areas if re-

sources are not to be over-exploited.

The significance of this message for bi-

ological diversity is, in the simplest terms,

use it or lose it. This is not to say that

strictly protected areas such as national

parks do not have a major role in the con-

servation of wildlife and habitats in the

tropics; they do, and indeed national parks

and equivalent reserves will continue to

be the primary method for protecting areas

of exceptional uniqueness and diversity.

However, such protected areas can never

cover more than 5-10% of a country’s ter-

ritory, and we know that much more ex-

tensive areas must remain in natural or

semi-natural condition in the world’s trop-

ical forests if we hope to conserve the vast

array of organisms found there. The ques-

tion therefore becomes: How do we man-

age those 90-95% of tropical forest lands

outside protected areas? If sustainable use

of wildlife resources on these lands cannot

be demonstrated, there will be intense

pressure to open them up to uses such as

logging or slash-and-burn agriculture that

are less sustainable and more destructive

of the natural systems.

In the past, support for research and

development of sustainable use of wildlife

resources in the tropics has fallen between

the cracks. Development agencies viewed

it as too unconventional, underestimated

its importance, or simply looked at it as

wildlife preservation guised as develop-

ment. Conservation agencies saw it as too

use-oriented or failed to see its overall role

in wildland conservation. That situation,

happily, is changing, as the crack between

development and conservation agencies is

narrowing and we see that sustainable

wildlife use in the tropics provides a com-

mon ground for our objectives of sustain-

able development and the conservation of

biological diversity.

References Cited

1. Pierret, P. V. and M. J. Dourojeanni. 1967. Im-

portancia de la caza para alimentacion humana

en el curso inferior del rio Ucayali, Peru. Rev.

for. Peru, Lima, 1(2): 10-21.

2. Rios, M., M. J. Dourojeanni and A. Tovar. 1973.

La fauna y su aprovechamiento en Jenaro Herrera

(Requena, Peru). Rev. For. Peru, Lima, 5(1-2):

73-92.

3. Balick, M. J. 1985. Useful plants of Amazonia:

a resource of global importance. Pages 339-368

in Key Environments: Amazonia, (G. T. Prance

and T. E. Lovejoy, eds.). Pergamon Press, Ox-

ford.

4. Prance, G. T. 1985. The pollination of Amazon-

60 THOMAS E. LOVEJOY

ian plants. Pages 166-191 in Key Environments:

Amazonia, (G. T. Prance and T. E. Lovejoy, eds.).

Pergamon Press, Oxford.

5. Goulding, M. 1985. Forest Fishes of the Amazon.

Pages 267-276 in Key Environments: Amazonia,

(G. T. Prance and T. E. Lovejoy, eds.). Perga-

mon Press, Oxford.

6. Goulding, M. 1980. The Fishes and the Forest.

Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 60-62, March 1986

7. Duke, J. 1982. Contributions of Neotropical For-

ests to cancer research. Unpublished manuscript.

8. U.S.D.A. 1978. Agricultural Statistics, 1977. U.S.

Govt. Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

9. Freese, C. H., P. G. Heltne, N. Castro R., ed

Whitesides. 1982. Patterns and determinants of

monkey densities in Peru and Bolivia, with notes

on distributions. Intl. J. Primat., 3: 53-90.

The Grand Array of Life on Earth

Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy

Vice President, Science, World Wildlife Fund—U.S.

We hope in this third section, to give a

biological perspective, namely how life on

earth, and our life on earth should relate

one unto the other.

First, we should consider life itself, this

exceptional development which appears

to be confined to our planet alone. Life is

a high energy operation, because it takes

great amounts of energy to build complex

structures—more complex than anything

that occurs in the vast segment of our solar

system and universe which is non-living.

It takes energy, too, to maintain these

complex structures against the general

tendency of the universe away from struc-

ture and toward chaos—so elegantly

summed up by Josiah Willard Gibbs as the

Second Law of Thermodynamics, but cer-

tainly more widely and unwittingly in hu-

man cognizance in the lines about Ozy-

mandias, King of Kings.

The necessary energy comes largely from

the sun and is converted by green plants

into forms usable by them and other forms

of life—a miracle that we unconsciously

celebrate thrice daily as we go to table, or

eschewing ceremony, at least acknowl-

edge by grabbing for a caloric ring, as the

merry go round of our lives rushes past a

fast food establishment. The order and

structure of human achievement, whether

libraries, machines, governments or edi-

fices are but extensions of the ability of

life to produce order and structure.

But living things are not immortal, they

must inexorably succumb to Gibbs’ Sec-

ond Law, yet can manage to escape by the

device of reproduction. Life is very much

in the business of making more of itself,

which is why sex keeps rearing its head.

Without meaning to descend to schoolboy

snickers and titters, it is biologically mean-

ingful that sex is pleasurable—were it not,

it is inevitable that the particular species

would become extinct. It is reasonable to

suppose that reproduction is pleasureable

for each form of life on earth. One cannot

help but wonder what it must be like for

species like the Century Plant for which it

only happens once in a lifetime. I dwell

on this point not to titillate like a saucy

dime store novel, but because this uni-

versal feature of life on earth, is also a

source of great hope for those of us con-

BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY 61

cerned with maintaining the variety of life

on earth. Given a chance, each species will

perpetuate itself, but from extinction there

is no return, no escape.

We know that life on earth comes in

great variety, but science, cannot as yet,

say with any precision how diverse life on

this planet actually is. When I first became

interested in natural history some thirty

years ago, the general estimate was on the

order of a couple million species. Later

estimates of five and ten million began to

be heard and just recently based on dis-

coveries about insect life in the rain forest

canopy, the estimates have risen to about

30 million (Erwin, pp. 59-75 in Tropical

Rain Forest: Ecology and Management,

Ses sueeon. IF. C. -Whitmore, A. C.

Chadwick, eds., Blackwell Scientific Pubs..,

Oxford, 1983). This means that we know

the weight of the moon, and perhaps even

the strength of the magnetic fields of Ur-

anus, to a greater precision than we have

taken the measure of the variety of life—

really a most fundamental datum of sci-

ence, and one of very central interest to

ourselves as part of it all (Wilson, Issues

in Science and Technology 2:20—29, 1985).

This is a very disturbing state of ignorance

especially when we are on the verge of

losing a major fraction of the variety of

life on earth. The impending loss is in large

part due to unpremeditated or unwilling

actions by an ever larger human popula-

tion, acting in a variety of environmental

destructive ways, prominent among them

the destruction of tropical forests which

harbor about half of this astounding va-

riety.

The tendency to diversify is a funda-

mental theme echoed throughout the his-

tory of life on earth, checked and occa-

sionally reversed only by traumatic events,

such as the meteor induced dust cloud cur-

rently believed to have triggered the de-

mise of the dinosaurs (Alvarez et al., Sci-

ence 208:1095-1108, 1980; Wilford, The

Riddle of the Dinosaur, Knopf Div. of

Random House, New York, 1985). We

have only the most rudimentary notions

as to why there is such a universal tend-

ency. It is all too easy to accept it as a fact

without understanding, even to say that it

really means we needn’t concern ourselves

with the loss of a species here or there,

for after all, with certainty more will even-

tually arise. Yet such an uncaring attitude

ignores that the time scale for replenish-

ment of diversity impoverished by human

action, is on a greater scale than a human

life span, and will do little good for those

of us here now, or even the next genera-

tions. Nor does it recognize that each and

every species is a reflection of a long ev-

olutionary history, stretching back to the

origins of life on earth. Each also reflects

recent environmental history and prob-

lems, which the extant organisms, by their

very survival, have demonstrably dealt with

and developed solutions for. These are so-

lutions often of immediate relevance to

practical human affairs, whether it be re-

sistance to viral diseases of corn discov-

ered in a wild perennial corn species in the

mountains of Jalisco, or the ability to re-

move mercury or isocyanate from aquatic

environments demonstrated for two yeasts

in eastern Pennsylvania streams (R. Pa-

trick, pers. comm.).

The tendency to variety also expresses

itself on a local level in those biological

aggregations of interacting species science

calls ecosystems. Almost all natural eco-

systems contain large numbers of species,

many of which are rare, and the functions

of which in the system are either unknown

or apparently negligible. Yet why do al-

most all ecosystems have such variety—

variety incidentally that is badly dimin-

ished in the face of toxic wastes and pol-

lution? A “‘clean” environment is biolog-

ically diverse. A polluted or stressed

environment is not, but rather is domi-

nated by dandelions, cockroaches, or

equivalent weeds and pests. I, and some

others suspect the presence of the variety

of species in an ecosystem is, by accident

of history or otherwise, a measure of the

flexibility of that system in time of change:

when mercury contamination lowers the

diversity of a stream community the par-

ticular yeast species becomes abundant and

62 THOMAS E. LOVEJOY

the ecosystem persists while the yeast bus-

ily cleans it up.

Certainly we know enough to say that

maintaining biological diversity is almost

entirely a matter of plusses for human so-

ciety. Dependent upon it is the ability of

ecosystems to continue to function in ways

on which we in turn depend. The life sci-

ences, are surely (without in any sense be-

littling other fields of inquiry) the most

important branch of knowledge for our-

selves as living organisms. Understanding

them depends squarely on maintaining the

basic body of data about life on earth and

this is best summed up and measured by

the diversity of life on earth. And each

and every species holds the promise for

discrete highly practical contributions to

human welfare—an enzyme or observa-

tion can transform the world.

These fundamental truths tend to be ob-

scured by the triumphs and glitter of our

technology. And it is hard not to be dis-

tracted. When I think of a year spent on

Maryland’s Eastern Shore as a boy, in a

house with a woodstove and a telephone

with no dial, it seems nothing short of mi-

raculous to live in a world of microwaves,

Concordes and satellite assisted direct in-

ternational dialing to some of the most

remote places on earth. Another fatal flaw

will be to let this blind us to our true bi-

ological nature, to let us think for example

that biological engineering means we can

dispense with diversity because we can re-

place what we have lost—instead of the

reality that biological engineering merely

increases the value of the biological library

that the diversity of life on earth repre-

sents. Indeed from another perspective it

is very clear that humans are best served

by landscapes that are both domestic and

wild, and that humans dwelling in biolog-

ically impoverished landscapes tend to lead

an impoverished existence. The best mea-

sure of our success in maintaining a bal-

ance between the world of technology and

the world of our biological nature, will be

the extent to which we protect biological

diversity. The wisdom of wildness (to bor-

row Lindbergh’s term) rests on valuing and

protecting each and every species, and in

protecting that grand array of realized

possibilities of living systems that we term

so simply: biological diversity.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 63-68, March 1986

Impact of Development on Arid

Rangelands

Pamela J. Parker

Chairman, Conservation Biology Department,

Chicago Zoological Society

Biological diversity has been affected

adversely by two major forces in recent

times. The first is growth of the human

population and the second is technological

development. Surely the rest of the bio-

logical world must regard us as a species

that has reached plague proportions de-

manding vast resources from the land. We

have achieved a large part of the support

of our enormous numbers through tech-

nological capacities to make rapid and large

scale changes in the land, changes affect-

ing all of the other organisms sharing the

environment with us.

The effects of the large population size

and technological development have been

to reduce biological diversity and to di-

minish the capacity of land to support bi-

ological systems including those from which

we draw our own support. These effects

are particularly dramatic as we invade the

lands which throughout history have been

little altered by occupying cultures be-

cause of the difficulties in extracting from

these lands resources to support human

activities. The major land types greatly af-

fected by current development are the wet

tropics and the arid rangelands.

Under most schemes of development the

wet tropics experience high rates of loss

of the biological diversity that character-

izes them. The loss can have catastrophic

effects locally on soil structure, nutrient

cycles and the interrelationships among

many species integral to the stability and

productivity of the life forms of these for-

ests. On a large scale the loss is a threat

to global climatic patterns and hence po-

tentially effects all biological systems. The

richness of the life forms destroyed through

this process is not even fully appreciated

by science.

In contrast, the arid lands, the other

major land types affected by human pop-

ulation growth and development, are

characterized by less biological diversity

and greater environmental instability than

are the tropics. The destruction of these

dry lands, however, is no less rapid or dra-

matic than the destruction of the natural

systems of the tropics nor are the long

term effects of these losses likely to be of

less consequence to the richness of all life

dependent on these areas.

The form of development in the dry

rangelands is mainly pastoral instead of

wood products or crop farming for water

is too limited to support growth of timber

or allow cultivation of grain crops in most

arid areas. The common result of pastoral

development is loss of the stability of bi-

ological resources.

Dry rangelands have several character-

istics in common. Many are in the 30 de-

64 PAMELA J. PARKER

gree latitudes and are influenced by world

wide climatic patterns. They experience

low rainfall and high rates of potential

evaporation. This water stress is often

compounded by irregularity in the timing

of rainfalls. These climatic factors present

a series of physiological challenges to the

perennial plants growing under conditions

in which they must struggle to retain the

water they have secured against a great

evaporative force drawing it out from their

leaves and roots. These plants must be

able to make use of water entering their

environment at any time while on rare

ocasions they must survive having their

roots flooded with an overabundance of

water that takes some time to drain away

or evaporate.

An example of this suite of character-

istics drawn from the arid zone of South

Australia comes from weather records at

Brookfield Conservation Park. The av-

erage annual rainfall is 260 mm in the face

of an average annual potential evapora-

tion of nearly 2000 mm. The rainfall is

distributed randomly among the months

of the year and in the decade from the

middle 1960’s to the middle 1970’s, reg-

istered rainfall fell below 100 mm in 1967

and above 500 mm in 1974. This low, er-

ratic rainfall linked with high predictable

rates of potential evaporation concen-

trated during the summers leads to great

challenges to living organisms in hanging

on to the water necessary to support life

processes. The behavioral, physiological

and evolutionary responses of native spe-

cies are focused on coping with limited

water and, in turn, inaccessibility of nu-

trients. The evolutionary resolution of the

water challenges to the arid adapted bio-

logical systems of the dry lands is ex-

pressed in relatively few and highly spec-

ialized species of plants and animals

occurring in sparse populations repre-

senting these species. The low biomass of

organisms is in keeping with limited avail-

ability of water. A low biomass is all that

can be supported.

Most arid lands have two plant systems.

One is the ephemeral plants which are

ubiquitous when growing conditions are

good. These plants are short lived as vis-

able green plants finishing with their ma-

jor dependence on water within the brief

span during which they have ready access

to it. The rest of the time their presence

in the system is inobvious as they wait out

the dry times in the soil seed bank. As

seeds, their metabolic needs for water are

few and the threats to their existence rel-

atively reduced. Pastoral profits ride on

the ephemeral plants which spend as short

a time as possible in making the seeds of

their next generation of plants. Their short

time spent as green plant seed factories

offers only a short time that these plants

are available as sources of nutrients and

water to mammalian herbivores. Once they

have set their seeds, their life cycle is gen-

erally complete and they vanish from the

landscape even if they have not been grazed

away.

The other plant system is that of the

perennial plants including the lichens,

shrubs, trees and species of long lived

grasses. These are the physiological spe-

cialistsable to hold onto water while en-

gaging in metabolic activity and retaining

water against the large gradient of the po-

tential evaporation. These persistent spe-

cies are usually very slow growing and set

seed only irregularly when favorable cli-

matic conditions arise. They are vulnera-

ble to overuse by grazing and browsing

animals. Most of each plant’s water and

nutrient resources are required for its own

persistence under conditions of environ-

mental stress. Few are available for har-

vest by other species without serious effect

on the individual plant providing them.

An analogy can be made with a bank ac-

count gathering small percentages of an-

nual interest. Small amounts can be with-

drawn without loss of the principal. If large

amounts are taken, all may be lost in time.

Native mammals in these rangelands

generally occur in low numbers or are no-

madic, following the availability of the

ephemeral plants appearing with the rains.

Thus in the natural scheme grazing pres-

sure on perennial plants is light. Histori-

DEVELOPMENT: ARID RANGELANDS 65

cally man’s use of the dry areas was as a

hunter and gatherer which did not have a

major effect on the plant communities or

as nomadic herders which mimiced the bi-

ology of the wild relatives of the domestic

animals they depended upon. In these his-

torical instances the dry rangelands were

used as a renewable natural resource.

With increasing European pastoral de-

velopment, these lands are used as a slow

mining operation in terms of a gradual loss

of biological productivity. Part of this ef-

fect is due to the introduction of cattle and

sheep which have higher water require-

ments than do the native species endemic

to the areas. The higher water require-

ments are coupled with food requirements

needed to support reproduction, growth

and a surplus of animals for sale. Just to

meet the water requirements of domestic

stock even during a relatively wet period,

water is provided. The addition of this water

then permits the animals to persist when

it does not rain, at least for a while. In the

absence of rain and in the absence of the

ephemeral vegetation, the animals turn to

subsistence on the perennial plants with

the consequence of subjecting this vege-

tation to heavy browsing. In these two ways,

providing artificially augmented surface

water to stock and setting levels of her-

bivore populations through economic, not

biological, forces, pastoral development

extracts from the land support for greater

numbers of herbivores than would be ex-

tracted in a system that was regulated by

the availability of renewable resources

produced by the intact ecological system.

In other words, the system is regulated by

human economic needs, development

(wells, tanks, etc.), and by the ability of

the land to support fodder plants.

Trends of development have also in-

volved fencing or other means of reducing

animal movements so that grazing pres-

sure becomes constant throughout the year

without times of rest for the vegetation.

Stock confined to an area will eat the most

palatable species first and turn to others

sequentially as preferred plants disappear.

Selective feeding at high stocking densities

removes not only plant biomass but re-

duces species diversity over time as the

palatable perennial species succumb to a

greater harvest than their growth can sup-

port. The results of this slow mining op-

eration have been loss of perennial species

that are most palatable to stock. This is

the equivalent of the loss of biological

drought insurance on lands when relative

drought occurs with most summer or dry

seasons and whenever the rainfall fails.

Loss of perennial plants destabilizes bio-

logical systems on these lands and trans-

forms the land’s productivity to a boom or

bust economy.

Loss of the perennial plants has yet an-

other consequence with far reaching ef-

fects. If the lichens, trees, shrubs and per-

ennial grasses are lost, nothing remains to

hold the fragile soil in place during a

drought. Small rainfalls that come evap-

orate rapidly or follow land contours as

they run off, escaping the holding capacity

of structured soil and plant roots. Winds

blow the dry, loose soil leaving behind

the steps leading to the desertification of

overgrazed pastures. |

The boom or bust economy has a psy-

chological manifestation, too. Boom times,

years of good rainfall and a rich emerging

ephemeral plant productivity come to be

seen as “‘normal’’. Busts, dry years with a

failure of the ephemeral vegetation are seen

as “‘disaster’’, an unpredictable event that

is out of place in the regular course of

pastoralism in these areas. Setting the level

of stock to that which can be supported

without losses of animals during droughts

and without loss of the perennial vegeta-

tion is to miss the profits of the good years.

Few investors are drawn to this stable con-

tract with the land. This basic pattern of

pastoral development obtains in many parts

of the world and is the underlying source

of the crippling of the land and its de-

pendents in Africa, North America, Aus-

tralia and elsewhere in the world.

The arid zone of Australia has much in

common with other rangelands but with

some special features that simplify the

consequences of pastoral development.

66 PAMELA J. PARKER

Australia was exploited suddenly just over

a century ago rapidly transforming the

natural system through an enormous in-

vasion of exotic animals, cattle, sheep and

rabbits. Australia has a streamlined sys-

tem of generally low quality soils lacking

in nitrogen and other nutrients and food

limited herbivores with few predators to

complicate the direct relationship between

mammalian grazers and the plant growth

on which they depend.

_ The system is run by rainfall and sea-

sons, good ones and bad. Very small rain-

falls may evaporate immediately or be too

light to be of direct use to vascular plants.

They may, however, activate the non-vas-

cular plants, lichens and mosses. Certain

of the lichens have the ability to fix at-

mospheric nitrogen and under some con-

ditions they can contribute that building

block of protein to the system at large.

Persistence of that part of the plant com-

munity contributes a blanket of long lived

minute plants that hold soils in place as

long as they are not ground away by the

hooves of concentrated herds of stock.

More significant rainfalls stimulate ac-

tivity of the vascular plants allowing them

to take up soil nutrients, fix carbon and

invest in growth and reproduction in ad-

dition to maintaining themselves. Signifi-

cant rainfall in the right time of the year

will send a message to the seed bank wait-

ing in the soil and elicit germination of a

portion of its stores. On rare occasions,

perhaps every decade or so, enough rain

will fall to trigger trees and shrubs to di-

vert energy and resources to making very

large crops of seeds. In such good seasons

if there are not an overwhelming number

of grazing animals to take the seedlings as

they become established, the next major

generation of woody plants will be

launched. If significant rainfall does not

come, ephemeral plants may not germi-

nate, may appear in the form of only a

few individuals or may start growth only

to burn off in the dry weather that follows.

Little food is then provided for grazing

animals. They must turn to the perennial

vegetation or leave the area.

Much of the perennial woody vegeta-

tion presents challenges to the herbivores

trying to live on its leaves and stems. Thorns

and other deterrants are often present.

Sometimes the leaves concentrate salts or

nitrogenous compounds that are toxic to

herbivores if eaten in large quantities. If

the salty leaves and stems are eaten ex-

tensively, then the animal will have to find

water to drink to rid itself of the salt.

Watering points for domestic stock may

provide that water. If the water is not

available, then the salty food cannot be

eaten. For most of the grazing mammals

surviving on this kind of vegetation, out-

lasting the drought is a waiting game in

the face of a negative protein balance. A

short drought is survivable on this diet. A

long drought may not be for either the

stock or the perennial shrubs being

browsed. Too many stock kept in a pas-

ture through too many droughts will even-

tually eat out this vegetation. The native

grazers, the kangaroos and their relatives,

are offered the same base of resources as

the domestic stock. They, along with the

sheep or cattle, wait for the end of the

drought. If they are fortunate, they sur-

vive the times of food and water stress to

welcome the returning rains and plant

growth that follows or unlike the sheep

the native wildlife may move in search of

green food elsewhere where the condi-

tions are better. If they are unfortunate

and the drought lasts too long, they perish.

The local area must then await reoccu-

pation by animals coming in from another

area. This pattern of high drought fre-

quencies in a stressful environment pro-

vides a background conducive to local ex-

tinction of populations of wildlife species.

Such has probably been the pattern for

many populations for thousands of years.

What has changed with pastoral devel-

opment is the increased number of ani-

mals dependent on the same categories of

food resources, fragmentation of the re-

sources through their overuse and barriers

to the movement of animals between

patches of habitat capable of supporting

them. When local extinction of a popu-

DEVELOPMENT: ARID RANGELANDS 67

lation persists and the phenomenon of lo-

cal extinction becomes widespread

throughout all of the populations of a spe-

cies, the risk of local extinction of popu-

lations can become transformed to risk of

loss of all the populations, species extinc-

tion. This process is likely to underly the

loss of roughly half of the medium sized

species of mammals described at the time

of early settlement in Australia.

The story of the Australian fodder grasses

is similar to that of the woody perennial

vegetation. The original grass communi-

ties on which the first European settlers

pastured their sheep were never docu-

mented by biologists. Their species com-

position is unknown. However it is prob-

ably safe to infer that the most palatable

of these grasses were eaten first by the

sheep and that some of these grasses are

now rare or missing in sheep paddocks

today. One of the grasses, speargrass, that

the early settlers viewed with alarm, in-

creased its presence in the late 1800’s. The

awns and sharp armor of the speargrass

seeds sometimes caused great damage to

the sheep. The problem of speargrass

caused the redevelopment of a breed of

African sheep to withstand these hazards.

Today, the speargrass is a major arid zone

grass species and a mainstay of sheep pas-

tures. This is partly due to the relative

resistence to grazing of the speargrass. Even

SO, grazing exacts a large toll. Under heavy

grazing pressure the speargrass has to re-

place its leaves as they are eaten. Leaves

are necessary to photosynthesis and photo-

synthesis permits the plant to establish its

root system, increase its size and mature

sufficiently to produce seed to found new

individuals. When leaf replacement is a

major resource drain on the plant, few

reserves are stored. Additional grazing

pressure and drought conditions may cause

the death of the plant. When this occurs

on a large scale the perennial habit of the

grass is transformed to an annual pattern

within the population. Speargrass then joins

the ranks of the ephemeral plants. It is no

longer available to herbivores throughout

a drought, it no longer serves to hold the

soil in place between crops of grass. It is

also unable to take advantage of each of

the windows of time that offer good grow-

ing conditions because each year it has to

begin again to establish its roots and leaves

anew instead of adding to its previous

growth. When speargrass is fenced off and

protected from grazing it is able to con-

tinue to grow throughout even severe

droughts. On grazed plots experiencing the

same drought conditions, the grass plants

are unable to survive both the stress of

drought and of depredations by herbi-

vores. The plants die and must be restored

to the area by germination of seed. This

may be the key to the success of the great

many species and large biomass of immi-

grant ephemeral plants to Australia whose

origins are in the Mediterranean region.

These plants probably arrived with Eu-

ropean pastoral development. They have

experienced 8,000 years of grazing by do-

mestic stock and are adapted to coexist-

ence with sheep and cattle even if they are

not adapted to the rigorous aridity and

nitrogen-poor soils of Australia. Inside the

fenced speargrass plots, the native grass is

able to claim more and more of the ground

away from the introduced species. In the

absence of grazing it is a successful com-

petitor when grown under the conditions

of the Australian climate persisting and

growing each year. The balance is shifted

by heavy grazing in favor of annual grasses

and the ephemeral herbs which do not

contribute to the stability of the system

during the times of climatic stress.

The solution to the merger of long term

development of the pastoral industry in

Australia and survival of the productivity

of the natural system would come as no

surprise to Charles Lindbergh. To stabi-

lize production and, over the long run even

increase it, management protocols need to

approximate the natural ecological system

and remove no more resources than the

land can produce as interest developed from

its biological capital. Numbers of herbi-

vores supported must be tied to the car-

rying capacity of the land at its least pro-

ductive times. Large areas are needed as

68 SYLVIA A. EARLE

management units for stock so that sub-

units of land can be rested to allow re-

newal of perennial vegetation. Infrequent

times of high rainfall can trigger setting of

seed in woody plants. Subsequent protec-

tion of the young seedlings from stock is

necessary to allow recruitment of the next

generation of shrubs and tree. If the

drought is only local, large management

units also make possible movement of stock

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 68-72, March 1986

within an extensive area to pastures of rel-

atively higher rainfall where ephemeral

plant communities can support the herd.

Sound pastoral practice has immediate

benefits to wildlife as well as to the stock

and stockmen. Whatever enhances and

protects productivity of the dry rangelands

benefits both pastoralism and the native

wildlife which can then fit into the inter-

stices of the development.

Sea and Space: Frontiers for

Exploration—an Introduction

Sylvia A. Earle

Vice President, Deep Ocean Technology, Inc.

‘“.. . The only other place comparable

to these marvelous nether regions, must

surely be naked space itself, out far be-

yond atmosphere, between the stars . . .

where the blackness of space, the shining

planets, comets, suns and stars must really

be closely akin to the world of life as it

appears to the eyes of an awed human

being in the open ocean, one half mile

down.”’*

The human body is remarkably versa-

tile, able to climb mountains, swing among

treetops, swim considerable distances, leap

into the air, and briefly enter underwater

realms. We are not naturally equipped with

wings to fly nor gills to remain for pro-

longed excursions in the sea. By using

something we are endowed with—inge-

nuity—we have been able to respond to

*William Beebe, Half Mile Down.

and in some measure satisfy another hu-

man characteristic—irrepressible curios-

ity. The result has been the creation of a

gradually expanding wealth of technology

that serves to extend human capability,

even into environments inhospitable to any

life form.

To some, “‘technology”’ conveys the

spectre of an overly mechanized society,

a loss of contact with nature, a spoiler of

civilization. Charles A. Lindbergh felt that

a balance is possible, that the human pas-

sion for creating and using tools can be

compatible with maintaining a healthy en-

vironment. The use of technology is, in

fact, necessary for access to space and to

the deep sea. Without machines to take

us into the sky, we would be as earth-

bound as elephants; without submarines

and other special diving equipment, our

ability to explore the oceans directly would

be approximately equivalent to the ability

SEA AND SPACE 69

of dolphins to glimpse the above-water

realm.

There are parallels in the development

of the technology that has made possible

the exploration of space and the oceans.

Until about a century ago, both were ex-

perienced primarily through remote meth-

ods. Telescopes magnified the view of as-

tronomers, but flight was a dream prior to

Lilienthal’s first successful piloted gliding

flights in 1881-1896. When the British re-

search vessel, Challenger undertook to ex-

plore the oceans of the world in 1872, sci-

entists aboard used nets and dredges and

other devices to blindly sample the oceans.

Imagine trying to understand the workings

of a forest or city if the only information

you had to work with came from frag-

ments fortuitously snared from a sky-ship?

Five years after the Wright brothers made

their first powered, sustained and con-

trolled airplane flights near Kitty Hawk in

1903, the British Royal Navy deployed the

first diesel electric submarine.

Technology designed to master both skies

and seas came together in 1911 when Eu-

gene Ely flew a Curtiss Pusher and touched

down aboard the cruiser, U.S.S. Pennsyl-

vania in San Francisco—the first landing

of an airplane on a ship.

The early 1920’s marked numerous

events of historic consequence for aviation

including Lt. James H. “Jimmy” Doolit-

tle’s transcontinental flight in a single day

(Pablo Beach, Florida to San Diego, Cal-

ifornia). Meanwhile, British inventor, Jo-

seph Peress, built the first successful ar-

moured diving suit, later known as Jim.

The “Kitty Hawk” of rocketry occurred

in 1926 when Robert Goddard demon-

strated the successful operation of a liquid

fuel rocket, and two years later, Fredrich

Stamer made the first flight of a manned

rocket-propelled airplane. During the year

between these events, Charles A. Lind-

bergh flew from New York to Paris, the

first solo non-stop crossing and the first

by a single engine aircraft.

Balloonists A. W. Stevens, W. E. Kep-

ner and O. A. Anderson set a new altitude

record—60,613 feet aboard the Explorer

I during the same year that William Beebe

and Otis Barton set a new depth record—

3,028 feet in a bathysphere designed by

Barton and deployed offshore from Ber-

muda. The following year, 1935, diver Jim

Jarrett wore the diving suit that bears his

name and located the vessel, Lusitania,

sunk in 330 feet of water off the coast of

Ireland.

The half century that has transpired since

these events has been an era of unsur-

passed technological development, dra-

matically evidenced in the rapid progres-

sion of critical developments leading to

manned and robotic aircraft and space-

craft. The first successful helicopters, first

jet flight, and first passenger plane with a

pressurized cabin, Boeing’s 307 Stratoli-

ner, all occurred before 1940.

In the following decade, regularly

scheduled commercial aircraft began

transatlantic service, Captain Charles E.

Yaeger became the first pilot to exceed

the speed of sound and Jacques- Yves

Cousteau and Emile Gagnan perfected the

aqualung and used it to dive to 210 feet

in the Mediterranean Sea. Balloonist Au-

guste Piccard turned his attention to the

oceans and, in 1948, with Max Cosyno,

tested his subsea “‘balloon,” the bathy-

scaphe FNRS2.

The 1950’s marked records of depth

(13,287 feet in the bathyscaphe FNRS3),

distance (U.S. nuclear submarine Nauti-

lus, Pacific to Atlantic under the North

Pole), and speed (Mach 2 by A. Scott

Crossfield; Mach 3 by Captain Milburn

Apt). It was the decade that marked the

launching of the first remotely operated

vehicle into the sea. It was also the decade

that signalled the dawn of the space age.

Sputnik 1, the first man-made earth sat-

ellite, was placed in orbit by the Soviet

Union. By the end of the decade, the U.S.

had launched a successful satellite (Ex-

plorer I) and the Soviet Union landed the

first man-made object on the moon, Luna

1, and photographed the farside of the

moon for the first time, using Luna 2.

New frontiers were attained at an ac-

celerating pace during the ten years that

70 SYLVIA A. EARLE

followed. Underwater highlights include a

descent to the ocean’s greatest depths,

35,800 feet, in the bathyscaphe, Trieste,

by Lieutenant Don Walsh and Jacques

Piccard in 1960. That same year, the U.S.

nuclear submarine, Triton, completed the

first round-the-world cruise underwater—

30,752 miles in 61 days. Skyward, the first

weather satellite, Tiros I, was launched.

Major Yuri Gagarin became the first man

to view earth from space in 1961, and later

that same year, Alan Shepard, Jr. became

the first U.S. astronaut to enter space. A

year later, Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn

orbited earth aboard the Mercury space-

craft, Friendship 7, and Mariner 2 became

the first spacecraft to conduct a fly-by of

another planet (Venus).

Edwin A. Link, well known for his pi-

oneering work in aviation, turned to ocean

exploration in the early 1960’s and, con-

currently with Jacques Cousteau and U.S.

Navy Captain George Bond, pioneered the

techniques of underwater living—satura-

tion diving. While some men were living

underwater in the mid-1960’s (Sealab I;

Conshelf IIT), others were walking in space

(Voskhodz; Gemini 4). In 1969, while a

team of four men occupied the underwater

laboratory, Tektite, fifty feet down, three

others ascended to the moon.

Eleven successive five-person teams

spent fourteen to twenty days saturated in

the underwater habitat, Tektite. By the time

the last Apollo crew visited the moon in

1972, twelve men had left their footprints

there.

Throughout the 1970’s, advances con-

tinued to occur concerning access to space,

despite significant funding cut-backs. The

U.S. Skylab crew rendezvoused in space

with the Skylab orbital workshop and later,

Apollo-Soyuz marked the first interna-

tional manned space mission. In 1977, the

Salyut space laboratory was launched by

the Soviet Union and, in due course, was

occupied for as long as 139 days. Also in

1977, Paul MacCready’s Gossamer Con-

dor achieved sustained man-powered flight,

following rigidly prescribed guidelines to

win the Kremer Prize. The same year, the

spacecraft Voyager I was launched by the

U.S. to fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond,

carrying greetings from many nations as

well as hauntingly beautiful songs of

humpback whales.

In the 1970’s, groundwork was estab-

lished for a series of Space Shuttle missions

in the 1980’s, that in turn were designed

to lead to a manned Space Station before

the end of the century. National support

for ocean technology and research in the

United States declined during this decade,

but the increasing demands for ocean ac-

cess by the offshore oil and gas industry

provided worldwide incentive to develop

new technology. Numerous small sub-

mersibles appeared, mostly for industrial

applications, and saturation diving tech-

niques were pushed to new limits. In 1972,

the French company, Comex, conducted

a simulated dive to 2001 feet, and working

dives in the North Sea to 1000 feet became

almost routine. Atmospheric diving suits,

including fifteen modernized Jim systems

and more than thirty other small one man

units called Wasp and Mantis came into

being.

Nineteen seventy-nine provided an op-

portunity for me to evaluate the atmos-

pheric diving system, Jim, for scientific re-

search in the clear, blue waters offshore

from Oahu, Hawaii. As I descended to the

sea floor to 1250 feet (Figure 1), I was

aware of some of the striking similarities

between my situation and that of astro-

nauts, while acknowledging the vast tech-

nological and economic differences.

Although the original Jim design was

developed in the 1920’s, modern versions

look remarkably similar to equipment used

by astronauts, and for good reasons. In

space as well as in the sea, it is necessary

to take along life support for enough time

to sustain you while you accomplish your

mission. Exposure to the pressureless vac-

uum of space would affect humans in a

way different from exposure to 600 pounds

per square inch of pressure exerted at 1250

feet or more, but the end result would be

equally fatal. In both kinds of protective

suits, movement is awkward. Astronauts

SEA AND SPACE 71

Fig. 1. Dr. Sylvia A. Earle descended to a world-record 1250 feet in 1979 offshore from Oahu, Hawaii

in an atmosphere diving system called Jim.

slip their arms and legs into moderately

flexible covering; Jim is made of a mag-

nesium alloy, weighs half a ton, and uses

articulated rings joined by special oil-filled

seals.

In space, astronauts are alone, aside from

human companions who might have come

along, and flora and fauna deliberately or

inadvertently associated with the space-

craft. In the sea, there is no such thing as

“alone.”’ Walking along the sea-floor, the

abundance and diversity of life is dazzling.

Red swimming crabs, small fish illumi-

nated by rows of glowing lights, rays longer

than I, hovering like giant butterflies; tall

spirals of bamboo coral that shimmer with

blue, luminescent fire when I brush against

fem |. .

This, I reflect, is why we must look in-

ward to the sea, while simultaneously

pushing the frontiers skyward. This is a

planet brimming with life, most of it con-

centrated in the ocean. In curious, dimly

understood ways, our survival, our well-

being, is linked with theirs. The history of

life is in the ocean, written in the lives of

millions of jewel-like creatures that we have

barely begun to catalog, let alone under-

stand.

What is holding us back? During a time

when passengers fly seven miles overhead,

watching movies and eating lunch, why

does no nation possess even one vehicle,

manned or not, that is capable of travell-

ing to seven miles into the sea, something

accomplished in 1960, and not once since.

Why, in the mid-1980’s, more than a

decade after the last astronaut walked on

the moon, are there still more footprints

there than there are a half mile under-

water? Is it thought that the oceans are

already thoroughly explored? Is it imag-

ined that the dangers underwater exceed

those in space? Will exploration in the sea

by divers and manned vehicles give way

to robots? Will future space exploration

be left largely to machines that are lofted

skyward and monitored thereafter by vi-

carious, earth-bound explorers?

Will Space Shuttle astronaut Katherine

72 WALTER CUNNINGHAM

Sullivan,* a marine geologist who has been

lured skyward, have her way and be able

in the future to work in space with ma-

chines, rather than be replaced by them?

Will there still be room for the spirit that

characterized past explorations to thrive

as the new frontiers in sea and space are

approached?

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was asked to

comment on the perils ahead, prior to de-

parture with her husband on the first over-

the-arctic flight to establish the practical-

ity of travelling from New York, ‘north

to the orient.”

One reporter said:

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 72-76, March 1986

‘“‘Can’t you even say you think it is an

especially dangerous trip, Mrs. Lind-

bergh?”’

She responded:

“Tm sorry. I really haven’t anything to

say. (After all we want to go. What good

does it do to talk about the danger?)”

The presentations that follow will ac-

knowledge the dangers, the risks and com-

mensurate rewards associated with ex-

ploring the frontiers of sea and space. Two

concurrent themes will be repeated, some-

times softly, sometimes quite distinctly:

“Onward and upward . . . and onward

and downward!”’

Research and Development of

Resources in Space

Walter Cunningham

President, The Capital Group

The focus of the Lindbergh Fund’s ef-

forts is the creation of harmony between

technological innovation and the environ-

ment. Sometimes the two are in conflict.

Technologists may look at the question

from a slightly different perspective than

environmentalists do. That statement

“technology and harmony with the envi-

ronment”’ raises the question of balance

between the idealistic and the pragmatic.

Frequently there is an overworked effort

*Dr. Sullivan’s presentation, ‘“Technology for Ex-

ploration of Space’’ was cancelled by NASA due to

the Space Shuttle Challenger accident.

to blame technology for today’s problems.

I believe that we should also give tech-

nology credit for solving some of yester-

day’s problems. For example, I recall

reading an article that pointed out that in

the year 1805, 2,000 people were em-

ployed in the city of London whose sole

job was to sweep a path across the street

through the horse manure from all the

horse-drawn carriages that were going

through town. The potential hazards were

not just the smell and inconvenience, but

the diseases that could be transmitted by

the flies. I think that there are a lot of us

that would just as soon not go back to that

RESOURCES IN SPACE 73

kind of a pastoral environment. Certainly

technology has moved us away from things

like that throughout history.

Just imagine the problem today if we

were still trying to maintain our reasona-

ble standard of living with live horses in-

stead of the mechanical and electrical

horsepower that we use today. In addition

to the enormous health hazards, the horse/

rider accident rates would project to be

ten times higher than what we are having

today with today’s modern technology. If

we are looking at today’s technology as

creating some problems let’s also give it

credit for solving some of yesterday’s

problems. I am very optimistic that to-

morrow’s technology will solve whatever

problems we have today or whatever we

are creating for today.

As a question of balance, people some-

times forget that in going after what they

want, the needs of everybody else may not

be met. This issue is sometimes framed as

a quality-of-life problem. It is also a quan-

tity problem. We probably are in the fix

that we complain about today, because

technology has enabled an increasing pop-

ulation to use up the shrinking resources

of our planet at an ever increasing rate.

How do we improve upon that? First we

can introduce a more efficient utilization

of those resources. Less waste. For ex-

ample, turning waste products into useful

resources or at least minimizing the waste.

Second, we can try to find more resources.

That’s going on all the time but it is be-

coming more difficult and more expensive

to find those resources. Third, we can con-

trol population growth—the most signifi-

cant controllable factor.

Space exploration addresses the quan-

titative aspects of the resources problem.

There are a lot of people who see moving

into the space environment as a way of

tapping new resources. With many proc-

esses, it offers greatly increased efficien-

cies, a few examples of which will be given

later. Some things can be done a lot better

in a micro-gravity environment than it can

be done down on Earth. And outer space

is certainly not as crowded. Space is where

our future is. We are filling up this planet.

That new ocean is more pristine now than

the New World was before Columbus and

Magellen. We’ve been out there for 25

years and we have just stuck our toe in

that particular ocean. And that’s an ocean

which Charles Lindbergh would enthusi-

astically support exploring today.

Our space ocean, the one that we are

moving out into, is the most hostile en-

vironment that man has ever explored. The

exploration of outer space requires the most

complex systems ever devised and oper-

ated by man if we are to safely move into

that environment. We have been explor-

ing it 25 years but we have just begun. We

have not yet begun to exploit space for

man’s benefit yet. We are still at the cut-

ting edge of trying to routinely get there

and survive. The space shuttle, in fact, is

the first step in that direction. It’s the ve-

hicle that we are committed to in this

country to utilize as our means of com-

merce into that new ocean for the next ten

years.

When I talk about exploiting our move-

ment into the space environment—I’'m not

talking about mining asteroids, lunar con-

struction sites, nor space colonies. I am

talking about what we can do in the near

term. How do we create an efficient free-

market system for a society like ours in

order to utilize the space environment?

We are spending a lot of money on it. In

a government-controlled economy, such

as the Soviet Union, the leaders can do

whatever they want about exploiting space.

There is no need to meet free-market tests.

I personally don’t think this is the best way

to spend money through a government-

controlled economy. Government-con-

trolled efforts at commercialization do not

have a good record in the past. I do not

think that they will be able to change that

record in the future. Government efforts

to sponsor commercial technology, for ex-

ample the nuclear-powered U.S.S. Savan-

nah, Operation Breakthrough in housing,

the Synfuels Corporation, the Concorde,

the TU144, are certainly not economic

ventures. Those were all government-

74 WALTER CUNNINGHAM

funded projects. Government has been

somewhat more successful in brands of ge-

neric research such as aviation research.

In free economies, government spend-

ing is a debatable subject and it’s subject

to public pressure. That means that it is

impossible to commit funds arbitrarily. The

help of private enterprise is needed to take

up the slack. A profit motive is essential

if private industry is to accept such a chal-

lenge.

There are various categories of com-

mercial participation in the space environ-

ment. First, in the aerospace industry pri-

vate companies develop rockets, space

infrastructure, power systems, space fa-

cilities, space labs, and industrial space.

A second level of private industry par-

ticipation is technology transfer. Technol-

ogy transfer for space exploration is not

much different than the classical technol-

ogy transfer from any new field. I hesitate

to mention it because it has always been

somewhat embarrassing to stand up and

talk about Teflon frying pans and beta cloth

which the public tends to appreciate as

having flown out of the space program.

We should not lose sight of the fact that

space technology transfer has been ben-

eficial in other areas, for example the in-

ertial navigation system of the 747. A 747

can take off from Orlando airport and op-

erating purely on that inertial navigation

system, the pilot can fly to the final ap-

proach going into Honolulu, Hawau,

probably to within a half mile of the final

approach path. That inertial platform has

three such units on the 747 for redundancy

and to correct any errors. They have to

be cheap enough such that it is economi-

cally feasible to put three of them on board.

They are only cheap because the same

contractor that sells those inertial plat-

forms for the 747 was the one that devel-

oped the inertial platform and the navi-

gation system for the Apollo spacecraft

back in the early 1960s. This is a natural

exploitation of technology that was de-

veloped for one purpose and then diverted

to be used in other places. The problem

with that in the long-term commerciali-

zation of space is its reactive nature. Re-

cognizing that technology is available,

matching it up with a market demand, and

putting it to other use is good for business,

but it does not place an initiating demand

on space exploitation itself.

The third area, and the only one that

offers long-term potential for us to suc-

ceed in this environment, is exploiting the

unique properties of space in order to ei-

ther manufacture products or to improve

processes for the marketplace here on

earth. The customer for that type of devel-

opment is the commercial marketplace.

Government in the last ten years, NASA

explicitly, has been marginally successful

at encouraging this type of commerciali-

zation.

The government and the marketplace

are sometimes in conflict. For example, if

the aerospace industry wants to create a

new booster, they would like to see the

government cost of that booster as high as

possible. On the other hand, in order to

exploit the unique properties of space we

need to have the cheapest transportation

system possible to get into and out of orbit

SO we want the lowest priced booster

transportation. The most frequently used

example of commercial exploitation is the

McDonald-Douglas experiment on elec-

trophoretic separation which has been done

on about four shuttle missions. This proc-

ess is based on the separation of different

hormones by virtue of their electric charges.

McDonald-Douglas has expended about

15 billion dollars so far in that area and

there is hope that some of the products of

the process will have a sale value. They

claim that this separation of hormones 1s

about 700 times more effective in zero

gravity than it is on the ground. In addi-

tion, the end product is about four times

as pure as with other separation processes.

What are the properties of space that

we can exploit to make a market-driven

space economy? First, there is a cost-free,

micro-gravity environment. When you start

comparing space microgravity with what

you can do on Earth, the best scientists

have been able to do is the drop tower in

RESOURCES IN SPACE 75

which they can let something free fall about

10~°g for four seconds. Or they have been

able to fly in parabolic trajectories in an

aircraft up to 30 seconds of 10°’g. That’s

about one one-hundredth of a g. So far,

we have probably conducted less than one

hundred hours of active experiments in

this micro-g environment. So we have

hardly begun to exploit some of these

properties.

Other, not-so-frequently thought of im-

portant properties of this environment are

its near-perfect vacuum, its near-perfect

sterility, its extremely cold temperatures,

(the temperature outside is almost

— 273°C), the full electro-magnetic spec-

trum of radiation, and unobstructed fields

of view. Most of the good things that come

out of these new areas come serendipi-

tously. If we only plan to look for those

we know, we will probably miss the most

important new ones.

Taking advantage of these particular

properties will lead to a commercial mar-

ket in zero gravity, estimated to cost be-

tween 50 billion and 150 billion dollars by

the year 2000. We have to be moving con-

tinuously in that direction but there are a

lot of obstacles. Most notable is the eco-

nomics of doing it. Back in the days of

Apollo when I flew, it cost about $1,000

a pound to go into orbit. When they started

to design the space shuttle, they were trying

to come up with a system that could re-

duce that by a factor of 10 which would

have meant $100 a pound. Well, every-

thing that I read lately says that it has been

estimated to run from $1,600 to $5,000 a

pound for the space shuttle to put it in

orbit. If you convert that back to 1971

dollars, we’re talking about $650 to $2,000

depending on how you do your arithmetic

back there. Frankly, it looks to me like in

the 15 years or the 20 years since Apollo,

we are just about holding our own, cer-

tainly we have not cut costs by a factor of

10.

General Dynamics has estimated it would

take a $10,000 per pound price tag in order

to make it economically worthwhile to sell

something that was made in space. In an-

other study, McDonald-Douglas has es-

timated that it cost 31 million dollars per

shuttle launch, which is the early price tag

for an Apollo launch. The whole subject

of what should be charged for a launch on

the space shuttle is now up for discussion.

There is a wide range of opinions on the

issue. The proposed charge now is 87 mil-

lion dollars but private industry has indi-

cated that the figure ought to be about 137

million dollars. So even with this issue there

is conflict. I believe that we cannot afford

to raise the price of a launch even to 87

million dollars. There are some things which

only the government can do. One of them

is having a space program, and providing

a transportation system into and out of

space.

We have stiff competition. The French

are charging $3,000 per pound to put sat-

ellites up on their rockets. Launch services

have been offered by the Soviet Union and

China has opened an office in Washing-

ton, DC to sell commercial pay loads on

their rockets. Brazil, India, and Japan are

considering doing the same. The point is

that we have to remain competitive. Those

governments and those economies are able

to subsidize the cost of their launches. If

we are going to compete we are going to

have to subsidize launches and reduce

transportation costs.

One of the candidates for the third gen-

eration of semiconductor materials is in-

dium. It has been estimated that defect-

free indium which could be produced in

zero gravity (microgravity) would sell for

$450,000 a pound. This is an example of

a high value, low volume, low weight

product that will meet the cost criteria. If

launch costs could be reduced to $100 a

pound, it could facilitate the creation of a

free market on products produced in space.

There are a few issues with which we

need to be concerned for the future. One

of them is a perceived lack of reliability

on space shuttle flight schedules. Cer-

tainly the Challenger explosion doesn’t en-

hance the image in that direction. There’s

a suspicion on private companies’ part

about government involvement in com-

76 WALTER CUNNINGHAM

mercial ventures. Policies can change, they

change with the politicians. What is a long-

term commitment? What kind of tax

breaks? You know right now you can’t

take an investment tax credit for some-

thing that’s done in orbit because it has to

have been used six months out of the year,

here in the United States. There are a

number of policies that need to be changed,

some of which there’s no argument about,

but it’s still subject to political whims to

have it happen. There is also the problem

of insurance costs. You have been reading

about them every time something goes

wrong. I understand that the insurance

company that paid for one of the satellites

that they brought back, still haven’t found

a customer to buy that satellite. It’s cer-

tainly a problem that holds back some of

the commercial exploitation.

Finally, but not least, and maybe even

one of the stickiest ones is the subject of

intellectual property. What kind of pro-

prietary rights do you have when you are

using a government-subsidized launch ve-

hicle? I think that this question can be

addressed rationally, however, it means

changing some policies about government

ideas on intellectual property and that

doesn’t come easy.

Well, none of those problems are triv-

ial. They are all being addressed. They

haven’t discouraged a whole raft of com-

panies, McDonald-Douglas, Rockwell In-

ternational, 3M, General Electric, Union

Carbide. There are a lot of companies

working on the commercial development

of this new environment. One of the areas

that has not really been opened up yet,

one that I believe very strongly in, is en-

trepreneurial participation. We have all

seen in the past, that the businesses that

really make it big in some new field may

not come out of the large corporations.

Certainly the aerospace companies that

should have a leg up on all this knowledge

about space have not come forth with great

new commercial ventures. McDonald-

Douglas seems to be making an effort.

But, I think we need to find a means for

entrepreneurs to take advantage of this

environment.

I really only need to emphasize that my

discussion here was intended to frame some

questions in your mind and give you some

information; certainly it’s challengable. I

think the analogy of setting sail on this

particular ocean in space is an absolutely

marvelous one. I will leave you with a quote

by Arthur Clark that I really love. Arthur

Clark several years back said, ““We have

set sail on an ocean whose farthest shores

we can never reach.”’

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 77-81, March 1986

Policies for Exploration and

Use of the Oceans

The Discovery of R.M.S. Titanic

Paul M. Fye, Ph.D.

President, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

and

Kenneth Paul Fye, Ph.D.,

Boston University

ABSTRACT

The discovery of the sunken luxury liner Titanic on the floor of the North Atlantic

Ocean in the Summer of 1985 in a French-American cooperative effort not only highlighted

the dramatic use of deep ocean technology, but also raised significant policy questions for

oceanographic research. Our ability to protect the resting place of Titanic will reflect our

ability to manage the exploration of the oceans effectively, to protect their natural envi-

ronments, and to successfully negotiate agreements to that effect with other nations.

She was the finest, most magnificent ship

ever built. Nothing like her had ever been

attempted before, and nothing quite like

her has, I think, been contemplated since.

She carried the rich and famous, the ar-

istocracy of Europe and America; the

Strausses, the Astors, J. Bruce Ismay,

President of the White Star Line, and

Thomas Andrews, her builder. She was

the latest state of the art, the leading edge

in ship building, the most high-tech ship

of her day. Every eventuality had been

seen to, she carried every convenience,

every accoutrement imaginable, including

lifeboats for more than a third of her ship’s

company, exceeding the requirements of

the British Board of Trade.

On her third day at sea at 11:40 p.m.

she grazed an iceberg that sliced a 300 foot

gash in her starboard bow flooding all of

her forward water-tight compartments. In

less than three hours she had settled to the

bottom of the North Atlantic, more than

two miles down, near a deep sea canyon.

It was unimaginable, her going down

that way, with her stern pointing vertically

skyward against what Walter Lord called

a “Christmas card backdrop of brilliant

stars”. She slid so slowly beneath the waves

that the ship’s baker stepped off her fantail

78 PAUL M. FYE AND KENNETH PAUL FYE

as she went down like getting off an ele-

vator. He didn’t even get his hair wet. She

had been the ship that “God Himself”

couldn’t sink, and now in two hours and

40 minutes it seemed as if ‘““God Himself”

had done exactly that.

When R. M.S. Titanic went downin April

1912 she took with her 29 boilers, coal

enough for burning 650 tons a day, 5 grand

pianos, assorted bottles of ale and wine,

chamber pots, serving platters, 30,000 fresh

eggs, a jeweled copy of the Rubaiyat of

Omar Khayyam, an entire way of life, and

one thousand five hundred human souls.

It was on this very spot 73 years later

that a small French research vessel out of

Brest began a series of searching sweeps,

criss crossing a 150 square mile target area

of the ocean bottom. In August, after hav-

ing covered 80% of the target, Le Suroit

turned over the search to RV Knorr out

of Woods Hole which took her turn at the

monotonous procedure the technicians

called “mowing the lawn’. Below Knorr

in the inky blackness was Argo, a towed

sled on a 13,000 foot tether of cable feed-

ing a television picture to monitors on the

mother vessel more than two miles above.

She had been on station for 10 days. In

the lab, French Oceanographer and Co-

Chief Scientist, Jean-Louis Michel had just

relieved his American counterpart, Dr.

Robert Ballard at the monitors, sending

Dr. Ballard to his cabin for a much needed

shower and rest. The rest was short lived.

Ship’s cook, John Bartolomei, knocked on

the door to inform him that something was

going on in the lab that they wanted his

opinion on. Something going on in the lab.

He was to remember thinking that it was

odd that they had sent the cook and not

one of the technicians to roust him from

his bunk. It was a disturbing departure

from routine and he pulled his jump suit

over his pajamas and made his way to the

lab with more than his usual haste. In the

lab amid a growing and excited group he

peered into the monitor’s blue white flick-

ering image of bolts on the side of a boiler,

and knew where he was. After 73 years,

R.M.S. Titanic had been found.

The first order of business was to re-

locate the bottom transponders so that

Knorr could hold her position over the

wreck. Argo was then retrieved for serv-

icing. In the process a winch gear was bro-

ken off and it took ship’s engineers 14 hours

to jury rig a replacement. Dr. Ballard

gathered his exhausted exhilarated tech-

nicians on the stern where he held a brief

memorial service for those lost at sea 73

years before. What followed was hours of

frantic imaging, flying Argo around Titan-

ic’s stacks and bridge in a series of daring

and nerve-wracking close-up maneuvers

which twice collided Argo with Titanic. He

was later to look down and realize that

after 40 hours on watch he was still wear-

ing his pajamas under his jump suit.

Like most scientific discoveries this one

took place by standing “‘on the shoulders

of giants’’. It took astute interpretation of

73 year old data, accepting some, discard-

ing some, to finally select a 150 square

mile area for the search. Le Suroit began

in July the lawn mowing proceedure cross-

ing the area with their revolutionary deep-

search sonar and magnetometer vehicle the

“SAR” which can survey a swath of ocean

bottom more than a half mile wide with

each pass. In heavy seas and gale force

winds Le Suroit and Sar eliminated the

bulk of the search area making possible

the American follow-up in August and

September.

The American equipment differed dra-

matically from the French. Both were sub-

merged unmanned bodies connected to the

main vessel by a long cable. The Woods

Hole submersible was called Argo after

the name of the mythical vessel that car-

ried Jason on his quest for the Golden

Fleece. Argo, like Sar, contained sonar

gear, but more importantly it carried three

cameras with the capability of telemeter-

ing their images back to the surface where

observers can sit in relative comfort (all

comfort at sea being relative) to watch in

real time on the monitors what the cam-

eras were ‘“‘seeing’’ down below. Argo is

towed close to the bottom, depending on

the ruggedness of the terrain and the cour-

THE DISCOVERY OF THE R.M.S. TITANIC 79

age of the technician and winch operator

who operate in the full knowledge that

a collision that results in the loss of the

vehicle will terminate the expedition

promptly. This procedure is called “‘flying”

the vehicle. Fortunately Argo has opera-

tors with just the right touch so that it can

work the bottom for over 70 hours in a

single stretch without catastrophe. Argo,

like Titanic, was on her maiden voyage at

the time of the discovery, but even with

very sophisticated gear, worked perfectly.

Knorr does carry another submersible

sled called Angus. Angus, which has been

used in earlier work on the discovery of

undersea vents and unusual deep sea an-

imals, does not carry video imaging ca-

pability. It does carry sonar and 35 mm

film cameras, but without video, the op-

erator is in effect shooting blind, hoping

his cameras are pointed in an interesting

direction. Most of the slides taken of 77-

tanic were taken with the Angus system,

a. NS

B) cae

' <

g ee a

“a y

but only after the terrain and wreck were

carefully surveyed and locked into the

shipboard computers. It is the aforemen-

tioned bottom transponders which are es-

sential in this very tricky operation. It is

the time difference in the arrival of key

points of underwater sound between the

transponders placed on the bottom and on

Argo which permits the calculation of dis-

tance to each object and thus later allows

for the positioning of Angus for picture

taking: a very tricky business indeed (see

sketch, Figure 1).

The Titanic was found sitting upright in

rolling sand dune country with very little

cover of sand or mud and very little ma-

rine growth. Not far away is a deep sea

canyon which could have tumbled the wreck

over itself destroying much that was iden-

tifiable. There had been much speculation

prior to the discovery postulating much

greater disintegration and coverage of sand

and mud or even that she might be deeply

KNORR with ANGUS

and transponder

is navigation system

80 PAUL M. FYE AND KENNETH PAUL FYE

buried in a muddy bottom. Fortunately

these speculations turned out to be wrong.

Titanic has lost two of her giant smoke

stacks, and the stern section has parted

from the rest of the wreck, but the re-

mainder of the hulk is in amazingly good

condition.

The photographs of the Angus probe

resulted from the computer calculated po-

sitions of earlier data secured by Argo’s

video system. That they got pictures at all

is one of the most amazing parts of the

story, but then these are selected from over

10,000 shots. This is after all the secret of

all great photography; knowing that you

cannot shoot too much film.

It has been known for some time that

ships on their way to the bottom leave a

characteristic debris plume; essentially a

collection of material that settles to the

bottom on one side of the wreck. Titanic’s

debris field extends about 800 meters aft

of the wreck. It includes a number of ar-

tifacts that have only begun to be cata-

loged.

We are concerned here, of course, with

questions of Ocean Policy, and in fact the

political and philosophical questions are

likely to prove more lasting and compli-

cated than the scientific ones. It is well

known that the Titanic disaster resulted in

a number of immediate policy changes. It

changed many rules of the sea relating to

safety and navigation in northern waters,

particularly during the iceberg season. Al-

most immediately shipping routes were

shifted several hundred miles to the south.

The International Ice Patrol was created

as one of the most important results of the

tragedy. The foundation of the Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution was indirectly

a result of the early work of the Ice Patrol

which convinced Henry Bryant Bigelow

and others of the need for an oceano-

graphic institution on the East Coast. The

irony that this Institution should eventu-

ally participate in the rediscovery of the

Titanic wreck is an additional twist on a

story that is laced with irony. The Patrol,

supported by several nations, was origi-

nally housed at the Oceanographic in

Woods Hole, and a great deal of coop-

erative oceanography was the result. The

Patrol annually plots the field of ice, as

well as the approach of rogue icebergs to

the active lanes of shipping in the North

Atlantic. 7

It is a further ironic twist to the Titanic

story that the wreck itself must be pro-

tected from the very technological break

throughs that made its discovery possible.

The knowledge that locating the wreck was

possible has awakened the curiosity and

greed of souvenir hunters around the world.

Protecting our environment (either natu-

ral or archaeological) from the uncon-

trolled expansion of our technology is, after

all, one of the themes of this symposium,

and may well be the dominant moral prob-

lem of our age. How does one put the

technological genie back in the bottle, or

at least, in this case, how does one prevent

its unscrupulous use by developers? The

laws of ownership have not changed for

several centuries, and this leaves open the

policy question of who, if anyone, owns

the Titanic.

There are several possible legitimate

claimants to the wreck. The original own-

ers, The White Star, now the Cunard Line

might make some claim to it, but have yet

to do so. Their successors-in-interest the

Commercial Union Assurance Society

could lay claim by virtue of their having

paid the insurance on Titanic, but only if

they can prove that the wreck has not been

abandoned, an unlikely prospect. WHOI

and IFREMER could make a more plau-

sible claim to at least some of the value

of any salvage, by virtue of the excellent

work they performed in discovering the

wreck.

The current proposal, however, is to

leave the wreck untouched and to declare

it an international maritime memorial for

those who died there in 1912. The House

of Representatives has passed such legis-

lation, which requires the American Gov-

ernment to enter into negotiations with

other interested powers, primarily Great

Britain, France, and Canada. The diffi-

culties associated with getting even coun-

THE DISCOVERY OF THE R.M.S. TITANIC 81

tries who are allies to agree to a protec-

tionist plan are difficult to estimate. Getting

the Western Allies to agree on anything

these days is a mountainous task.

However, the stakes are great. Titanic

is magnificent where she lies, and should

be protected from those who would tear

her apart, as vigorously as we would pro-

tect an endangered natural resource. Fur-

thermore, although the likelihood of any-

one successfully raising her is remote in

the extreme, the possibility of reckless sal-

vagers dying in the attempt is real. The

ultimate tragedy would be for any more

seafarers to die on Titanic than those who

now lie in watery graves off Newfound-

land.

“ April maximum ice limit

April extreme iceberg limit

“a

41 46 Lat. Lees

\ 350 14 Long.

| \

WOODS HOLE i =

——

We all have a stake in the preservation

of the Titanic Memorial so that the lessons

learned and paid for at so dear a price will

not be lost to future generations. We have

seen in pictures the extraordinary pre-

servative powers of the deep sea. We are

called upon to do no less.

References Cited

1. Ballard, Robert D., Jean-Louis Michel. ‘““How

We Found Titanic,” National Geographic. De-

cember, 1985, 696-719.

2. Lord, Walter. A Night to Remember. Henry Holt,

£953:

3. Ryan, Paul R. (ed.). Oceanus. Winter 1985/1986.

April 10, 1912: the SOUTHAMPTON

Titanic steams out of .

Southampton. After

brief stops for mail and

passengers at

Cherbourg, France, and

Queenstown, Ireland,

she begins her maiden

voyage to America.

===>

NEW YORK

knots (26 mph), strikes an

iceberg. Three hours later, it

sinks to the ocean floor.

In the joint U. S./French exploration,

the French research vessel Suroit

prepared the way by narrowing the

search area with sonar scanners.

—-—

April 14, 1912: at 11:40 p.m., the

great ship, steaming at 22/2

Aboard the research vessel Knorr,

scientists from France and Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution located

and photographed the doomed liner.

A 300-foot tear through five of

her watertight compartments sent

the Titanic to her final resting

place, more than 12,000 feet down.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 82-87, March 1986

Technology for Ocean Exploration

Graham S. Hawkes

President, Deep Ocean Engineering, Inc.

Those afraid of the universe as it really is . .

beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition . .

. and envision a Cosmos centered on human

. But those with the courage to

explore the weave and structure of the cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their

wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.

What limits ocean exploration? For ac-

cess beyond the edge of the sea and in

depths greater than a few feet, the use of

technology is necessary. But is the lack of

appropriate technology the only reason that

so little is presently known about earth’s

inner atmosphere?

I am going to pose a question to help

put this issue in perspective. We are meet-

ing now on a part of the earth called Flor-

ida. Would you describe this place as

mountainous? High country or lowlands?

Later we’ll come back to this question and

show its significance relative to the topic

of ocean exploration.

Last spring I was among those who paid

tribute at a meeting of the Explorers Club

to a well known Arctic explorer who de-

scribed his recent expedition, an arduous

mountain-climbing feat, as “the last great

exploration of the planet.” I got the feel-

ing that if I put up my hand and announced

that I knew where there was a patch of

ground ten feet square that no human eyes

had ever seen before, I might be crushed

in the rush of those who wanted to be the

first there.

Perhaps a similar spirit motivated some

—Carl Sagan, Cosmos

of my fellow British countrymen who re-

cently walked around the world, pole to

pole, north to south and back. The reason

they gave for doing it was that no one had

done it that way before.

Such events do not bode well for those

who would like to be explorers. Is it so

that we humans have been everywhere,

seen everything there is to see on the

planet? To do something distinctively dif-

ferent, must one now hop backwards to

the north pole? I like singlehanded sailing,

but to achieve notoriety in this field, it

might be necessary to travel around the

world three or four times nonstop.

It is possible to walk or fly or take a

jeep or boat or mule to any part of the

planet at the bottom of the ocean of air

that surrounds us, the apparent surface of

the earth. Thus, there is a popular notion

that the only frontier left is skyward, into

the distant realms beyond earth’s atmos-

phere. But what of that other, more dense

atmosphere that mantles the planet—the

ocean? Who has seen, let alone climbed

the mountains that rest on the surface of

the earth covered by water?

To overcome the problems of gaining

TECHNOLOGY FOR OCEAN EXPLORATION 83

access subsea, several approaches may be

used. One may freedive in the manner of

whales and dolphins, by taking a deep

breath and diving as deep and long as lung

and muscle power will allow. Using scuba

and saturation diving techniques, depth and

time can be dramatically increased. For

access to depths beyond a thousand feet,

it is necessary to use a submarine, the un-

derwater equivalent of an airplane, a self-

contained protective system supplied with

air maintained at one atmosphere.

In the past decade, the use of remotely

operated systems and robotic devices has

begun to complement the direct approach

of “man-in-the-sea.”’ Presently, more than

700 remotely operated vehicles (““ROVs’’)

are in active use worldwide, mostly for

military and commercial applications, but

increasingly, for research and exploration

as well. One of the most sophisticated of

these is the Argo, operated by Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution and involved

recently in the discovery and documen-

tation of the sunken liner, Titanic. Pres-

ently, such systems are tethered, with a

pilot guiding operations from a surface

station. Autonomous, computer-driven

systems are being designed that will be

equipped with camera eyes and various

sensory devices to gather information and

react to circumstances encountered with-

out moment-by-moment directions from a

human being.

Half a century ago, the relative state of

technology developed for access to the skies

and to the seas was roughly equivalent.

Aerospace technology has advanced enor-

mously during the past half century, but

among Ocean engineers, it is still regarded

as an event of some note to descend 3000

feet in a small submersible, although the

first visit to such depths occurred in the

early 1930's.

Much has been happening in the past

decade, however. I shall recap some high-

lights of this era, concentrating on tech-

nology that I’ve been involved with, that

coincidentally tells the story of recent ad-

vances and future directions.

The demands of the offshore oil and gas

industry stimulated development of var-

ious new technologies, starting in the early

1970’s. Saturation diving, originally a con-

cept developed to prolong time subsea for

scientific research and military applica-

tions, grew into a major industry. Oil ng

operators paid more than $50,000 per day

to keep a team of men ready to work in

depths as great as 1000 feet, sometimes to

1500 feet, using exotic mixtures of com-

pressed gas and complex life support

equipment.

Various four to six passenger submers-

ibles were also developed to work under-

water and to transport divers under pres-

sure from one site to another. Costs of

operation—$20,000 to $50,000 per day—

included a large support vessel capable of

withstanding the rigorous offshore envi-

ronment.

At the time I was an inexperienced en-

gineer who aspired to design airplanes, but

got involved instead working with torpe-

does and diver propulsion systems for the

Royal Navy. A small group of people be-

came interested in reconfiguring the one

man portable iron dress system, called Jim,

to work on oil rigs, and engaged me for

design work. Jim was originally developed

in the early 1930’s for salvaging the sunken

vessel, Lusitania. After initial success, it

remained idle until redesigned in the early

1970’s. There are now 15 units working

worldwide.

A man using Jim can go deeper than

divers—2000 feet—and can perform work

at a much lower cost. The system can only

walk on a flat surface, however, and work

subsea often requires moving vertically.

Thus came the inspiration for a system

that ultimately became known as Wasp—

it’s yellow and black and, like its insect

namesake, it flies. Eighteen Wasp units

are presently in operation, but in 1976,

when I set about designing the first, the

concept seemed revolutionary.

Work began not in a grand engineering

design facility, crammed with computers

and draftsmen and secretaries. Actually,

there was no electricity in my office, a

derelict cottage by the seaside near Nor-

84 GRAHAM S. HAWKES

folk. The front door did not work, so I

climbed in the window to get to my desk.

The place was quiet and peaceful, how-

ever, and within ten months of starting

work, the first unit was ready to take to

prospective customers. The cost of trans-

porting Wasp from England to the Off-

shore Technology Conference in Houston

was too great, so my colleagues and I took

a large photograph and displayed it in a

small booth among the giants of offshore

industry.

Wasp created a minor sensation at its

debut. Not only could it go twice as deep

as most saturation divers—to 2000 feet it

could also be operated for one tenth the

cost. We thought everyone would like that.

In fact, nobody did. The diving companies

were quite happy charging $50,000 a day

and did not much like the idea of getting

only $5000 for Wasp. They did not want

to buy it, but neither did they want their

competitors to have it. Within a few weeks,

we were avidly courted by several large

companies. This was very flattering at first.

Then it became clear that they all wanted

to buy that one machine and get exclusive

rights to ensure that no more would be

built. At that point, things began to get

nasty. An American company sued us and

a British one took the more straightfor-

ward approach and simply stole the only

Wasp then in existence. The matter was

happily resolved in the end, with the

American company buying four full years

of production. After two years, the orig-

inal Wasp was recovered and sold at a nice

profit.

I tell this story only to emphasize that

not everybody welcomes technological ad-

vances that enhance working capability and

also greatly reduce costs. We got through

difficult times with Wasp largely because

of our naivete and the sheer blazing con-

viction that is borne of righteous indig-

nation.

Since all production of Wasp was locked

up for several years, it was time to design

something new. I set to work on another

kind of one-man system, Mantis, launched

in 1978. Mantis is quite different from the

anthropomorphic Jim and Wasp. They, like

astronaut’s suits, have articulated limbs

operated by muscle power. The operator

actually has his arms in metal sleeves. The

operator of Mantis uses metal and plastic

manipulators controlled from within the

cylindrical pressure hull. The system is

propelled by strategically positioned

thrusters controlled by a push-button panel

provided with arrows indicating direc-

tions.

Thirty Mantis systems have been pro-

duced and are employed throughout the

world in support of the offshore oil and

gas industry. Mantis is successful because

it is small, easily transported and de-

ployed, and there is working capability

normally possible only in much larger, more

costly submersibles. At the time Mantis

was introduced, about twenty large sub-

mersibles were being operated from ships

in the North Sea. They soon became com-

mercially extinct because Jim, Wasp, Mantis

and a growing fleet of ROV’s could do the

work required at a fraction of the cost of

operating the large systems.

Except for a few large submersibles

working primarily for science, this type of

submersible has become obsolete. Among

those that continue to perform sterling

service for science are the Harbor Branch

Foundation’s Johnson-Sea-Link systems

and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu-

tion’s Alvin.

Let’s go back now to the questions raised

at the beginning. Are we sitting here on

a mountain, or is this a lowland? Is tech-

nology the limiting factor preventing us

from gaining access to the sea, or is some-

thing else holding us back?

Taking the astronaut’s view of the earth,

it is obvious that the oceans dominate the

planet. Taking the narrow perspective of

earth-bound human beings, there is an

impression that land dominates. It wasn’t

so long ago that the popular concept of

the earth was that it is flat, bounded by

corners, with a canopy of sky overhead.

Proof that earth is round was disquieting

to many, but acceptable as long as humans

remained the center of the action. People

TECHNOLOGY FOR OCEAN EXPLORATION 85

who insisted that we must be the pivotal

point of the universe had a difficult time

accepting the premise that the earth moves

around the sun rather than visa versa.

Many still have a problem imagining that

the earth may not have been designed just

for our pleasure, but most seem to have

adjusted to an understanding of where earth

is relative to the cosmos—a small blue

planet associated with a minor star in one

of many galaxies.

A typical map of the earth showing con-

tinents and islands surrounded by a fea-

tureless ocean reflects our self-centered

terrestrial bias. If we were to put the same

question about Florida to some savvy dol-

phins and whales, the answer might be

different from the response given by most

people. From the standpoint of sea crea-

tures, Florida’s base is several thousand

feet from its top, and seven miles from the

ocean’s deepest location. Doesn’t it make

sense to measure the height of a mountain

from its bottom, rather than from the in-

terface where the air atmosphere meets

the water atmosphere? Looking at it this

way, Florida is a mountain with a rather

level top, but a mountain nonetheless. “Sea

level” as a baseline reflects our landbound

point of view.

Taking the deepest part of the ocean,

the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench

near the Philippines, as the reference point,

we are presently standing on a mountain

more than half the height of Mount Ev-

erest. We are 37,000+ feet from the deep

ocean reference point, and Everest stands

approximately 62,000 feet above the same

point.

From the perspective of a dolphin or

whale, we humans are poor terrestrial

beings huddled together on that bit of land

that projects through the ocean, through

the inner atmosphere that is home for most

of the life on earth. We are literally im-

prisoned on the top one third of the planet.

The man honored last year by the Ex-

plorer’s Club had it wrong when he said

that the era of exploration is over. In fact,

it is just beginning. We have trampled on

Fig.. 1.

86 GRAHAM S. HAWKES

the top one third of the planet, but the

majority of the earth’s surface that is cov-

ered by water has never been reached,

even by ROVs, or nets or instruments, let

alone by humans who are determined to

see and experience for themselves.

Suppose it is acknowledged that, in-

deed, we don’t know as much as we

thought, and that ocean exploration is

something that must be undertaken in a

major way. Is it technologically feasible?

Could we, if we wanted to, explore the

base of this Florida mountain, or are there

major problems yet to be solved?

Before answering, I would like to de-

scribe a vision, a dream that began several

years ago as a result of discussions with

the chairman of this session concerning

how to get to the bottom of the ocean—

and return. It is a dream shared with and

in part supported by the Charles A. Lind-

bergh Fund through a grant in 1981. Imag-

ine being able to step into the ocean of

your choice and glide into the depths with-

out being concerned about getting cold or

running out of air. Imagine a comfortable

seat within a transparent pressure hull and

two sensory manipulators that respond to

controls that are operated instinctively.

Imagine a vehicle called Deep Rover that

is not make-believe, but real. The first of

what I hope will be many was launched in

the summer of 1984.

Deep Rover (Figure 1) is sophisticated,

but simple to operate. Evidence of how

simple it is to operate was achieved one

Saturday when fifteen people, including

my 13 year old son, Jonathan, were each

given 20 to 30 minutes of instruction be-

fore they became pilots in command of a

free-swimming submersible. They found

that slight forward motion on the arm rest

engages appropriate thrusters and the sub

moves forward; reverse is triggered by

leaning back. Such movements soon be-

come instinctive and most of the pilot’s

attention can therefore be concentrated

on what he is there to do.

The dream, now closer to reality than

when we first started talking about it in

1979, is to dive pairs or teams of Deep

Rovers and, by using ceramic glass rather

than acrylic for the clear pressure sphere,

to make descents to seven miles a routine

occurrence.

In conclusion, whatever one wants to

do in the oceans, can be done, technolog-

ically. Put a budget of, say, $100 million

or perhaps even $10 million, a fraction of

what is spent by this nation on hundreds

of matters of no greater importance than

this. Allow two or three years, and there

is virtually no limit to where it will be pos-

sible to go in the ocean.

Do you want to go to the deepest part

of the sea? It was done 26 years ago by

Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard and surely

could be done again if we decide to do so.

Technologically, solutions to problems re-

lating to great pressure and other chal-

lenges already are in hand. It is notewor-

thy that no nation, including the U.S., the

U.S.S.R., Japan, and France, presently

has the capability to go deeper than about

20,000 feet in a manned system. The last

vehicle in the Trieste series used by Walsh

and Piccard was decommissioned by the

U.S. Navy in 1984.

Technology generally has made rapid

advances in the past few decades, the last

in particular. Little of this is presently being

directed toward the ocean, but the ma-

terials are there, the technology is waiting

to be used.

What do you want to do? Do you want

to build cities underwater? We can do that.

Do you want a subsea restaurant? We can ~

do that. Do you want to take you aunt and

your grandmother down in a tour sub to

see coral reefs and visit with dolphins on

their own terms? This is underway right

now. What do you want to do in the sea?

It can be done. The limitations are not

technological, they are psychological and

self-imposed.

If the citizens of this great country,

America, ever got it in their heads that

they were in prison, unable to move at

THE LIVING SEAS 87

will throughout the planet, there would be

a clamor to break free, to remove the bar-

riers, and to commit to a vigorous program

of ocean exploration.

Presently, the oceans are ignored, just

as the ancients ignored and turned away

from the unknown hazards beyond the ho-

rizon. It was more conforting, for a while,

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 87—88, March 1986

to imagine that monsters were waiting just

over the edge of the flat earth, so best stay

away. But, just as a few in ancient times

risked the monsters and gained priceless

new understanding of the world, so must

risks be taken again. What, other than ig-

norance, is there to lose?

The Living Seas

Kym Murphy

Director, Living Seas Pavilion, Epcot Center, Walt Disney World

More than 10 years of design and con-

struction have gone into Walt Disney

World’s newest EPCOT Center pavilion,

The Living Seas. Dedicated to the explo-

ration of human-kind’s relationship with

the ocean, The Living Seas was designed

from start to finish to provide an intensely

entertaining and educational forum for the

presentation of ocean related sciences.

Twenty-seven feet deep and 203 feet in

diameter, the man-made salt water envi-

ronment has a life support system which

recirculates and filters all 5.7 million gal-

lons within 3 hours to maintain a natur-

alistic eco-system for the sealife of the coral

reel.

Rockwork at the entrance recreates the

organic forms of a natural coastline, with

waves cascading into tidepools. A curving

wall with a 125-foot-long, stylized ocean

mural draws us inside, where we pass

through a showcase of man’s historical fas-

cination with undersea exploration.

Reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci’s

sketches of underwater breathing devices

and submersibles, John Lethbridge’s div-

ing barrel and Frederic de Drieberg’s 1809

breathing device are a few of the curios-

ities displayed here. The dive suit from the

classic Disney film, ““Twenty Thousand

Leagues Under the Sea,” and the actual

11-foot-long Nautilus model are also

showcased.

A formal welcome is extended by United

Technologies, the pavilion’s participant,

in a 24-minute special effect multi-media

presentation introducing the pioneers of

modern ocean exploration. A high-tech-

nology company with worldwide head-

quarters in Hartford, Connecticut, United

Technologies employs some 194,000 peo-

ple. Among some of their best-known

products are Pratt & Whitney jet engines,

Carrier air conditioners, Sikorsky helicop-

ters and Otis elevators and escalators. Ex-

amples of United Technologies’ interest in

ocean exploration and the highly special-

ized equipment supporting these ventures

are seen throughout The Living Seas.

The ocean’s mysterious depths and its

effect on our lives are the subjects of a 7-

minute show which combines 35 mm live-

action film and computer animation to fo-

cus on the ocean’s inextricable link to our

survival.

After the show, theater doors open to

83 KYM MURPHY

reveal elevator-like capsules called ““Hy-

drolators,’’ which take us on a simulated

plunge to the ocean floor. We arrive at

Seabase Alpha, a prototype ‘‘21st cen-

tury” undersea research and visitor cen-

ter.

Boarding two-passenger “‘seacabs,”’ we

embark upon a 3-minute voyage that takes

us through an underwater world, popu-

lated by sea creatures, divers and robotic

submersibles darting among the coral,

rockwork, and plantlife of a Caribbean

coral reef environment. As our vehicles

move through tunnels with acrylic view-

ports 25 feet below the water’s surface, we

look upon schools of tropical fish, sharks

and other real ocean inhabitants within

their naturalistic eco-system. Some 200

varieties of sealife swim around us, in-

cluding sharks and rays, sea bass, puffers,

barracuda, butterflyfish and angelfish.

Within this environment, the diver crew

of Seabase Alpha is testing new diving sys-

tems. The crew also conducts experiments

in dolphin communication and monitors

the chemistry and biology of the ocean

environment.

The Visitor Center of Seabase Alpha

showcases current and future ocean tech-

nology in demonstrations, exhibits and in-

teractive shows. These exhibits are housed

within six modules, each dedicated to a

scientific topic crucial to our exploration

and understanding of the sea.

Seabase Alpha has been designed so that

it will be able to keep pace with the leading

edge of scientific thought, through the use

of varied presentation mechanisms such

as: large screen video presentations, in-

teractive video-disk systems and the most

versatile educational tool(s) of all; the

Seabase’s scientific staff who interact with

the guests as members of the “crew.” These

crew members who will be functioning on

and off-stage, will also be taking in on-

going research programs which, like The

Living Seas itself, are just beginning to

evolve.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 89-93, March 1986

Research and Development of

Ocean Resources

Don Walsh

President, International Maritime Incorporated, 839 South Beacon

Street, Suite 217, San Pedro, California 90731

ABSTRACT

Oceanography, the science of the sea, is the crucial first step in efficient development

of marine resources. To know what is there, learn its concentration, study the formative

processes, understand life cycles and develop the ability to predict location/occurrence

are all vital factors whether the potential resource is living, non-living, or a use of ocean

space. Simply having scientific information is not enough. There are three additional steps

before effective commercial development can be attained. These are: develop the tech-

nology to build machines to work in the sea, undertake an economic evaluation of a

proposed resource development and develop supportive public policy. While scientific,

technological and economic analysis methodologies are fairly well understood, the policy

area often produces the most difficulties and delays. Therefore “research and develop-

ment” activities for development of ocean resources must embrace all four areas to insure

a balanced approach to uses of ocean space.

Ocean Space: A Large Area for a Small

Paper

Clearly it is not possible to fully describe

here the full path of ocean resource de-

velopment from the initiation of basic re-

search, at the beginning, to commercial

resource production at the end. However

it is possible to give an overall concept of

how events, or developmental steps, must

be sequenced to insure a balanced, effi-

cient approach to use of this vast region.

It might be helpful at this point to ‘cal-

ibrate’ the reader with what is meant by

“vast region’. The world ocean covers 71%

of our planet; its average depth is about

two miles, and the maximum depth is seven

miles. The volume of the oceans is about

360 million cubic miles, a number so large

that it loses meaning. However noting that

all of the world’s population could be put

into one cubic mile of seawater gives some

scale to this number.

In economic terms all of the U.S. ocean-

related business contributes over $100 bil-

lion dollars a year to our gross national

product. And there are 138 other coastal

nations in the world. Therefore this brief

paper, of about 3000 words, can be pro-

rated at about $33 million per word just

for the value of the U.S. ocean industry.

90 DON WALSH

The Uses of Ocean Space: In Four Steps

The path from basic research to com-

mercial venture involves four broad steps:

¢ Science: What’s There?

The study of the oceans in terms of their

physical, chemical, biological and geolog-

ical properties.

* Technology: How Do We Get It?

The adaption of technologies to our

knowledge of the oceans to produce ma-

chines to work in and on the sea. This

includes machines science to study the sea.

* Economics: Is It Worth Doing?

Solving scientific and technological

questions does not guarantee efficient uses

of the sea. Economic analysis determines

whether or not a proposed resource de-

velopment program can produce a profit

for its operator.

* Public Policy: Politics Has the Last

Word.

This last step involves the ‘man-made’

constraints on uses of the sea. Govern-

ment policy determines under what con-

ditions resource development will take

place. Public interest groups attempt to

influence government policies to insure that

resource development is undertaken with

full consideration given to effect on the

environment and to finding balance be-

tween alternative uses. Cultural questions

also influence policy when traditional ways

of life are affected by a resource devel-

opment (or non-development). In many

ways the whole area of public policy pro-

vides the greatest number of difficulties

for the development of ocean space. Sci-

ence, technology and economics can be

reduced to fairly specific scientific meth-

odologies and analysis. Human factors used

in the development of intelligent govern-

ment policies are far more complex.

Oceanography: The Provider of

Information

Oceanography is not very old compared

to the fields of pure science such as phys-

ics, chemistry, mathematics and geology.

In fact, oceanography is not even a pure

field of science. It is interdisciplinary, es-

sentially embracing most existing fields of

science and applying them to the marine

environment. An oceanographer gener-

ally belongs to one of four major discipli-

nary categories: biological, geological,

chemical and physical. The first three cat-

egories are pretty self-explanatory. The

fourth, physical oceanography, can be

simply described as the study of the mo-

tions of the ocean and its interaction with

its air and land boundaries.

Oceanography: The Early Days

Inquiring men have looked at and stud-

ied the sea for literally thousands of years

but there was little formal organization and

analysis of what was observed. Resources,

(uses of the sea) did not depend upon or

use this information to any large extent.

In the 1840’s a U.S. naval officer, Lieu-

tenant Matthew Fontaine Maury under-

took a project to organize, analyze and

chart voluntary observational data taken

by naval, whaling and merchant ship cap-

tains. Maury knew that a great mass of

information could be available from the

hundreds of ships that covered large ocean

areas. If this information could be organ-

ized by season and region certain useful

patterns might evolve that could assist all

mariners to be more successful. The result

of this work was two publications which

revolutionized maritime safety and effi-

ciency, ““Wind and Current Charts’ and

‘Sailing Directions’. His book, “The

Physical Geography of the Sea’’ (1855) is

credited with being the first modern

oceanography textbook. Maury’s diplo-

macy, hard work and careful studies earned

him the unofficial title, ‘‘the first physical

oceanographer’’.

Oceanography’s formal beginning as an

interdisciplinary science was about 110

years ago, when the British Challenger

Expedition (1872-76) left England on an

around-the-world scientific voyage. About

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF OCEAN RESOURCES 91

this same time (1873) the first marine lab-

oratory was established at Naples, Italy.

By the turn of the century, oceanographic

studies were being conducted in many

places throughout the world.

Marine biology relating to fisheries was

the primary thrust of most marine re-

search prior to the beginning of World War

J. Prior to that time no marine minerals

were taken from the sea and the study of

Ocean currents and water depths were

~ mostly confined to improving safe navi-

gation of ships in coastal waters. However

the tragic loss of the steamship TITANIC

in 1912 did set in motion studies of ice-

bergs, their formation and drift trajecto-

ries. In fact, these studies continue to the

present.

The war helped stimulate the need to

have more information about the oceans,

especially in learning how to detect and

destroy enemy submarines. Since the pri-

mary means of detection was sound prop-

agation through the water, the field of ma-

rine acoustics was born.

World War II research efforts expanded

upon this work and by the end of the war

effective active and passive sonar (sound

navigation and ranging) systems were in-

stalled on both submarines and surface

ships. Both the knowledge of the marine

environment and matching technology now

set the stage for a major expansion in the

field of oceanography.

Predictive Information: Key to Effective

Uses of the Sea

The product of marine scientific re-

search is predictive information. That is,

information that can be applied to uses of

the sea. Following the scientific method

the scientist observes, hypothesizes, and

experiments. Finally he develops, and then

tests a predictive model for the phenom-

enon being observed.

Once we can understand and predict

marine phenomena, whether they relate

to marine weather or to the abundance of

fish in a certain area then we can use this

information for the benefit of commerce.

Not all “‘predictive information” finds

an immediate application in the commer-

cial marketplace. Actually very little makes

it this far. Thus the term “‘resources”’ has

a specific meaning. It refers to those ma-

terials, properties and space whose avail-

ability, predictability and value make them

economically important if they were to be

exploited. To pass the test of being a re-

source the key determinant is the eco-

nomic one. Thus while many things of po-

tential value are found in the world’s oceans

only a few command commecial value. The

balance remain scientific curiosities, help-

ing scientists to understand more about

the sea but not achieving the status of re-

source. Of course the situation is not static,

new knowledge and new technologies fre-

quently convert yesterday’s curiosity into

tomorrow’s resource.

The Resources of the Sea: A Quick

Sampling

In considering marine resources we can

divide them into three broad categories:

living, non-living and oceanspace use. The

common thread in all of these categories

is the essential need for predictive infor-

mation in order to be able to conduct ef-

fective and economically viable operations

on and under the sea.

Living resources means all living things,

animals and plants, in the sea and on the

seafloor. Other than marine transporta-

tion/exploration this is the oldest resource

use of the ocean. While only about 15%

of the protein needs of the world’s pop-

ulation is supplied from the sea, there are

promising new developments that may in-

crease this supply. The most obvious is to

know more about the oceans as a means

to better harvest available fish stocks. New

technologies such as ocean sensing satel-

lites are providing this capability.

The new field of bioengineering will

permit improvement of natural fish stocks

92 DON WALSH

as well as greatly improve the efficiency

and yields of fish farming (aquaculture)

operations. At present about 10% of the

fish consumed in the world comes from

aquaculture; this figure could be greatly

increased through the application of bio-

engineering.

Marine organisms (plants and animals)

have greater levels of bioactivity than do

terrestrial organisms. Of particular inter-

est are bioactive compounds that can be

derived from living marine resources which

can be the basis for new generations of

pharmaceuticals.

Non-living resources are generally the

hard minerals and liquid/gaseous hydro-

carbons taken from the subseafloor, sea-

floor, and from seawater itself. In addition

this category includes renewable ocean

energy such as ocean thermal difference,

waves and tides.

While not economically feasible at pres-

ent, it is clear that mining of ocean mineral

deposits will be an important source of raw

materials early in the next century. The

technology is in hand and has been tested;

it’s only a matter of time until market de-

mand catches up with capability.

Oil and gas from the seafloor also is an

area where a depressed world market for

hydrocarbons has been reflected in off-

shore development. But the demographics

of the world population tell us that this is

only a transient ‘energy glut’. Most of the

world’s new discoveries of hydrocarbons

will come from beneath the seafloor. Ocean

thermal energy which is renewable and non-

polluting will become more attractive as

the per barrel price of crude oil increases

in the future. Again, the technology is in

hand and has been tested.

Finally, oceanspace use embraces the

ocean as a place for certain activities such

as transportation of the world’s com-

merce; waste disposal, and marine recre-

ation.

Approximately 99% of world trade (by

tonnage) travels by ships between nations.

This percentage will remain constant al-

though total tonnage will increase as third

world economies develop and expand. New

technologies such as automated ships and ~

super ships will greatly reduce operating

costs while improving maritime safety.

Man will continue to generate wastes

and as populations increase so will this

‘byproduct’ of numbers of people and in-

creasing affluence. The oceans must be

considered as one of the acceptable sites

for disposal. To safely do this, we must

know more about ocean processes.

The developed nations create leisure time

and disposal income for their citizens. This

translates to increased recreational activ-

ities, especially in the marine area. In the

U.S. marine recreation contributes more

than $28 billion a year to the gross national

product. This is a major growth area for

ocean industry.

At present ocean industry is depressed

in many areas. Oil and gas are too abun-

dant and prices per barrel of crude have

fallen dramatically. The ‘oil glut’ has cas-

caded throughout the marine industry and

related sectors such as offshore drilling

services, shipbuilding and tanker opera-

tions have all suffered. World shipping has

too much capacity for the amount of car-

goes available. This is not only in the tanker

trades but also in general cargo shipping.

Understandably the world shipbuilding in-

dustry is badly depressed due to poor off-

shore oil and gas prospects and the over-

capacity in cargo shipping. Finally world-

wide fishing activity seems to have reached

a plateau of about 70 million tons a year

and there has been little change for sev-

eral years. |

But the news is not all bad. Marine rec-

reation is a major growth area. Port and

harbor operations still expand and are

profitable for most major seaports. And

as always, national investments in navies

seem to continue to increase.

This mixture of good news/bad news

must be understood as a transient situa-

tion. One only has to look at forecasts for

world demand for energy, minerals and

marine protein to understand that there

will be a return to demand. The hard part

is attempting to calculate when this will

happen in each of the resource areas.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF OCEAN RESOURCES 93

In areas such as oil and gas, and ocean

mining the lead times for resource devel-

opment are in the order of 10-15 years.

Therefore it is not unreasonable to suggest

that doing the relevant oceanographic re-

search now will provide the knowledge

needed to develop the resource in the fu-

ture when economic conditions are better.

In other words there can never be a world-

wide ‘glut’ in marine scientific informa-

tion.

Summary: Reality Versus Hope

The distance between basic scientific in-

vestgation and actual commercial practice

is great, sometimes too great. As noted

earlier, at every step of the way there are

major problems which need to be ad-

dressed to insure that the people of our

planet can enjoy maximum use of the re-

sources of ocean space. As Marshall

McLuhan said, “There are no passengers

on Spaceship Earth, we are all crew”. A

primary problem is lack of public invest-

ment in marine science and technology.

Because such activity produces results over

the long term (10-20 years) it is hard for

governments, which are short term (4-8

years), to be concerned about problems

relatively so far in the future. But without

the fundamental predictive information,

and matching technological capability, the

result will be greatly restricted resource

uses of the oceans.

In the United States our national budget

allocations for marine research and tech-

nology have just barely kept up with the

inflation rate over the past decade. The

U.S. is not alone, a similar situation is

found in other major maritime nations.

Yet we know that only a small fraction of

ocean space has been explored for its re-

source wealth while an expanding world

population continues to put a strain on

existing terrestrial resources.

Resource development without the sup-

porting foundations of science and tech-

nology is wasteful, economically ineffi-

cient and potentially harmful to the ocean

environment. Yet this may be the case if

proper support is not given to doing the

needed fundamental research in the oceans.

This is not an argument for massive gov-

ernment support for marine science and

technology. The role of government in this

area is to fund basic research where there

is high risk, the national interest is in-

volved and where the rewards are some

years in the future. A government part-

nership with the entrepreneur will permit

a smooth transition from basic research to

commercial practice with each player un-

dertaking the role that he is best suited to

fill.

There is still time to do it right. How-

ever there must be much greater public

involvement to insure government policies

encourage more extensive studies of ocean

space and that government budgets pro-

vide the needed resources. This public

awareness can only come from education

and information activities which actively

lobby the public to become more con-

cerned with the care and use of “‘spaceship

earth”’.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 1, Pages 94-96, March 1986

A Synthesis of Presentations

Surgeon Vice Admiral Sir John Rawlins

Chairman of the Board, Deep Ocean Engineering, Inc.

The philosophy of the Charles A. Lind-

bergh Fund reflects that of the man for

whom the fund is named. That philosophy

is that a balance must be struck between

technology and the environment. This is

what Lindbergh called, “the wisdom of

wildness.”

I see a parallel in this and in a sport that

I particularly enjoy—judo. Judo is the sci-

ence of balance. The philosophy of the

Greek athletes was, ‘“‘a healthy mind in a

healthy body.” The presumption is that

by educating your body to a healthy state,

that you thereby would develop a healthy

mind. In judo, the objective is to have a

balanced mind in a balanced body. Judo

depends upon maintaining your own bal-

ance, disturbing your opponent’s balance,

and in preventing him from regaining it,

thereby bringing about his downfall. Good

health and good balance are interdepen-

dent. I do not think that it is necessary to

draw obvious parallels with the state of

the planet.

A number of important themes have

emerged from this conference, some that

have become apparent only after reflect-

ing on the whole, having heretofore con-

centrated on the individual components.

Some highlights follow:

—Satellite imaging, vital to maintaining

an overview of the state of the planet,

needs further development, support,

and application.

—Communication of the conservation

ethic via entertaining but instructive

films, museums, aquaria, zoos and

centers such as Epcot’s Living Seas

Pavilion, was repeatedly endorsed.

—Development of replenishable energy

sources such as solar and wind power

and the use of hydrogen must be en-

couraged.

—The need to stem the loss of species

diversity and the use of diversity as a

yardstick to gauge a healthy vs. an

unhealthy environment was a recur-

rent topic.

—The loss of species may be on the or-

der of 10,000 per year through the

destruction of rainforests and other

critical habitats, while replacement by

newly evolving forms may be only on

the order of one per year. Protection

for critical habitats and captive breed-

ing programs for rare and endangered

species coupled with broad public ed-

ucation concerning the tragic conse-

quences of the loss of species were

discussed as some of the ways to ad-

dress this imbalance.

—The need to solve problems relating

to toxic waste disposal is of critical

importance. Methods for doing so in-

volve legislation and regulation, but

these in turn often generate new

problems such as stifling innovation

and increasing costs. :

—Recently developed methods make it

A SYNTHESIS OF PRESENTATIONS 95

possible to detect traces of certain toxic

substances to and within a quadril-

lionth of a percentage. Such sensitiv-

ity increases capability concerning

understanding and dealing with toxic

materials, but can be troublesome as

people attempt to grasp the signifi-

cance of such small amounts.

—A repeated underlying message con-

cerning waste disposal was, “‘There is

no away, anymore.’ We must face up

to the problems of generating and dis-

posing wastes or face the regrettable

consequences.

—The perception that exploration of the

planet is essentially complete was

shown to be nonsense, in part by evi-

dence that most of the planet is ocean,

and most of the ocean has not yet

been explored either directly by hu-

mans or by remotely deployed ma-

chines. It was also pointed out that

only five or perhaps fifteen per cent

of all the species of organisms pres-

ently living on the planet have been

described scientificially. This suggests

that much exploration remains to be

done.

—It is clear that the responsibility for

maintaining a healthy planet rests

largely now with the actions of man-

kind.

—It is both ecologically and economi-

cally sound to use ecosystems in a sus-

tainable way.

—The theme that “‘time is our most pre-

cious resource’ came with a corol-

lary: ““We need to take advantage of

technology in order to ensure its most

efficient utilization.”

—Increasingly, the resolution of envi-

ronmental matters involves law and

public policy, often to positive ends,

but sometimes with costly and con-

fusing results.

—Some have suggested protection for

remote environments, such as the deep

sea, and remote sites of historic sig-

nificance, such as the sunken passen-

ger liner, Titanic, can be achieved by

maintaining a cloak of ignorance. The

rationale is that it is more difficult to

damage or destroy something that

can’t be found or reached. This sug-

gestion was countered by the theme,

“with knowing comes caring.”” Many

historic sites and priceless natural areas

have been destroyed deliberately or

inadvertently because their value was

not appreciated. Education, not ig-

norance, is needed to gain lasting pro-

tection.

—TIt was noted that the earth, seas, sky,

and space beyond are as pristine now

as they ever will be, if present trends

continue. There are opportunities to

learn from wildness and set standards

for all that follows. This is particularly

apparent concerning understanding

the balance that comes about in nat-

ural ecosystems, but there are other

specific examples of the “wisdom of

wildness.’ One example is that it takes

the very latest aerospace techniques

to crudely approximate what nature

achieves with ease concerning flight

among insects, bats, birds, and even

ancient reptiles.

Concluding thoughts were provided by

Reeve Lindbergh Brown. She said her

father, of course, could not have known

twelve years after his death, on the an-

niversary of his birth, that a group of peo-

ple would be meeting to address a topic

which was the focus of much of his life—

balance. He would be pleased, she thought,

to know that individuals were actually tak-

ing responsibility for achieving and main-

taining the balance he believed to be vital

to survival.

She recalled an observation I made that

a tragedy can be measured by the size of

the audience, by the number of people

affected. Triumphs, she said, can also be

so measured.

In her father’s lifetime, personal triumphs

and tragedies both involved sizeable au-

diences. His concerns for achieving a bal-

ance have belatedly been shared by an in-

creasingly wide audience, including those

96 SIR JOHN RAWLINS

gathered for this symposium, and those

who will read the printed results.

Noting that one of the panels concerned

“outer space” and “inner space,” she made

reference to thoughts that her father jot-

ted down on a pad just before one of her

last visits with him. He had mused, “I know

there is an infinity outside of us; I wonder

if there is also an infinity within.”

This conference has not only expressed

the philosophy of Charles Lindbergh; it

has also found his spirit.

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Delegates continue in office until new selections are made by the representative societies.

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wis \ / VOLUME 76

Number 2

‘ Nat

Journal of the June, 1986

WASHINGTON

ACADEMY .- SCIENCES

ISSN 0043-0439

Issued Quarterly

at Washington, D.C.

EDUCATION:

THE SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM

CONTENTS

Editors’ Introduction:

Seo. SLAPP and MARY ELLEN MUNLEY .......¢..:.¢.2...-0% i

Se MAMMA EME IRL CONES Fcc fol eat alae) ys La a/ebele wid Opies ae ween See oe ae IV

Articles:

Learning in the Museum

PARKER B. POTTER, JR. and MARK P. LEONE: Liberation Not Repli-

canon: Archaeology in Annapolis” Analyzed ..............2..cene0eee es 97

SPE RICE: Making Sense OL ATt .. 22s ce ne heb eee he oe owen 106

Museum Exhibiting

BESEEBY VAN DER LEE: Playful Learning for All Ages ................ 115

MICHAEL JUDD: Facts and Consequences: A Mandate for Science and Tech-

“VE GID y CRIMES eae, nee Elis Oe OT aE ee Noe ABS Td 123

Per DAVISTSUFFINS: Presenting the Pastin the Present ............4. 125

LEA R. WALKER: Representing Cultural Diversity: A Responsibility of His-

EDIRY A GEREN yp cca.co 0 Bt Ree ce ee Cc aa on A ENR a 131

Learning About Learning in Museums

LEE OESTREICHER: “BARKING DOGS” and the Visitor: Museum Eval-

Nation and the: Search tor Effective Exhibits... .. 0... 06.0065 6) eens bees me

“CEPT STU YO TES, ~ ls 6 Eo aad Og ee, Sn en mR mae ie GRE alr

Washington Academy of Sciences

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 2, Pages i-iv, June 1986

Editors’ Introduction

Museums are customarily regarded as

repositories for the natural and cultural

record. But the passive connotation of

“respository” is not borne out by actual

museum practice. Through what they

choose to collect as well as how they de-

cide to arrange collections, museums im-

plicitly express which conceptions of art,

history, or science are worthy of attention.

But the state of scholarship in museum-

related disciplines and attitudes about the

public underlie the constant process of de-

cision-making that pervades museum

practice and inevitably informs museum

performance.

The modern museum has been de-

scribed by J. Mordaunt Crook in The Brit-

ish Museum as a “‘product of Renaissance

humanism, eighteenth-century enlight-

ment, and nineteenth-century democ-

racy.” Admirers of antique pedigrees pre-

fer to harken back to the Mouseion of

Alexandria, a center for learning that

flourished from the third century BC to

the third century AD, as a conceptual an-

tecedent to today’s “‘seat of the muses.”

Yet this seemingly mixed ancestory is

not without a common thread. A degree

of genuine continuity can be discerned in

museums’ gradual progression from the

sixteenth-century Wunderkammer, an

amazing place where the privileged few

viewed an eclectic collection of natural and

manmade objects, to twentieth-century

discovery rooms where visitors are invited

to attend participatory exhibits with col-

lections of artifacts specially selected for

“hands-on” learning. Certainly, in Amer-

ica the amassing and display of collections

have generally been associated with pop-

ular access and education. Consider Charles

Willson Peale’s wondrous—and profita-

ble—museum that brought together, for

the edification of visitors to Independence

Hall in the late eighteenth and early nine-

teenth centuries, portrait paintings of the

heroes of the Revolution, preserved spec-

imens of wildlife in naturalistic habitats, a

fully-mounted skeleton of a mammoth, an

illusionistic painting of his sons ostensibly

pausing on a staircase, and the like. Or

the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, founded

in 1870 by civic-minded individuals with

the express intent of “‘collecting materials

for the education of a nation in art, not

for making collections of objects of art.”

And there is the Memphis Pink Palace

Museum and Planetarium established

around 1930 with the strict stipulation that

“every exhibit must teach something.”

Just recently, the American Associa-

tion of Museums’ Commission on Mu-

seums for a New Century published a re-

port that calls upon museums to rededicate

themselves to their historic mission as

agents of popular education. The report

recommends that museums embrace the

concept of the centrality of learning and

states, “If collections are the heart of mu-

seums, what we have come to call edu-

cation—the commitment to presenting

objects and ideas in an informative and

stimulating way—is the spirit.”” The com-

mission was firm on this point: “The

American museum does not simply ex-

hibit,” they reminded their colleagues, “‘it

teaches as well.”

Today, the museum community is se-

riously examining its role as an educa-

tional institution—wondering about its re-

ii Editors’ Introduction

sponsibility to its audiences, questioning

its strategies for public awareness, and ex-

amining its methods of teaching through

the use of collections of objects. In this

journal issue we invite readers behind the

scenes of the museum. This excursion is

intended to allow you to eavesdrop on

professional conversations going on in the

museum world. The papers presented here

focus on some current thoughts and events

shaping the developing field of museum

education. This is a period of self exami-

nation for museums and education. Mu-

seums are reexamining their definitions of

education and learning. Staff are no longer

satisfied with recitations of attendance fig-

ures as the chief indicator of their edu-

cational success. Museums are increas-

ingly interested in the quality of a visitor’s

experience. And while school children will

always be an important audience, many

museums are currently extending their ed-

ucational efforts to include consideration

of the adult, casual visitor. In 1986, mu-

seums are broadening the base of their

educational mission.

Educational responsibility is firmly

embedded in the philosophical foundation

of American museums, but as you will dis-

cover in the assembled collection of pa-

pers, museum professionals are still

searching for a clear understanding of how

people can learn best in the museum en-

vironment. Museums have yet to realize

their full potential as educational institu-

tions, and promising initiatives are emerg-

ing in all parts of the country. Regional

study groups are exploring theoretical

foundations for museum education. The

J. Paul Getty Trust commissioned a study

of education departments in several large

art museums and is spearheading a move-

ment toward the articulation of philo-

sophical foundations for museum educa-

tion. In recognition of the central role of

education, many museums have under-

gone internal reorganization. Education

concerns are becoming central to museum

operations as heads of education depart-

ments become assistant directors of mu-

seums and as educators join curators and

designers on exhibit design teams.

The collection of papers presented in

this issue offer several perspectives on mu-

seum education. Here museum profes-

sionals reflect on their work and on their

responsibility to their audiences. Danielle

Rice, Curator of education, Philadelphia

Museum of Art, argues that learning from

objects of art is not limited to absorbing

information about them. She worries about

visitors’ dependency on labels and docent

talks, and she hopes that visitors will ques-

tion, analyze and think critically as they

look at art. She wonders, ‘“‘Can the mu-

seum teach people the critical thinking skills

needed to unlock the mysteries of art?”

Such skills, she contends, are the key to

making viewing art a personally meaning-

ful experience.

Linking artifacts from the past to people

living today is also the concern of Fath

Ruffins, an historian at the National Mu-

seum of American History (NMAH). Ms.

Ruffins recently directed the reinstallation

of a portion of the museum’s permanent

collection. She discusses the process of de-

veloping the exhibit, ‘““After the Revolu-

tion: Everyday Life in 18th Century

America.” The exhibit is the NMAH’s first

attempt to present a social history inter-

pretation of American life. History, Ms.

Ruffins asserts, is more than specific dates

and other facts. And for the museum, the

presentation of history involves more than

the display of artifacts and the story they

tell. Ideas, points of view, and changing

interpretations guide the selection and

placement of objects. Thus, visitors should

be aware of the choices that have been

made and should approach an exhibit ask-

ing, ““What is the museum trying to say?”

Parker Potter and Mark Leone suggest

that museums do nct pay enough attention

to the messages they present through their

exhibits and programs. Five years of in-

novative work in Historic Annapolis brings

these authors to the conclusion that mu-

seums need to give more attention to what

they teach—looking for the several layers

Editors’ Introduction ili

of meaning inherent in any museum pres-

entation. They discuss their own work in

Annapolis. It serves as a model of the use

of ethnographic research in the develop-

ment of a theme for a museum program.

Potter and Leone insist that it is the re-

sponsibility of the museum to teach the

public about the methods of history rather

than leave people with the false impres-

sion that there is one, right view of his-

torical events.

The issue also includes reports on sev-

eral recent and important developments

in museums—science and technology cen-

ters, participatory exhibits, and a project

designed to rectify gaps in museum re-

search and exhibition programs. Finally,

Harris Shettel discusses the ways mu-

seums evaluate the educational effective-

ness of exhibits and programs.

The museum professionals represented

here are engaged in questioning the au-

thority and effect of their own voices

through the exhibitions they mount and

the programs they present. At the same

time, they have advice for museum visi-

tors. Today, public attention is drawn es-

pecially to large exhibitions as they be-

come the mainstay of our largest and best

museums. Public perception of museums

is shaped by exposure to blockbuster ex-

hibitions such as ‘“‘Aditi: A Celebration of

Life,” “Louis XIV: The Sun King,” and

the more recent Renoir retrospective in

Boston and ““Treasure Houses of Britian”

at the National Gallery of Art. Though

these captivating events are an important

part of the modern museum world, they

offer a limited view of a museum and its

vast collection. The dazzling presence of

these wonderful exhibitions all but blinds

visitors to the treasures found in the mu-

seum’s permanent collection.

The authors of this volume invite read-

ers to look at museums more carefully, to

ask questions, and to become even more

thoughtful museum users. A prominent

museum professional, Edgar Preston

Richardson, addressed the issue of the un-

deruse of museums on the occasion of his

acceptance of the museum community’s

most prestigious award, the American As-

sociation of Museum’s distinguished serv-

ice award. Mr. Richardson observed that,

‘What is missing from the museum world

of North America is an educated adult

comprehension of the immense and fas-

cinating treasures of art, science and his-

tory assembled in our museums. Adults,”

he points out, “remain unaware of the im-

portance of what is in the collections of

the museums of the United States and

Canada. Lying unseen and unknown in

the prominent collections of the museums

of North America are things so important,

so interesting, so rare and valuable—things

that tell the story of the earth and of life

upon earth—that they form an enormous

resource of knowledge and pleasure to

those who will give them thought and at-

tention.”

With this issue we commend museums

to your thought and attention. Museum

collections are a vast untapped resource.

This issue of the Journal of the Washington

Academy of Sciences is dedicated to in-

forming a special, interested audience of

new ways to use the museum—ways to

enrich your research activities and per-

sonal learning. It has been said that mu-

seums represent, with libraries, the two

halves of the public memory. Museum staff

members acknowledge that this ‘““mem-

ory’ seems to be as much about the pres-

ent as it is about the past. We go to mu-

seums, it seems, hoping to see the beautiful,

the old, and the informative. But what we

actually see in the museum is ourselves.

Carol B. Stapp

Mary Ellen Munley

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the gen-

erous assistance provided by Anne-Louise

Marquis, Tracey A. Eberle, and Ann Grogg

in the production of this issue. We are also

grateful to the Journal of the Washington

Academy of Sciences for offering this im-

pressive forum to museum professionals

for “‘talking shop” and to Marcella Bren-

ner for her skillful matchmaking that led

from a single article to an entire issue ded-

icated to learning in the museum.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 97-105, June 1986

Liberation Not Replication:

‘Archaeology in Annapolis”

Analyzed

Parker B. Potter, Jr.

Department of Anthropology, Brown University

Mark P. Leone

Ph.D., Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland

Educational excellence in history mu-

seums rests upon thoughtful and thorough

consideration of three fundamental ques-

tions:

Why teach?

What to teach?

How to teach?

But how to teach has been much more

extensively discussed in history museums

than what to teach, while why teach has

gone virtually unasked. Perhaps the as-

sumption—largely unchallenged since Ar-

istotle’s Aesthetics—that objects commu-

nicate directly through sight or touch

underlies slighting the issue of how to teach

in history museum settings. And assuming

that objects themselves teach (rather than

the exhibit designer who arranges the ob-

jects, or the curator who writes the labels,

or the museum educator who develops the

programs) relieves responsibility for de-

ciding what to teach in history museums.

Further, the American faith in education

as an unqualified good no doubt circum-

vents questioning what education is good

for in the history museum—in other words,

why teach.

Although these three central questions

may not be considered explicitly by mu-

seum staff, every museum exhibit and pro-

gram is nonetheless based on implicit an-

swers to why teach, what to teach, and

how to teach. Moreover, these ques-

tions—and their answers—are inextrica-

biy intertwined: how to teach is deter-

mined by what is being taught; what is

being taught is determined by why the

teaching is taking place.

The public program of “Archaeology in

Annapolis” evolved from explicit consid-

eration of these three key questions. This

four-year-old experiment in outdoor his-

tory education is part of a year-round ex-

ploration of the archaeological record of

eighteenth-century Annapolis. Initiated by

Historic Annapolis, Inc. (a private, re-

search-oriented preservation organization

founded in 1952) in conjunction with the

University of Maryland, the project seeks

to contribute to understanding the com-

98 PARKER B. POTTER, JR. AND MARK P. LEONE

mercial base of the port city, its property

and wealth structure, and relationships

among the groups who inhabited the city.!

To date a dozen sites have been excavated

or tested; six have been opened to visi-

tors.* The public program is intended to

make the techniques, methods and find-

ings of archaeological research in Annap-

olis available to residents and tourists alike.

Why We teach

It has been argued persuasively that

nineteenth-century American school texts

were written to stabilize society, to main-

tain the status quo, to replicate rather

than to liberate.’ Education that fosters

replication—teaching people what they al-

ready know or new information just like

what they already know, operating through

the emotions or senses—is the outcome of

failing to ask why teach. Education that

fosters liberation—teaching people what

they didn’t even know they didn’t know,

operating through intellectual imagina-

tion—springs from asking why teach.

We believe that history museum ex-

hibits and programs are educational media

comparable to school books. The question

why teach therefore obliges the history

museum to subject its public offerings to

parallel scrutiny—do the exhibits and pro-

grams cultivate replication or liberation?

Furthermore, we recognize that all his-

torical interpretations, even scholarly ones,

can be expected to be products of their

own times, reflecting contemporaneous

social and political forces. Therefore, mu-

seum visitors should be made aware of the

current cultural context that inescapably

shapes any historical interpretation.

Moreover, we are convinced that the pub-

lic should be encouraged to question rather

than accept given interpretations. When a

historical interpretation does not actively

encourage challenges, it inevitably en-

courages acceptance of the often hidden

social and political agenda it supports.

Historical interpretations can thereby pro-

mote replication of the society that pro-

duces them.

Through the public program of “Ar-

chaeology in Annapolis” we try to liberate

participants from dependence on unre-

flectively presented historical information

for their understanding of the past. Our

response to why teach: to help visitors be-

come critical consumers of history rather

than passive collectors of ‘‘true historical

facts” which often serve hidden contem-

porary social or political agendas.

What We Teach

Ethnographic analysis, borrowed from

cultural anthropology, holds that any hu-

man reality will have both a surface and

a deeper meaning and that not all individ-

uals in a particular setting may be con-

scious of the two levels of meaning. Eth-

nographic observation is eminently well-

suited for revealing hitherto undetected

patterns that—once understood—can be

exploited, controlled for, or otherwise

taken into account.

We believe that an ethnographic study

of a specific history museum within its par-

ticular social and political environment

isolates significant questions, while bring-

ing into play a theory of society for for-

mulating problems and analyzing results.

Internally, ethnography could be used to

answer any number of specific questions

about the museum under study, but the

large and useful ones would include how

staff members made decisions about ex-

hibits, whether there is a different mes-

sage communicated by different media,

how people remember what they are told

in museums, and what creates the bore-

dom so often found in museums. Exter-

nally, ethnography also suggests signifi-

cant issues. Critical theory has been used

to examine the relationship between a his-

tory museum’s immediate economic and

political environment and its exhibits in

order to determine whether the museum

encoded meanings from the modern world

LIBERATION NOT REPLICATION 99

while seeming to educate about a past one.*

Once an ethnographic study reveals such

a relationship, the museum staff can de-

cide whether the messages should be dis-

entangled.

The public program of “Archaeology in

Annapolis” takes into account the results

of a study of how Annapolis today thinks—

and over the last century has thought—

about its past.° Primary sources included

interviews with local residents, tours of

the city, historical talks given to a variety

of groups, historical picturebooks and

guidebooks, and fullblown histories of the

city, to name a few.’ Principal questions

included: What time periods are stressed?

Which individuals, classes, groups, and in-

stitutions are the objects of historical at-

tention, and for whom? And most impor-

tant: Which relationships among individuals

and institutions are highlighted and which

are ignored or concealed?

The key ethnographic finding is that his-

tory in Annapolis is fragmented. Eight-

eenth-century history is separate from

nineteenth-century history; black history

is separate from white history; the history

of the city is separate from the history of

the United States Naval Academy, lo-

cated in Annapolis since 1845. Detailed

analysis shows sharp contrasts between the

city and the academy. Whereas the city is

portrayed as old, eighteenth-century, brick,

small, slow, evocative, and associated with

the white part of the population, the acad-

emy is portrayed as modern, nineteenth-

or twentieth-century, granite, large, fast,

scientific, and associated with the black

part of the population. At the same time,

both the city and the academy claim to be

nationally important, the city for its role

in the birth of the nation, the academy for

its role in national defense and its national

student body.

This emphasis on national role by both

the city and the academy shortchanges the

historical relationship between the two.

Annapolis, founded around 1650 and

named capital of Maryland in 1695, has

commemorated since the 1880’s a “Golden

Age”’ (circa 1760 to the mid-1780’s) that

culminated dramatically in two important

events that occurred in the Old Senate

Chamber of the Maryland State House—

George Washington’s resignation of his

commission in the ContinentalArmy and

the ratification of the Treaty of Paris with

Great Britain.’ The Naval Academy, on

the other hand, was founded in 1845 and

regards itself as a big, progressive univer-

sity—not as a historic site. Both city and

academy ignore their 140-year-long rela-

tionship.

We have developed a hypothesis that

suggests that neither city nor academy finds

it advantageous to acknowledge a com-

mon history. Annapolis, economically de-

pendent on the Naval Academy, has been

dominated in real estate transactions by

the academy. Ten times the Naval Acad-

emy wanted land from the city for expan-

sion; nine times Annapolis acquiesced.

Only once, when Historic Annapolis es-

tablished in 1963 the historic value of three

city blocks adjacent to the academy, was

expansion halted.’ In all likelihood the city

downplays the history of its connections

with the academy from wariness of further

expansion by the academy. And the acad-

emy sidesteps its historical relationship with

the city for fear of appearing the menacing

neighbor. Both Annapolis and the Naval

Academy sustain a myth of historic au-

tonomy to advance their individual self-

interest. Each, therefore, according to

critical theory, presents an incomplete

version of the past that accentuates sep-

aration, effectively according separation

an aura of inevitability that is both ahis-

torical and inaccurate.

It has been contended that social life

today functions on the basis of separa-

tions—time units like centuries, social units

like ethnic groups or economic classes, and

spatial units like plans.’? Customarily taken

as givens, normally unexamined, these

separations can nevertheless be shown to

have histories that render them subject to

challenge and change by the knowledge-

able. Through the public program of ‘“‘Ar-

chaeology in Annapolis” we try to share

observations of the contempory, local so-

100 PARKER B. POTTER, JR. AND MARK P. LEONE

cial and political environment derived from

ethnographic analysis. Our resonse to what

to teach: the masking of a present and a

past reality in traditional treatments of

Annapolis’ history.

How We Teach

The objective of liberating the audience

and the content of challenging customary

historical interpretations equally underlie

and thematically unite the three-part vis-

itor experience that constitutes the public

program of ‘‘Archaeology in Annapolis.”

Two hours in length, “Archaeology in

Public” consists of an audio-visual pres-

entation, a guided tour of an archaeolog-

ical site under excavation, and a self-guided

walking tour of one part of the Historic

District of Annapolis:"

* Twenty-minute multi-projector au-

dio-visual presentation, Annapolis:

Reflections of the Age of Reason, to

be screened in a visitors center, high-

lights how the increasing balance,

symmetry, segmentation, and stand-

ardization that characterized late

eighteenth-century English and

American material culture tran-

scended the aesthetic by shaping not

only the things people used but also

their very lives, thereby facilitating

profit-making in eighteenth-century

Maryland.

Fifteen-minute tour, with question

period, of an archaeological site, con-

ducted by a working archaeologist.

Ninety-minute self-guided walking tour

of eight locations around the city,

contained in a 24-page guidebook,

Archaeological Annapolis: A Guide

to Seeing and Understanding Three

Centuries of Change,” that not only

gives the contemporary interpreta-

tions of each location but also clarifies

how its historical meaning has changed

and continues to change in conjunc-

tion with needs, opinions, tastes and

politics.

Although the ideal visitor experience

would follow the order above, the three

components—using different data and

media—are intended both to stand alone

and to complement one another. The un-

derlying and unifying theme of liberation

and challenge is particularly compelling

when delivered by a dirt-stained, working

archaeologist discussing with the visitor how

he or she is thinking about a site that very

day. We are confident that finished and

beautifully-designed exhibits filled with

research conclusions dressed up as “‘true

facts” are not nearly as effective for cul-

tivating critical consumers of history who

intelligently question received historical

interpretations. Our response to how to

teach: to have archaeologists speak di-

rectly to visitors, presenting the methods

for learning about the past instead of the

fixed results of historical and archaeolog-

ical research, meshed with an overall ex-

perience that provides context for viewing

and weighing historical and archaeological

evidence.

Sample Guided Tour

In April and May 1985 “Archaeology

in Annapolis” excavated the eighteenth-

century yard of the State House Inn, on

State Circle, about 150 feet from the

Maryland State House, in order to find

evidence of the original perimeter of State

Circle.’ The current “‘circle” is actually a

lumpy oval 30 to 60 feet narrower than the

original, true circle laid out as part of Gov-

ernor Francis Nicholson’s town plan in 1695

(See figures 1 & 2).

After introducing herself, the crew, the

project (including key sponsors), the site

and archaeological techniques, the ar-

chaeologist/guide calls attention first to the

State House across the street and then to

a clear profile in a 15-foot-long trench that

shows the eighteenth-century contour of

the hill on which the State House still sits.

She points out a line of post holes, mark-

ing the boundary of an earlier, larger cir-

LIBERATION NOT REPLICATION 101

Fig. 1. An early 18th century ground plan of Annapolis. Note the roundness of the two circles. (Photo

by M. E. Warren)

cle; these signify alterations, like those on

the other side of the circle, 700 feet away

at the Governor Calvert House site, where

there is archaeological evidence for one to

three feet of cutting and as much as 12

feet of filling on the edge of the circle.’

There have been many such minor mod-

ifications but only one major exception,

the archaeologist/guide explains, to Gov-

ernor Nicholson’s original plan, which fea-

tured two circles with streets radiating from

them. Keeping in mind that this baroque

street plan not only served to make prop-

erty lines clear (as would any well-sur-

veyed town plan), but also served to focus

attention on the two buildings inside the

circles—the State House and St. Anne’s

Church—as architectural symbols of the

two centers of power in colonial Annap-

olis and Maryland, the 1695 street plan

was not simply a product of traffic flow or

convenience but rather a device to identify

and enhance authority. It was, and is, ac-

tive and even political. Today, throughout

the city, the State House continues to be

the visual focus of attention from almost

all the streets, which still radiate as they

did in the late seventeenth-century. The

exception is the United States Naval

Academy. When it was founded in 1845,

the academy used a part of the 1695 plan,

but between 1900 and 1910 it was rede-

PARKER B. POTTER, JR. AND MARK P. LEONE

102

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LIBERATION NOT REPLICATION 103

signed and now has its own separate, self-

contained street plan that focuses on itself

and on the adjacent Severn River. This

design obliterated a part of the original

plan and abandons the State House and

St. Anne’s as focal points.

The academy campus, like the exca-

vated post holes pointed out by the ar-

chaeologist/guide, represents alteration in

the town plan, even though the separation

between Annapolis and the Naval Acad-

emy, signaled so sharply by the architec-

ture, seems timeless today. Indeed, for the

academy not to have its own plan, for it

to employ Governor Nicholson’s focal

points, would constitute a symbolic sub-

jugation of a federal institution to the State

of Maryland, a patent absurdity to the

academy. The guided tour conducted by

the archaeologist/guide thus provides some

oi the requisite information for making

the relationship between Annapolis and

the Naval Academy an issue rather than

an established fact.»

Beginning with standard archaeology,

the guided tour could have presented the

street plan as an anachronism, a lovely

relic unchanged since 1695, or a simple

American version of city plans carried out

in Europe since the fifteenth century. But

such verbiage would only have duplicated

the fragmented presentations customarily

given of Annapolis’s past while obscuring

the active use of space and sight lines to

keep power within the separate hands it

has, by agreement, come to reside. In-

stead, the guided tour was shaped by a

decision to teach a specific message about

how material culture has been, and con-

tinues to be, manipulated in Annapolis.

The guided tour stressed that the two

political or social segments of the city use

space and its divisions, ordinarily taken to

be neutral, as part of the management of

power. A street plan, it becomes clear,

may handle vision in a way that enforces

political separations and demonstrates their

truth. We wished the guided tour to teach

something explicit and connected to the

present, to avoid replicating society in an

unreflective fashion, and to disclose the

history of a hitherto unquestioned sepa-

ration through archaeology. The attentive

visitor might then be aware of what society

is asking him or her to do by “learning”’

history, and awareness might lead to ac-

tion.

How, What, and Why Recap

Since the summer of 1982, five different

archaeological sites with guided tours like

the one described above have been opened.

Each guided tour is specific to the site on

which it is given, in accord with its loca-

tion, history, preliminary findings, and

stage of excavation. In four seasons over

25,000 people have participated in “‘Ar-

chaeology in Public’’ guided tours. There

is no doubt that this public program slows

down excavation. On-demand tours, as

many as 40 a day given to an average group

of fewer than six, are both very labor in-

tensive and expensive. Nonetheless, our

10%-level of visitor evaluation suggest that

the investment is worthwhile. The evalu-

ations verify that we are teaching visitors

not only about particular archaeological

sites but also about questioning archaeo-

logical presentations, and consequently,

other presentations of history. And that is

our real goal.

In each of the media we use, we make

an issue of method, the contemporary logic

applied to things from the past. A focus

on method encourages the visitor to ques-

tion and challenge an interpretation. How

we teach, therefore, endeavors to keep

‘““Archaeology in Annapolis” from being

simply another tool for replicating society

and maintaining an unexamined order. We

stress our active participation in the cre-

ation of the past. What we teach derives

from studying the ethnography of the local

community because, contrary to the

impression given by many American his-

torical museum settings, the creation and

consumption of the past are neither neu-

tral nor passive. People and groups use

history to keep what they have and to get

104 PARKER B. POTTER, JR. AND MARK P. LEONE

what they want from others. We recognize

that the line between what we teach and

how we teach may seem indistinct. In fact,

we readily acknowledge that how we teach

is a part of what we teach. Finally, why

we teach exemplifies Carl Becker’s idea

that “everyman is his own historian.” '® The

public program of “‘Archaeology in An-

napolis’” eschews creating and propagat-

ing just another version of the past. We

are trying to teach people how to keep

history from being done to them.

Acknowledgements

An early version of this paper was pre-

sented by Leone as “Material Culture as

Education’”’ at the Sixth Museum Confer-

ence, “Education Programs: What Role

in Museums,” on April 13, 1985, at the

University of Delaware. Potter has re-

ceived considerable assistance in his eth-

nographic research from the volunteers and

staff of Historic Annapolis, Inc. Principal

sponsors of “Archaeology in Public” in-

clude the Maryland Humanities Council

(Grants 546, 601-E, 738-F, and 760-G),

the National Endowment for the Human-

ities (Grant GM-21645-83), and the

Maryland Heritage Committee.

Notes:

1. The project depends heavily on the

preexisting historical work with city

and county records done by the his-

torical school led by Dr. Lois Green

Carr and including Dr. Lorena Walsh,

Dr. Jean Russo, and Ms. Nancy Baker.

2. M. P. Leone 1983. ‘““Method as Mes-

sage.” Museum News, 62(1): 34-41;

Potter, P. B. Jr. and M. P. Leone.

‘“‘Archaeology in Public in Annapolis:

Four Seasons, Six Sites, Seven Tours,

and 32,000 Visitors,” American Ar-

chaeologist, in press.

3. R. M. Elson 1964. Guardians of Tra-

dition. University of Nebraska Press,

Lincoln.

4. M. P. Leone 1981. “Archaeology’s

Relationship to the Present and the

Past.” In Modern Material Culture: The

Archaeology of Us, R. A. Gould and

M. B. Schiffer, eds., Academic Press,

New York. pp. 5-14; Leone, M. P.

1981. ““The Relationship Between Ar-

tifacts and the Public in Outdoor His-

tory Museums.” In The Research Po-

tential of Anthropological Museum

Collections. A. Cantwell, J. B. Gnif-

fin, and N. A. Rothschild, eds. , Jour-

nal of the New York Academy of Sci-

ences, 376: 301-313.

5. R.S.Baranik,S. Bromberg,S.Charles-

worth, S. Cohn, C. Duncan, ef al.

1977. an anti-catalog. The Catalog

Committee of Artists Meeting for

Cultural Change, 106 E. 19th St., #4,

New York, NY, 10003; M. Wallace

1981. ‘Visiting the Past: History Mu-

seums in the United States.” Radical

History Review 25: 63-96; D. Meltzer

1981. “Ideology and Material Cul-

ture.” In Modern Material Culture: The

Archaeology of Us, R. A. Gould and

M. B. Schiffer, eds., Academic Press,

New York. pp. 113-125; J. M. Gero,

D. M. Lacy and M. L. Blakey (eds.)

1983. ‘“‘The Socio-Politics of Archae-

ology.”’ Research Report 23, Dept. of

Anthro., University of Massachusetts

at Amherst; R. G. Handsman 1984.

‘How to do the Archaeology of the

Center Village of Litchfield.” Art-

facts XII(4): 2-7.

6. Potter’s work has been preceded by

several unpublished preliminary eth-

nographic studies of history in An-

napolis: C. Quinn 1982. “Notes for a

Walking Tour of Annapolis.” Term

paper, Dept. of Anthro., University

of Maryland at College Park. On file

at Historic Annapolis, Inc., (HAI)

Annapolis, Maryland; J. H. Ernstein

1985. “Interpretations of History in a

Living Historic Town.” Term paper,

Dept. of Anthro., Boston University.

10.

LIBERATION NOT REPLICATION

On file at HAI; N. A. C. Holman

1985. “‘Close Encounters of the His-

torical Kind: A Personal Account of

a Summer Spent Looking at the

American Past.” Research paper,

Dept. of Archaelogy, St. Catherine’s

College, Cambridge. On file at HAT;

L. Topper 1985. “‘Public Archaeology

in Annapolis.”’ Term paper, Dept. of

Anthro., George Mason University.

On file at HAI.

. Potter has lived and researched in An-

napolis for 30 months. His data base

includes four booklength histories of

the city, 20 guidebooks, a dozen for-

mal interviews, hundreds of hours of

informal interaction, attendance at a

half-dozen major historical celebra-

tions and over two dozen historical

lectures and special tours, participa-

tion as both a student and teacher in

the Historic Annapolis interpreter

training program, as well as regular

service as an HA interpreter.

. R. G. Handsman and M. P. Leone.

“Living History and Critical Archae-

ology and the Reconstruction of the

Past.” For Critical Traditions in Con-

temporary Archaeology, V. Pinsky and

A. Wylie, eds., in press, Cambridge

University Press.

. Historic Annapolis, Inc. 1963. Three

Ancient Blocks of Annapolis, Mary-

land’s Capital City. HAI, Annapolis.

G. Lukacs (1922) ‘“‘Reification and the

Consciousness of the Proletariat.’ In

History and Class Consciousness by G.

Lukacs, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge. pp.

Lt.

13:

14.

15:

16.

105

83-222; J. Habermans 1971. Knowl-

edge and Human Interest. Beacon

Press, Boston; S. Barnett and M. Sil-

verman 1979. Ideology and Everyday

Life. University of Michigan Press,

Ann Arbor.

consultant.

M. P. Leone and P. B. Potter, Jr. 1984.

Archaeological Annapolis: A Guide to

Seeing and Understanding Three Cen-

turies of Change. University of Mary-

land and HAI, Annapolis.

J. W. Hopkins III 1985. “Preliminary

Report on the Excavations at the State

House Inn Site.” Ms. on file at HAI.

A. E. Yentsch 1983. “Salvaging the

Calvert House Site.’ Final report for

NEH grant RO-20600-83. On file at

HAI.

The tour of the State House Inn site

was Offered from 9:00 until 4:00,

Monday through Saturday, from April

22 through June 1, 1985. The basic

tour was directed toward adults but

we also created a special version for

fourth graders field tripping in An-

napolis as a part of their study of

Maryland history. The tours followed

the format developed in 1982 (see note

2). The tour was given by two of the

five archaeologists working on the site,

Pamela Henderson and Kristen Pe-

ters, and was presented to more than

4,300 people in six weeks.

C. Becker 1935. Everyman His Own

Historian. Quadrangle Books, Chi-

cago.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 106-114, June 1986

Making Sense of Art

Danielle Rice, Ph.D.

Curator of Education, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Even novice museum-goers suspect that

there is something to be learned from sim-

ply looking at art, something which words

cannot convey. Yet this ““something”’ per-

plexes many people, who assiduously read

labels and listen to recorded tours, hoping

to unlock the mysteries of art. “This is

what you are seeing” all too often substi-

tutes for actually looking at artworks (Fig.

1). But words alone do not seem to pro-

vide the key.

René Magritte’s painting, The Betrayal

of Images (Fig. 2), plays upon the dif-

fernce between words and images: below

the image of a pipe the words “‘this is not

a pipe” are prominently displayed. This

pronouncement boldly refers to the reality

of the painted surface. The painting is not

a pipe because it is a painting. And paint-

ing, Magritte implies, has a language all

its own that differs from, and even con-

tradicts, linguistic messages.

While it is a well-known truism that a

picture is worth a thousand words, mod-

ern culture depends on words and the in-

formation they convey. As Magritte slyly

points out, images speak, but not in the

same way as words. Verbal information

has been described by anthropologist Ed-

ward T. Hall as “‘low-context’’ because,

once the code or language is known, it

requires little previous experience to be

understood.’ But information about an

artist’s life or about the history of a par-

106

ticular object or its style is very seldom

useful without the knowledge of how to

apply it.

Art objects are “high-context’’ forms of

communication, conveying complex ideas

that go well beyond the immediately vis-

ible and easily decipherable stories that

some paintings seem to depict. According

to Hall, in a high-context message or com-

munication, ““most of the information is

either in the physical context or internal-

ized in the person, while very little is in

the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the

message.’’* Consequently, to make sense

from a confrontation with an original work

of art, the viewer has to be willing to ques-

tion, analyze, and think critically—that is,

to be able to make educated decisions and

judgments about what he or she is seeing.

What the museum visitor brings to the

process of interpreting art, therefore, is of

paramount importance.

Art that tells a story—through its re-

semblance to readily-absorbed low-con-

text information—attracts people with lit-

tle or no experience in interpreting

artworks. One of the most popular paint-

ings in the National Gallery of Art is John

Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark

(Fig. 3). Its story is obvious: a young man

in the water is being attacked by a vicious

killer shark while several men in a boat

attempt to rescue him. The drama of the

scene is easily perceived and the image

107

MAKING SENSE OF ART

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Fig. 1.

108 DANIELLE RICE

Leci nent pas une fe. ;

Maegiite

Fig. 2. René Magritte, “La Trahison des Images (ceci n’est pas une Pipe)” or ‘The Betrayal of Images

(this is not a pipe)” 1928-29. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Purchased with Funds Provided by the

Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection.

evokes the feeling of excitment often sought

in adventure movies and novels. More-

over, in addition to the recognizable ac-

tion, a lengthy description printed right on

the frame identifies the man in the water

as Watson and recounts his survival of the

shark’s attack, overcoming the loss of a

leg to become a fine, upstanding citizen.

These facts, while appeasing the desire of

most visitors to know what a work of art

is about, are only marginal to what is com-

municated visually by the painting itself.

Exploring the realm of the visual con-

notes considering how a painting—a static,

two-dimensional surface with lines and

colors on it—conveys so much drama and

emotion. Certainly the gestures and

expressions of the people depicted in Wat-

son and the Shark help to communicate

urgency. But equally important is the net-

work of intersecting diagonal lines under-

lying the human forms and the play of

lights and darks across the surface. The

nude Watson is very bright, as are the two

figures reaching for him, while the evil

shark emerges from the shadows. There

are few rounded, cuddly shapes in the

painting but many jutting edges and sharp

angles. All these elements of design con-

tribute to the overall dramatic effect.

Copley has also been rather clever in

communicating the action. A painting, un-

like a story, does not take place in time.

To communicate a narrative, the artist has

to arrange his figures, colors and shapes

to enable the viewer to see certain parts

of the composition before others. In Wat-

son and the Shark the nude body is one

of the first things to be noticed, then the

menacing shark. Following awareness of

the imminent danger, the viewer’s eye

travels up the two standing figures in the

MAKING SENSE OF ART 109

Fig. 3. John Copley, ‘““Watson and the Shark,” 1778. National Gallery of Art, Ferdinand Lammot Belin

Fund.

boat which form the apex of an acute tri-

angle that pulls the eye away from Watson

and the shark just enough to draw atten-

tion to the man with the spear about to

do in the evil attacker. Will he get the

shark before the shark gets Watson? Cop-

ley artfully placed the tip of the harpoon

at the same distance from the shark as the

shark’s nose is from Watson. Only the in-

scription of the frame resolves the sus-

pense. The visual information, commu-

nicated by the composition, combined with

literal information, completes the story of

the painting.

Visual information, however, is not al-

ways interpreted in the same way. Today’s

viewers looking at Watson and the Shark

probably react quite differently from their

eighteenth-century counterparts. More

easily than current museum-goers, Cop-

ley’s contemporaries would have sensed

that this painting concerned not just a man

and a shark, but rather referred to the

triumph of Good over Evil. Copley en-

sured this association by “quoting” from

famous masterpieces as well-known to art

lovers of his time as the Mona Lisa is known

today: the man about to spear the shark

is borrowed from a Renaissance painting

by Raphael of the angel Gabriel defeating

Satan, and Watson himself closely resem-

bles an ancient statue, the Apollo Belve-

dere, that embodied ideal beauty. Fur-

thermore, eighteenth-century viewers—

unaccustomed to seeing far away places—

would have been very curious about and

appreciative of the accurate detailing of

Havana harbor where the scene takes place,

while contemporary viewers, familiar with

the movie Jaws, may note that the shark

110 DANIELLE RICE

does not appear very realistic. Today’s

museum-goer may find Watson’s nudity a

bit funny or discern that, in spite of the

action, the painting, in the final analysis,

appears quite static.

The rich diversity in human response

further complicates culturally-determined

differences in perceptions and ideas like

common knowledge of Raphael’s angel

Gabriel vis-a-vis Spielberg’s mechanized

shark. Different people can react quite

differently to the same object: conse-

quently, art works do not always convey

the same message to everyone. Studies

show, however, that visitors going through

art museums on their own, without a guide,

spend only one or two seconds in front of

each object. Clearly this is not enough time

to engage in active looking at the artworks

and registering their effects. But addi-

tional time spent reading labels or bro-

chures seldom results in an understanding

of the high-context language of art. Can

the museum as an institution teach people

the questioning, analytical and thinking

skills they need in order to unlock the mys-

teries of art?

There are three basic activities all visi-

tors, consciously or unconsciously, under-

take in an art museum: identifying, com-

paring and judging. While these processes

occur as a matter of course in any setting,

the nature of the museum as a learning

environment lends them special signifi-

cance. The visitor comes to the museum

primarily to see things; the act of perceiv-

ing is thus more acutely in focus.

The first activity—identifying—may

consist simply of naming what is seen as

a painting, a sculpture, a piece of furnitire,

etc. Or, it can be more complex, reflecting

the viewer’s previously acquired knowl-

edge. Beginning art history students, for

example, like to impress friends and fam-

ily by identifying a particular artist’s work

without looking at the label. But the iden-

tification game need not be regarded solely

as an opportunity for swaggering. In to-

day’s culture, so flooded with posters, color

plates and postcards of artworks, the act

of identifying corresponds to finding what

John Berger calls “the original of the re-

production.”*? Many museum-goers have

experienced the genuine satisfaction of

seeing in the flesh works of art recognized

from advertisements, books, or television.

The second activity—comparing—is

often closely linked to the process of iden-

tifying. Since a relationship is automati-

cally established between or among ob-

jects when they are displayed together,

museums inevitably foster comparisons.

Two portraits by different artists may be

hanging in the same room; a single gallery

may show a number of works by the same

sculptor, allowing viewers to trace the art-

ist’s stylistic development; decorative arts

from one country may be installed in close

proximity to a period room of the same

century from another country.

The third activity—judging—is the

process of deciding what is liked or dis-

liked, choosing among the objects that have

been identified and compared. In the art

museum this process is sometimes some-

what thwarted by the fact that the objects

have been—both in principle and in prac-

tice—already identified, compared, and

judged. Everything that is exhibited is

‘“‘sood”’ art. Nevertheless, people have an

innate tendency to show preferences and

make choices.

These three fairly commonplace activ-

ities—identifying, comparing and judg-

ing—are tools which may be effectively

used to sharpen questioning, analytical and

critical thinking skills in the art museum.

The art museum educator can let people

know that they are carrying out these

processes and can encourage more

thoughtful identifying, comparing and

judging. Mere identification, for instance,

is not as simple as it seems, since seeing

and knowing are intimately intercon-

nected. A friend can be recognized from

a great distance, before his or her facial

features can actually be seen. On the other

hand, a lack of familiarity with an object

Or person can cause certain important pieces

of encoded information to be overlooked.

MAKING SENSE OF ART

Mellon Collection.

For a long time the National Gallery’s

painting The Suitor’s Visit (Fig. 4) by the

Dutch seventeenth-century artist Gerard

ter Borch, was believed to represent a

young woman receiving her fiancé in the

company of her parents. The title en-

couraged a rather hasty identification of

the major characters in the scenario: fi-

ancé arriving, mother greeting, shy young

woman playing the guitar, and father hov-

ering in the background. But a more care-

ful look reveals some problems with this

script. The women in the painting appear

to be the same age—perhaps they are sis-

ters. However, the figure in the shadows,

previously identified as the father, does

not seem much older than the ostensible

suitor. And how can the figures in the

painting be identified with confidence to-

day given unfamiliarity with the dress of

112 DANIELLE RICE

the period that virtually precludes intuit-

ing the subtle messages that costume con-

veys? In fact, recent scholarship believes

the scene to be a brothel: the suitor is a

client; the young girls, prostitutes. Yet even

this hypothesis leaves many unanswered

questions, for how is the calm, elegant at-

mosphere communicated by the work to

be reconciled with customary expectations

and assumptions about brothels? Thus, in-

stead of providing easy answers, the proc-

ess of identification can often lead to some

of the deepest questions about artistic in-

tent or cultural context.

Comparisons are often set up for the

visitor by the judicious juxtaposition of

artworks. The art museum educator can

exploit the closed system of a comparison

to demonstrate a number of relationships

and interconnections. The museum-goer’s

questioning how objects are similar and

dissimilar can lead to a deeper under-

standing of stylistic developments, indi-

vidual vision and national identities.

Finally, evaluating and making edu-

cated judgments—essential for visitors—

challenges the art museum educator. All

too often museum-goers will assert defen-

sively that ‘they don’t know much about

art, but they know what they like”’ to allay

their fear that what they like may not be

considered good enough by museum au-

thorities. Such rigidity is unfortunately

detrimental to the learning that can and

should take place in the art museum.

Absorbing, processing, and then apply-

ing information perceived through all the

senses constitutes learning. Processing in-

volves matching the newly-acquired per-

ceptions and information to a cognitive

orientation shaped by previous experi-

ences and a conditioned way of seeing the

world. Perceptions that are unmatched may

go unnoticed, simply not registering in the

consciousness of the individual as infor-

mation.* But when the matching is even

partially successful, the individual will be-

gin making sense of the information he or

she has received. Making sense often re-

quires the revision of preexisting assump-

tions and ideas, and this revision enables

the individual to apply the newly-ac-

quired, newly-integrated material to his or

her actions and behavior.

Although all three steps are essential to

learning, processing seems to be especially

significant. Psychologist George Miller has

pointed out in Psychology: The Science of

Mental Life that during this part of the

mental operation, the “organism struggles

to reduce the mismatch between its own

criteria and perceived reality.’’> Informa-

tion that fails to match may be discarded

quickly. But if the individual is willing to

endure what Morse Peckham calls “‘cog-

nitive tension’’ (discomfort from the sen-

sation that something is wrong), then

learning occurs.® Individuals who can ex-

amine with some objectivity the disparity

between new information and their own

internal order are able to try a number of

different ways to resolve the mismatch;

ultimately they come up with solutions that

are innovative and unique.

When museum visitors see an art object

with which they are completely unfamil-

lar, cognitive tension occurs. In fact, cog-

nitive tension is present in varying degrees

for most visitors in front of most art ob-

jects most of the time. Why else would

people turn so eagerly to recorded tours,

labels, and other forms of low-context in-

formation in order to make sense of the

high-context experience of looking at art?

Art museum educators, in addition to pro-

viding ready information about art, should

encourage visitors to endure the discom-

fort of not knowing the “right” answer

immediately in order to learn to make ed-

ucated judgments on their own. The mu-

seum is a safe place in which to endure

ambiguity, to rehearse navigating through

today’s complex world.

Contemporary art is an especially ef-

fective tool for teaching evaluative think-

ing; individual taste in direct conflict with

institutional judgment generates consid-

erable cognitive tension. Abstract or non-

representational art objects, incompre-

hensible to many people because they

MAKING SENSE OF ART 113

thwart even the relatively simple process

of identification, not infrequently fail to

match visitors’ assumptions about the def-

inition of art. Furthermore, contemporary

art—treflecting through its diversity the

pluralism of values existing in today’s so-

ciety—challenges the notion that mu-

seums offer a single, absolute definition

of art.

Museums, by presenting themselves as

neutral contexts for the viewing of art, are

partly to blame for fostering certain false

assumptions that ultimately discourage

visitors from exploring more fully issues

of quality and value. In their effort to col-

lect and show the highest quality objects,

museums often give the impression that

their definition of quality is indeed the only

one possible. Museum professionals sel-

dom reveal in their installations and pub-

lications the human decision-making

mechanism, with all its ambiguities and

inconsistencies, that underlies the acqui-

sition, exhibition and interpretation of art.

For visitors to begin making educated

judgments, they need to apprehend both

that individual works of art—as well as

entire institutions—are dependent upon

people making decisions and choices and

that their own choices are valid and worth-

while; institutional taste is not absolute.

Thus, although museums may naturally

encourage certain perceptual skills—iden-

tifying, comparing and judging—that can

stimulate critical thinking, they also pro-

ject an authoritative neutrality that hides

the human components of the institution,

thereby undermining the visitor’s confi-

dence in his or her own competence to

think, analyze, and consider the meaning

of art on his or her own.

Labels, brochures, recorded tours, in-

teractive computers, and audio-visual pro-

grams provide visitors with useful infor-

mation about art. But these low-context

forms of communication fall short of il-

luminating the high-context experience of

understanding art. Making sense of art is

only possible through the visitor’s active

engagement in looking, thinking and re-

flecting. For the uninitiated museum-goer,

given the novelty and complexity of view-

ing art as a high-context expression, me-

diation by another person can be benefi-

cial. While this job is currently performed

by museum educators, all people can learn

to help one another notice, compare and

evaluate.

Art museum educators can humanize the

museum environment by reminding visi-

tors that an institution is only the sum-

total of the people who run it. More im-

portant, art museum educators can en-

courage visitors to endure cognitive ten-

sion, to reserve judgment, and to undertake

the process of evaluative thinking. By lis-

tening with a sympathetic ear to visitors

voicing their feelings of discomfort, an art

museum educator can help to validate their

opinions. Forewarning visitors that they

may dislike what they see or doubt that it

is art serves to encourage visitors to con-

sider their own system of assumptions and

beliefs in comparison with institutional

judgment about contemporary art.

The arts have traditionally played the

role of inspiring, educating and uplifting.

Since many visitors regard art museums as

educational institutions, they come with

the expectation of learning something. But

learning from objects is not limited to ab-

sorbing information about them. Instead,

it centers on thinking about important is-

sues like perception and values, resolving

difficult problems while enduring the dis-

comfort of cognitive tension, and asking

deep questions about the meaning and

content of works of art. Visitors treated

with respect by museum staff and chal-

lenged to consider the variety of complex

questions that the interpretation of art-

works poses respond very well. Perhaps it

is time for art museums to stop selling

themselves and their audiences short by

limiting their interpretive materials to

shallow answers for narrow questions.

Visitors eager to be told ““This is what you

are seeing” might be better served if their

attention were gently drawn to the object

itself and to the myriad of complex feel-

114 LESLEY VAN DER LEE

ings and questions engendered by looking, 4. Piaget’s famous experiments with chil-

thinking and reflecting. dren prove that some types of infor-

mation cannot be processed until the

proper cognitive structures have de-

Notes: veloped. Jean Piaget, The Child’s Con-

ception of Physical Causality (New Jer-

1. Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture (New sey: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1972).

York: Anchor Books, 1977), p. 91. 5. Cited in Morse Peckham, “Art and

2. Ibid. Disorder,” in Esthetics Contemporary,

3. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: edited by Richard Kostelanetz (New

BBC and Penguin Books Ltd., 1972), York: Prometheus Books, 1978), p. 101.

p. 21. 6. Ibid.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 115-121, June 1986

Playful Learning for All Ages:

Participatory Exhibits

Lesley van der Lee

Director, Sandy Spring Museum, Sandy Spring, MD

Traditionally, museums make multitu-

dinous decisions for the visitor. Curators

and exhibit designers customarily decide

what artifacts are exhibited, what infor-

mation is featured, and how the presen-

tation is made. Much of this unilateral de-

cision-making is, of course, warranted and

expected: the museum staff alone have the

professional expertise to determine the

physical condition of an object and how

best to display it. The museum visitor’s

decision-making is characteristically lim-

ited to reading none, some, or all of the

label copy. By largely excluding the visitor

from an active role in directing his own

learning, the museum frequently does it-

self and the public it aims to educate a

great disservice.

But what happens when the visitor is

permitted, even provoked, into an active

role in directing his own learning?

“This was fun!” exclaimed a middle-aged

woman from Kansas.

“This has been a very enjoyable expe-

rience,’ remarked a Massachusetts

businessman.

“There should be more exhibits which

we Can participate in,” recommended a

doctor from Vermont.

These three remarks attest to visitors’ sat-

isfaction after enjoying artifacts on a one-

on-one basis.’ Instead of just looking at

the artifacts, the visitors were given the

opportunity to interact with them. Instead

of being told not to touch, they were en-

couraged to pick up, manipulate, smell,

taste or try on the artifacts. In many cases

this hands-on freedom allowed the visitors

to answer their own questions: What is it

made of? What does it feel like? How heavy

is it? Can I make it work by myself? What

does the hallmark say on the bottom? Can

I bend over with this on?

From their comments, it is clear that

these visitors appreciated being able to tai-

lor their museum learning experience to

fit their personal needs. Regardless of their

background knowledge, they had been of-

fered the time, environment and materials

to pursue their own agenda for learning

from museum artifacts. They had all, in

fact, been actively involved in a facsimile

participatory exhibit.

Participatory exhibits are not new—a

school outreach program of touch exhibits

was conducted by the American Museum

of Natural History in New York in 1909.

Although educators observed improved

learning, they lacked the instruments to

document it. Over the past fifteen years,

however, the developing field of museum

evaluation has enabled American mu-

seums to investigate how to make their

exhibits educationally more effective. Re-

115

116 LESLEY VAN DER LEE

LEARNER RETENTION TENDENCIES RELATIVE TO ACTIVITY AND INVOLVEMENT LEVEL

Percentage

of Retention

70%

doing

seeing

20%

hear ing

10%

reading

Activity

MAZZA

DOING THE REAL THING

SIMULATING THE REAL EXPERIENCE

DOING A DRAMATIC PRESENTATION

Cet

GIVING A TALK

PARTICIPATING IN A DISCUSSION

Liisa.

SEEING IT DONE ON LOCATION

WATCHING A DEMONSTRATION

WATCHING A MOVIE

LOOKING AT PICTURES

CZ,

€anrtnZ

Level of

Involvement

ACTIVE

Receiving & Participating

PASSIVE

Adapted from The National Park Service: Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg.

Fig. 1.

search findings on both visitor behavior

and the museum learning process increas-

ingly indicate that the participatory ex-

hibit, and especially the discovery room

format, can successfully arouse and as-

suage the visitor’s curiosity. This growing

body of data, combined with society’s re-

kindled interest in improving education,

has led to the rapid proliferation of par-

ticipatory exhibits. The National Directory

of Discovery Rooms, begun by the Smith-

sonian’s National Museum of Natural His-

tory in 1984, now has more than one

hundred listings. This suggests that ap-

proximately one in fifty museums in this

country operates a participatory exhibit.

The late Dr. Frank Oppenheimer, foun-

der and director of the San Francisco Ex-

ploratorium, once said, “. . . in order to

have good learning and even good enjoy-

ment, you have to be able to make some

decisions.”* Participatory exhibits can help

PLAYFUL LEARNING 117

museums facilitate and increase visitor in-

volvement in and control of the learning

experience. The participatory exhibit is

rooted in the philosophy that the more the

learner is immersed in his own learning,

the greater will be his capacity to com-

prehend and recall:

I hear and I forget.

I see and I remember.

I do and I understand.

Chinese proverb

The higher the degree of learner partici-

pation, the higher the retention percent-

age tends to be (Fig. 1). As D. D. Hilke

and John Balling of the Smithsonian’s Of-

fice of Educational Research point out in

their recent study of family learning be-

haviors in two different museum exhibits,

“The success which individuals or groups

experience in acquiring or transferring in-

formation in a particular environment de-

pends not only on the behavioral strate-

gies which they bring to the task of learn-

ing, but also on the opportunities the en-

vironment provides for pursuing such

strategies.”’’ The variability of the visitor’s

learning preferences needs to be mirrored

in the museum’s exhibit format.

Looking at collections fails to satisfy fully.

Since our high-tech society furnishes

everything artificial from hearts to humus,

communion with the genuine artifact is

cherished. Dr. Caryl Marsh, founder of

the Discovery Room at the National Mu-

seum of Natural History and now at the

National Archives and Records Service,

reported in 1984 that “recent interviews

with visitors to the National Zoological

Park strongly suggest that now, more than

ever, people are starved for experience

with ‘real things.’ Stifled by synthetics,

surfeited with electronic images, they crave

contact with authentic objects.’’* Further-

more, in an evaluation study done at the

National Museum of American History in

1982, visitors indicated their desire to in-

teract with artifacts on their own terms,

intellectually and physically. They repeat-

edly wanted to know how something

worked.° Hilke and Balling also found in

the families they observed that there was

a ‘“‘bias towards strategies which acquired

information first-hand, and the aug-

mented potential for acquiring informa-

tion which accompanies utilization of such

methods.’”® “Evidently, the preferred mode

of acquiring particular information about

the exhibit was to find out for one’s self.’”’

Visitors seem both to want and to need

the first-hand experience with artifacts that

participatory exhibits afford and foster.

With its emphasis on individualizing the

museum learning experience, the partici-

patory exhibit may at first glance appear

chaotic. However, an effective participa:

tory exhibit is by definition a highly struc-

tured environment with carefully con-

ceived activities and clearly articulated

objectives.

A number of teaching techniques used

in participatory exhibits have conven-

tional pedagogical antecedents—finding

matching pairs of objects, manipulating an

artifact and guessing its use, or putting

together a puzzle to form a solution. While

these activities are often associated with

child’s play and are denigrated by some as

overly simplistic or juvenile, Judy White

and Sharon Barry of the National Zoo ex-

plain: ‘“‘Learning can be, and is, a fun and

exciting experience for people of all ages.

Learning is not a process that occurs in

just the classroom. We believe that play

is an inherent part of learning. Thus learn-

ing and play, or education and recreation,

two goals held by most zoos (and mu-

seums), do not conflict with each other.

A zoo (or museum) can be a great place

for playful learning.’’®

One of the earlier museum exhibits to

exploit playful learning as a teaching

method, the Discovery Room at the

Smithsonian’s National Museum of Nat-

ural History, was begun in 1974 as a tem-

porary experiment that proved so suc-

cessful it has been continued as a permanent

exhibit. It now attracts over 100,000 visi-

tors each year, and has served as the pro-

totype for many participatory exhibits both

in this country and abroad.

Physically, the Discovery Room is small

(36 X 28 feet) but its high ceilings, three

118 LESLEY VAN DER LEE

Fig. 2. The Discovery Room, National Museum of Natural History.

large windows and clear plexiglass win-

dow-wall give it a feeling of airy spacious-

ness (Fig. 2). The room is furnished with

several tables and stools, a long counter,

a carpeted platform, a microscope carrel

and different types of open shelving. Large

artifacts—a whale jawbone, wasp’s nest

and cannonball concretion—sit on the floor

or hang from the walls and ceiling. These

are called stumpers because they often

outwit the visitor’s imagination. Accom-

panying laminated cards tantalize the vis-

itor by posing intriguing questions: ‘““Who

made it?” ‘““What does it eat?” Detailed

answers are given on the back of the cards.

A popular stumper is the crocodile head—

or could it be an alligator? Visitors are

challenged to decide for themselves by us-

ing the information provided to examine

the head for clues. Medium-sized artifacts

like musical instruments, a freeze-dried

rattlesnake, and a geode—also with in-

formation cards—are readily accessible on

open shelving.

Smaller artifacts are organized in wooden

discovery boxes. These are stored behind

the counter and may be checked out from

one of the volunteers who staff the exhibit.

Each discovery box contains from six to

twelve artifacts that relate to a specific

theme. Included on the discovery box in-

formation cards are suggested activities

which can further stimulate and guide the

visitor’s learning. In the Queen Anne’s Lace

discovery box, visitors can study a mag-

nified encapsulation of the roadside flower

while tasting its culinary cousins: caraway,

cumin, coriander and dill. In the Why Are

You Sneezing? discovery box, visitors han-

dle fist-sized models of different pollen

grains as they investigate the causes of many

common allergies. With the Minerals dis-

covery box, visitors can explore the prop-

erties of minerals by shaking (salt), flaking

(mica), and writing (graphite) with them.

If the cards do not satisfy the visitors’ cur-

iosity, they can turn to the small reference

library in one corner of the Discovery Room

or consult a staff member. If this does not

suffice, they can write their questions on

PLAYFUL LEARNING 119

a stamped, self-addressed postcard for a

response from a curatorial specialist. In

some cases the Discovery Room collec-

tions are cross-referenced to other ex-

hibits in the museum; visitors who have

completed the Coral discovery box, for

example, are encouraged to go see the liv-

ing coral reef exhibit in the Sea Life Hall.

This unobtrusive system of checks and bal-

ances ensures that the visitors’ needs are

readily met at every stage of exploration

while allowing them the freedom to direct

their own learning. Throughout the Dis-

covery Room, information is made avail-

able in a variety of ways and at varying

levels of difficulty to accommodate a wide

cross-section of visitors.

Participatory exhibits similar to the Dis-

covery Room at the National Museum of

Natural History may be found in museums

of all sizes, disciplines, and budgets. Five

of the longer-established participatory ex-

hibits in Washington are the Insect Zoo

and the Naturalist Center—both also at

the National Museum of Natural His-

tory—and ZOOlab, BIRDlab and HERP-

lab—all three at the National Zoological

Park. The newest participatory exhibit,

“Hands on History: An Open House of

Eighteenth Century Activities” at the Na-

tional Museum of American History,

opened in November 1985 as part of

AFTER THE REVOLUTION. The In-

sect Zoo is a living exhibit of insects housed

in approximations of their natural habi-

tats. Visitors can stroke a click beetle,

closely watch a tarantula being fed, or ob-

serve bees energetically going about their

business in a see-through plexiglass bee-

hive. The Naturalist Center, which has an

informal library atmosphere, offers visi-

tors numerous study collections which they

can research or use to compare and con-

trast with specimens they may have at

home. Although each of the three parti-

cipatory exhibits at the National Zoo—

ZOOlab, BIRDlab, and HERPlab—has

its own distinct character, they are all

physically reminiscent of the Discovery

Room at the National Museum of Natural

History with tables and chairs, activity

boxes, a reference library, knowledgeable

staff and a congenial setting. As a group,

the three labs chronologically reflect the

changes and developments in participa-

tory exhibits over the past eight years as

the scientific study of visitor learning from

artifacts has become an increasingly im-

portant part of exhibit design and plan-

ning.

ZOOlab, opened in 1977, replicates to

a large extent the early Discovery Room.

It is located in converted office space in

the Education Building, a short walk from

the animal houses. Given the desirability

of closer proximity to the collections,

BIRDlab, the second participatory ex-

hibit, was opened in the Bird House in

1978. Despite its location, however,

BIRDlab conceptually functions as an ac-

cessory. HERPlab, the newest participa-

tory exhibit, was opened in 1982 in the

Reptile House after copious visitor eval-

uation studies at several different sites.

HERPlab is both physically and concep-

tually at the heart of the new Reptile House

(Fig. 3) and employs established partici-

patory methods in a stylish manner all its

own: discovery boxes include selected live

specimens (presented on a rotating sched-

ule to give the animals the needed respite

from curious humans); large glass doors

permit the visitor to witness the daily rou-

tine of an actual keeper area; film loops

and audio tapes complement the visitor’s

learning from artifacts.

Participatory exhibits are as yet a fledg-

ling form of artifact presentation. While

the field is rapidly expanding and new the-

ories and methods are being formulated,

much still remains to be studied, tried, and

proven. Two of the greatest challenges

facing developers of participatory exhibits

are acquiring appropriate tangible arti-

facts and finding effective ways by which

the artifacts may be used to facilitate the

visitor’s understanding of intangible con-

cepts. Participatory exhibits have there-

fore tended to flourish in the sciences rather

than the humanities. Scientific specimens

are often more easily and inexpensively

obtained, maintained, and replaced than

120 LESLEY VAN DER LEE

Fig. 3. Family interaction with a discovery box, HERPlab, National Zoological Park.

historical artifacts or artworks. Although

participatory exhibits suffer remarkably

little damage, a certain amount of wear

and tear on the collections is clearly un-

avoidable. Whereas a natural history cu-

rator may not mind visitors’ petting a com-

mon freeze-dried squirrel or assembling a

turtle skeleton, no art curator will con-

done their poking an original work of art,

nor a furniture curator their dismantling

a seventeenth-century court cupboard.

Moreover, conceptually, the sciences may

be presented with greater objectivity and

in more concrete ways than the humani-

ties. A natural history discovery box may

deal with the physical makeup of mol-

lusks; it is not concerned with their mo-

rality. A zoological exhibit on fish may

explain the spawning habits of salmon; it

need not discuss a flounder’s philosophy

or the hidden message in a conch’s collage.

Despite the problems of artifact rarity

and conceptual complexities, a growing

number of museums with humanities col-

lections are attempting participatory ex-

hibits. By building on the experience of

science museums and by conducting and

using evaluation studies on visitor learn-

ing, these museums are heralding the fu-

ture of artifact interpretation in the hu-

manities.

* At the Woodrow Wilson House Mu-

seum in Washington, D.C., the din-

ing room is used as a form of parti-

cipatory exhibit where the visitor can

explore the Wilsons’ style of enter-

taining. While no original artifact may

be touched, visitors do gain a sense

of personal involvement by casually

walking around the room. Encour-

aged by a staff member, visitors dis-

cuss, among other topics, reproduc-

tion dinner menus of the period. Did

they really eat all this? Who prepared

the meal? Who served it? What does

that say about social positions above

and below stairs?

* At the Then and Now Center of the

Plymouth Historical Museum in

PLAYFUL LEARNING 121

Plymouth, Michigan, visitors inves-

tigate social, technological and eco-

nomic changes over time in their com-

munity by comparing modern artifacts

with older equivalents.

Sensation, the extensive new partici-

patory exhibit at the High Museum

of Art in Atlanta, evolved from the

premise that reality is experienced

through the senses. Reality is there-

fore a perception and art a perceived

interpretation of reality. Through a

variety of sophisticated, multi-sen-

sory participatory exhibits, visitors are

led to reconsider their view of the

world around them. The five sense

organs are depicted as giant sculp-

tures which can be walked through.

smelled, felt and heard. A Honda car

replica produces music when its

trompe l’oeil marblelized chassis is

touched. In a participatory, prismatic

video-sculpture exhibit, visitors’

movements are transformed into var-

ious colors, shapes and patterns. Is

art really reality or is reality really

art? Whatever personal conclusions

visitors draw, they have been enthu-

siastic about participating in Sensa-

tions’s mixed media, inter-discipli-

nary exhibit. As one visitor put it, “I

wouldn't have believed that any one

exhibition could be so enlightening and

so entertaining, appealing on so many

levels. My five-year-old daughter en-

joyed it every bit as much as I did. It

succeeded completely in engaging us

both totally, though in quite different

ways.”

Despite their surface differences, these

three humanities participatory exhibits have

the same underlying commitment as their

scientific counterparts to engage visitors

in the design and execution of their own

learning process.

Participatory exhibits are coming of age,

and they are here to stay. Increasingly,

scientific research into museum learning

indicates a need and a demand for greater

visitor interaction with artifacts. Partici-

patory exhibits are demonstrating they can

successfully present artifacts and concepts

for enriched museum learning. As they

continue to mature and expand into other

disciplines, they may be expected to val-

idate Samuel Johnson’s apt observation—

“Curiosity is one of the permanent and

certain characteristics of a vigorous

mind”’—by providing new ways in which

to satisfy man’s inherent curiosity and in-

nate desire to learn.

References Cited

1. L. M. van der Lee, “Briefing Project: Visitors

and Artifacts,” (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

Institution, Life in America Project, National

Museum of American History, 1983), unpub-

lished.

2. W. Tramposch, “Exploring In Museums,” The

Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter, November 1982,

p: 3:

3. D. D. Hilke and John D. Balling, The Family As

a Learning System: An Observational Study of

Family Behavior in an Information Rich Environ-

ment, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institu-

tion, Office of Educational Research, 1985), p.

95.

4. Caryl Marsh, “The Discovery Room: History,

Philosophy Psychology,’ Washington, D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution, Office of Museum Pro-

grams, 1984), p. 6.

. Mary Ellen Munley, Evaluation Study Report:

Telltale Tools, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

Institution, Department of Social and Cultural

History, National Museum of American History,

1982), pp. 15-16.

6. Hilke and Balling, op. cit., p. 97.

7. Hilke and Balling, op. cit., p. 86.

8. Judith White and Sharon Barry, Families, Frogs

and Fun, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Insti-

tution, Office of Education, National Zoological

Park, 1984), p. 15.

9. “Sensation at Atlanta’s High Museum,” High

Museum of Art News Release, February 1, 1984.

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 123-124, June 1986

Facts and Consequences:

A Mandate for Science and

Technology Centers

Michael Judd

Museum Education Consultant, Washington, DC

Although science and technology cen-

ters represent the very latest type of mu-

seum, their lineage stretches back to the

beginnings of modern museums. In fact,

in 1675 the German philosopher and

mathematician Gottfried von Leibnitz

suggested a museum “of machines that

would entertain the public with magic

lanterns, artificial meteors and all sorts

of optical wonders . . . with demonstra-

tions of water, air and vacuum.” The spirit

and design of science centers can easily

be traced back through the “‘discovery”’

museums. The Exploratorium in San

Francisco was inspired by the Palais de

la Découverte in Paris with its ‘“‘animated

textbook”’ approach and the early dem-

onstrations and exhibits of the Deutsches

Museum in Munich. Yet there are sig-

nificant differences between the “‘new”’

science centers and the ‘“old’’ science

museums: science centers are more than

collections of objects and their programs

are directed to the general public. Mod-

ern science and technology centers take

as their objectives the explication of sci-

ence to the public, the improvement of

science education in the schools, and the

123

encouragement of young people to enter

careers in science and industry.

The Association of Science-Technol-

ogy Centers (ASTC), an organization of

200 institutions, has been instrumental in

giving direction to the phenomenal growth

of science centers in the United States

and abroad by offering conferences, pub-

lications, and advice. “Junior Leagues,

parents, educators, and business lead-

ers—very concerned about the need for

greater science literacy among children

and adults—contact us,’’ Bonnie

VanDorn, Executive Director of ASTC,

explains. ““Determined to start a hands-

on science center in their community, they

ask for help in developing rewarding in-

formal learning opportunities for fami-

lies and in coordinating with their school

system.’ Science and technology cen-

ters, both established and fledgling, typ-

ically espouse an explicitly democratic

mission, which finds expression in strong

links with school science curriculum and

with local business and industry. Whether

conventional or experimental, public

programming is closely tied to commu-

nity interests. Traditional courses and

124

demonstrations in electricity, astronomy

and biology have proliferated, while at

Discovery Place, in Charlotte, North

Carolina, unusual living history reenact-

ments of famous scientists at work in

period settings, as well as a futuristic

encounter with robot-assisted demon-

strations of basic scientific principles,

are being staged.

Science centers, with all their inge-

nuity, embody some powerful ambigui-

ties. Dramatic popular entertainment

techniques hold the attention of audi-

ences, especially family visitors. In the

fun of hands-on exhibits, however, the

scientific principles the exhibit seeks to

teach may be lost. But perhaps the most

important dilemma arises from the pres-

entation of science and technology as if

value-free. Science centers are expo-

nents of the traditional American belief

that our future can be made better through

the application of scientific knowledge to

human problems. But what about the

hidden, broader outcomes of technol-

MICHAEL JUDD

ogy? Science can produce monsters, like

radioactive waste and acid rain. More

science centers need to discharge their

obligation to teach the public both facts

and consequences, a mandate that may

conflict with the priorities of corporate

sponsors.

Attendance at science centers contin-

ues to rise (roughly 150 million visitors

annually); several new ones open each

year and they are rapidly spreading

around the world. According to Van-

Dorn, “‘Half of ASTC’s member insti-

tutions are under 20 years old. In 1982,

we had to establish a new category of

membership—Developing—for centers

in the planning stage.” Visitors come to

find a unique combination of informa-

tion and experience that stimulates the

imagination and educates for the future.

The challenge of science and technology

centers is to present technology and its

consequences to the public through ex-

hibits and programs that are accurate,

engaging, and socially responsible.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76. Number 2. Pages 125-130, June 1986

Interpreting the Past in the

Present

Fath Davis Ruffins

Historian, Department of Social and Cultural History, National

Museum of American History

People are often under the mistaken

impression that history is about specific

dates and other obscure facts. Their high

school experience of history may have

consisted of nothing more than memoriz-

ing. While the fact that George Washing-

ton did die in 1799 is correct, the signifi-

cant questions of history are not really

answered, or even approached, by know-

ing that fact. Rather, history is studying

such questions as: What meaning did his

life have to his contemporaries? Did his

death have symbolic meaning to them?

What meaning does George Washington’s

life and death have for us today? In a mu-

seum, historians and curators study arti-

facts, documents, recordings, and other

visual records to develop interpretations

of the past that both reflect the prepon-

derance of “facts” about the past and speak

meaningfully to people in the present.

Old exhibitions, just like old textbooks,

consequently require change and revision.

In 1964, the National Museum of History

and Technology opened as the newest

Smithsonian Institution museum. The

HALL OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE

AMERICAN PAST (HELAP) was one of

its inaugural exhibitions, examining do-

mestic life and material culture among

““middle-class’**’ Euro-Americans in the

125

seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries. At its apogée, HELAP hall was

considered innovative—combining a large

number of period rooms with objects in

cases, telling one continuous story

throughout the earliest years of American

history. But in 1983, the old HELAP hall

was dismantled to make way for a new,

interpretive hall called AFTER THE

REVOLUTION: EVERYDAY LIFE IN

AMERICA 1780-1800 (opened in No-

vember 1985) (See Figure 1). AFTER THE

REVOLUTION retains a similar accent

on material culture and everyday life, along

with the larger purpose of including the

new scholarship and historical perspec-

tives that had emerged in the 25 years since

the planning of the onginal hall. In a sense,

the 1780s and 1790s have not changed, but

the newly renamed National Museum of

American History has just spent hundreds

of thousands of dollars and undergone five

years of planning to change its public

interpretation of that era. This intensive

effort has afforded many opportunities to

reflect upon the specific problems and

pressures inherent in creating history ex-

hibitions.

Museum professionals know that his-

tory exhibitions are interpretations of the

past and, in that limited sense, fictive. Vir-

126 FATH DAVIS RUFFINS

A eae

REVOLUTION:

EVERYDAY LIFE

IN AMERICA

l 7 O OT Oo. Ooo

ipo:

tually all that a visitor sees in an exhibition

is the product of years of conscious delib-

eration—often adversarial—to come up

with a set of historical conclusions, a nar-

rative line, a specific number and range of

objects, and finally a visually-compelling

design and execution. An exhibition should

be thought of as a setting for some highly

dramatic objects and information. Sen-

sory stimuli of all kinds—colors, light lev-

els, sound, as well as the style of the in-

stallation design, the beauty or par-

ticularities of specific objects—all play

some role in attracting and holding atten-

tion.

Yet too few museum visitors ask them-

selves these basic questions: What objects

and themes have been selected for this

exhibition? What has been left out? What

is the museum trying to say? The visitor

should understand that what he or she is

seeing is an interpretation, an argument,

a point of view about the past. It is not

the “truth,” but rather a set of arguments,

organized within a narrative structure, and

presented in a completely calculated man-

ner, reflecting all the choices made from

the first moment to the last during the

development of the exhibition. Too few

museums are willing to expose this process

of decision-making directly to the public.

Indeed, many of the particular factors that

went into a specific decision might require

an entire exhibition or film to explain fully.

Further, most visitors—drawn to the his-

torical material itself—may not even be

interested in how the museum does its

business. However, “‘de-mystifying’”’ ex-

hibit-making is a prerequisite for helping

visitors ask questions about the past as

presented in museums.

The first step in the ‘“‘de-mystification”’

process is to recognize that the exhibition

is little understood as a unique form of

cultural discourse. Compared to other ex-

pressive endeavors, there is scant critical

material on the distinctive features of mu-

seum exhibitions. But certain character-

istics make exhibitions different from other

media as well as make the history exhi-

bition different from other kinds of exhi-

bitions. Unlike film, exhibitions are inter-

active (museum visitors walk, talk, and

participate). Unlike the theater, exhibi-

tions do not have a captive audience (mu-

seum visitors can pick what they choose

to read and see). Unlike the scholarly book

or article, an exhibition is non-linear and

usually non-progressive (one third of all

visitors enter an exhibition from the exit,

regardless of signs). Unlike printed me-

dia, an exhibition has spatial, visual, and

sequential elements in all dimensions

(museum visitors travel through the ex-

hibition environment in real time and

space). Most important, museums have the

“real things,’ not just images or descrip-

tions of them; visitors’ expectations, per-

ceptions, and experiences are strongly col-

ored by an explicit faith in the authenticity

of museum objects.

Museums are often deliberately “tem-

ples to culture.” Visitors approach them

as they would religious shrines, viewing

the objects entombed therein as pieces of

the true cross. Many traditional marble

museums were designed to reinforce this

attitude of reverence, giving the museum

community an important kind of cultural

authority. Moreover, exhibitions have no

‘authors.’ Unlike a book that has some-

one’s name on the front, few museums

INTERPRETING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT 127

name exactly who did what in a particular

exhibition. Of course, an exhibition is a

more collaborative project than any book.

Historians, curators, collections man-

agers, conservators, designers, fabricators

and other skilled artisans, as well as ed-

ucators contribute to the production of an

exhibition. In large exhibitions, scores,

sometimes hundreds, of such people are

needed. It can be extremely difficult to

establish authorship. Who exactly wrote

which section of labelling? Did the same

person do the documentary, artifactual and

graphics research? Who should receive the

credit or blame for the final product? Fur-

ther, exhibitions can outlive the individ-

uals who created them. Who then is re-

sponsible? The original “‘author”’ or those

individuals now caring for that collection,

hall or museum? Since there are no easy

answers to such questions many museums

avoid even raising them. However, con-

fronting issues of authorship, structural

design, and visitor expectation is essential

for understanding the setting in which ex-

hibit-making and viewing takes place.

Yet even within a similar context, all

exhibitions are not the same. The art or

science exhibition offers few parallels for

fully experiencing a history exhibition.

Painting, sculpture, photography, and all

the other art forms, including perform-

ance arts, are clearly the products of an

actively self-conscious mind at work to

create an aesthetic object or a particular

statement. In that sense, art objects are

meant to speak directly to the viewer. Art

museums often define their role as the

development of connoisseurship, the in-

formed appreciation of the art object for

its intrinsic excellence or quality; art mu-

seum exhibitions are thus designed to en-

courage the act of looking. But historical

artifacts, rarely produced explicitly to

“communicate,” are ordinarily the mun-

dane objects of the material culture of

everyday life; aesthetic appreciation is of

secondary importance.

A teacup is just a teacup unless a label

indicates that George Washington owned

it. This knowledge may place the cup ina

different light, but a label was required to

confer the additional level of meaning. In

history museums, humble, mass-produced

objects as well as unique and precious ob-

Jets must be interpreted. And the signifi-

cance of an egg timer—a prime example

of increasing mechanization in households

at the turn of the twentieth century, em-

blematic of a major movement toward

‘science in the home’’—simply is not ev-

ident without a context. Historical arti-

facts were not made to speak directly; only

the antiquarian, curator, or historian with

prior knowledge is likely to “‘hear’’ their

cryptic messages. The creation of the most

effective context for understanding is

therefore the chief objective in developing

a history exhibition.

Science and history museums, unlike art

museums, share a subject-matter orien-

tation. Science museums endeavor to teach

the public about science and the scientific

perspective and, at their best, to draw con-

nections between science and the world at

large; history museums endeavor to teach

about history and the historical perspec-

tive. Science and history museums differ,

however, because their disciplines have

different standards for evidence and proof.

Scientists study the world of matter and

abstract relations or natural laws that seem

upon observation to undergird it. Al-

though a number of historians of science

believe that the profession and practice of

science are highly political and influenced

by all manner of cultural obsessions, most

scientists believe that they are seeking

“basic truths” that can be demonstrated

in an experimentally observable way. By

contrast, history is the study of earlier so-

cieties and past events. Historians know

that the methods of history are quite dif-

ferent from the methods of science. His-

tory is not susceptible to the replicable

demonstration associated with scientific

subject matter. Because history is the study

of earlier peoples and times, it cannot be

recreated in the present upon demand. By

definition, history is the analysis and inter-

pretation of something which was only

“true” once, in the past. Evidence and

128 FATH DAVIS RUFFINS

proof must be based not on replicability

but rather on a carefully argued synthesis

of a wide variety of period source mate-

rials.

Consequently, historians are often

pleased to discover a “mediated truth,”

filtered not only through their own cul-

tural consciousnesses, but also through the

available remaining evidence. Gravity can-

not be “lost’—it can always be demon-

strated anew to the young student and the

curious adult. But historical evidence like

letters can be destroyed by fire, furniture

can be irretrievably untraceable, certain

information may always be unknown. His-

tory can be viewed as a search for truth,

but the outcome is never truth, only ar-

gument, always interpretation.

Like all history exhibitions, AFTER

THE REVOLUTION: EVERYDAY

LIFE IN AMERICA 1780-1800 was pro-

foundly affected by the state of scholarly

research, the availability of artifacts, and

the constraints of the exhibition as a mode

of communication. Its predecessor, the

HALL OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE

AMERICAN PAST, had once encom-

passed the best of scholarship, artifacts,

and exhibit design nearly a quarter cen-

tury ago. Not about great events nor fa-

mous people, the HELAP hall gave center

stage to material culture and everyday life.

But its examination of the lives of “‘mid-

dle-class” Americans spanned 300 years,

implying that the experience of early-set-

tling, Anglo-American Protestants (with a

smattering of German-Americans and other

western European groups) stood for the

history of all Americans during the sweep

of American history. The HELAP hall

consequently conveyed an archetypical,

nostalgic impression of the American past

devoid of change and conflict. Over time,

the exhibition began both to look out of

date (the colors were out of fashion; the

period rooms seemed quaint; the lack of

lively events compared poorly with living

history, folk festivals, and artisan dem-

onstrations) as well as to generate criti-

cism of its basic assumptions among schol-

ars and the general public alike.

Although the museum staff within the

Department of Cultural History began

talking about doing a new hall in the mid-

1970s, the enormous impetus necessary to

drive a project of this magnitude awaited

the arrival of a new director, Roger Ken-

nedy, at the National Museum of Amer-

ican History in 1979. By then, a body of

scholarship had accumulated to lay waste

to many of the guiding principles of the

HELAP hall. Post-war consensus histo-

riography—which had emphasized intel-

lectual and political history over everyday

life, which had minimized all conflict, and

which celebrated the economic structure

of the “middle class’”’ (with the concomi-

tant notion that the “middle class” stood

for everyone)—was attacked by a new

generation of historians, who saw class,

race, and gender relationships of all kinds,

as well as economic and political conflicts,

as the primary sources of historical change.

Further, the “‘new social historians” were

committed to uncovering the history of the

masses of people who had not left exten-

sive personal documents and family rec-

ords, but whose lives, individually and in

aggregate, were revealed by birth and death

rates, marriage records, census lists, tax

information, and military pension files.

These new historians sought to chart the

seismic changes in behavior patterns, eco-

nomic relations, and social life—often

barely perceptible to the participants but

evident to later researchers—that reflect

the lives of all people.

Scholarship about the Revolutionary Era

itself altered the static, balanced, and ho-

mogeneous world of order that 1950s and

1960s consensus historians had painted.

Social historians saw a world of great cul-

tural diversity, seething with political and

social conflicts—like slavery—and in rapid

economic change. The new “‘telling of the

tale’’ of the first American citizens needed

to acknowledge the stories of both Native

Americans (important far beyond their

relatively small percentage of the total

population) and African-Americans (some

20% of the nearly four million people

counted in the 1790 Census).' A new ex-

INTERPRETING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT 129

hibition would have to make clear that the

United States—caught up in a world-wide

system of goods and exchange that in-

cluded not only Europe, but also the Car-

ibbean, Africa, India, and China—was not

independent and self-contained.

Thus many of the historical principles

that served to formulate the HELAP hall

were explicitly reversed in the new exhi-

bition. Yet more than 600 of the artifacts

as well as four of the many period rooms

installed in the original HELAP hall are

incorporated in the 1250 objects in AFTER

THE REVOLUTION, since both exhi-

bitions share a fundamental concern with

the stuff of everyday life—material cul-

ture. The HELAP hall had accurately re-

flected the bulk of the appropriate collec-

tions for this period held by the then

National Museum of History and Tech-

nology. The new research, however, dic-

tated locating and selecting artifacts that

would give tangible and telling expression

to its abstract arguments. But artifact

selection—the most critical aspect of ex-

hibition preparation—is predicated on ar-

tifact availability. The dearth of eight-

eenth-century African-American artifacts

in the Smithsonian collections, the hous-

ing of Native American objects as eth-

nographic material in the Smithsonian’s

National Museum of Natural History, the

overlooking of the material culture of vir-

tually all poor people (more than 60% of

the cultural history collections of the Na-

tional Museum of American History doc-

uments the tastes and lifestyles of the upper

10% of the Euro-American population

throughout American history) hampered

ready translation of history scholarship into

history exhibition.

Nineteenth-century collectors, prefer-

ring objects associated with the rich and

famous, not surprisingly failed to antici-

pate today’s recognition of artisan arti-

facts as valuable and culturally significant.

Eighteenth-century painters, engravers,

and limners recorded harbor scenes, quiet

parks and stately buildings or portraits

rather than the “‘snapshots”’ of everyday

life that would be appreciated today. Given

these powerful strictures on artifact avail-

ability, to weave together a coherent nar-

rative in AFTER THE REVOLUTION

of the new scholarship in a visually-pleas-

ing design, loan objects, graphics (where

no objects existed) and reproductions

(clearly identified as such) were assem-

bled for exhibition.

Another goal was to make the process

of historical research and proof more vis-

ible to the visitor. In AFTER THE REV-

OLUTION, whenever possible, the “guts”

of the historical endeavor are included in

the labelling and in the overall context. A

section on Everyday Life in the Chesa-

peake includes information on how his-

torical archaeology contributes to knowl-

edge of African-American culture. The

Connecticut River Valley Parlor, set in 1784

as if an inventory were being taken, gives

an opportunity to talk about how histo-

rians know what they know. On occasion,

labels mention where information falls

short, when historians disagree about a

certain fact, or if an oral tradition is in

conflict with other documentary evidence.

The task of historians generally and his-

tory exhibitions in particular is to interpret

the past in ways that are meaningful to

people in the present. Of necessity, that

interpretation translates the detailed and

sometimes obscure findings of historians

and curators into interesting bits of label-

ing and dramatically-organized objects and

graphics. This interpretation—this trans-

lation—requires metaphor, which lets cer-

tain concepts, objects, images, or sounds

stand for something else. In the process

of developing the most elegant balance,

some information is weighted more heav-

ily. Each age highlights the information of

most interest to itself, thereby marking its

own time and place in history—vaguely

discernible to contemporaries but clearly

evident to those who come later. Since all

ideas can be viewed as heresy, verity or

passé at various moments in time, so par-

ticular metaphors become dated as the set-

ting in which they were developed shifts.

AFTER THE REVOLUTION is as sub-

ject to these fluctuations in esteem as the

130 FATH DAVIS RUFFINS

HELAP hall or any history exhibition—

indeed all historical argument.

Recapturing the past, even the recent

past, is never simple. Figuring out what

happened more than two hundred years

ago is considerably more complex. Some

facts are forgotten, others disputed, and

a few invented. The past itself never

changes; memory and interpretation do.

Each generation asks “history” to serve

different purposes, looking to the past in

light of the issues and controversies that

give meaning and definition to its present.

AFTER THE REVOLUTION: EVERY-

DAY LIFE IN AMERICA 1780-1800 re-

veals late twentieth century concerns about

diversity and conflict as well as eighteenth

century hopes, challenges, and struggles.

This new installation at the National Mu-

seum of American history mirrors both

the past and the present. In a real sense,

like all history museum exhibitions, it

inevitably—and __ principally—tells our

story.’

Notes:

1. First American Census, 1790. The

total population of the United States

was 3,900,000, including 700,000

enslaved and 50,000 free African-

Americans. National origin break-

down: 48.0% English, 19.4% Afri-

can, 8.5% Scots-Irish, 7.2% German,

4.7% Irish, 4.3% Scottish, 3.5%

Welsh, 2.5% Dutch, 1.7% French,

and 2% Swedish. The best scholarly

estimates of Native Americans sug-

gest that there were about 100,000

east of the Mississippi and 500,000

west of it (or less than 2.5% of the

U.S. population).

2. Paragraph is a paraphrasing of one

section of scripting in an audiovisual

program titled THE PAST IN YOUR

FUTURE, produced for the Life in

America Project in 1982-83 by

Shomer Zwelling and Avi Decter of

the Center for History Now.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 131-132, June 1986

Representing Cultural Diversity

A Responsibility of History

Museums

Lea R. Walker

Administrative Assistant, Afro-American Communities Project,

National Museum of American History

The Afro-American Communities

Project was established in 1981 to study

free black urban communities of the an-

tebellum period. Funded by the Ford

Foundation, the George Washington

University, the National Endowment for

the Humanities, and the Smithsonian In-

stitution and housed by the National Mu-

seum of American History, the Com-

munities Project is directed by Dr. James

O. Horton, Associate Professor of

American History and Civilization at the

George Washington University.

Using the methods and materials avail-

able to social historians, Dr. Horton and

his staff are analyzing the social, politi-

cal, and economic structure of free black

communities from the Revolutionary pe-

riod up to the Civil War in Boston, Buf-

falo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, New

York, Oberlin, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,

and San Francisco. The Communities

Project has compiled over the course of

four years the most extensive data base

ever assembled on free blacks in the ur-

ban North.

131

Initially, researchers studied the Cen-

sus records of 1850 and 1860, the Veteran

Administration’s military description

books for the Civil War, and nineteenth-

century newspapers and personal pa-

pers. More recently, the research staff

has consulted nineteenth-century pro-

bate records, including wills and inven-

tories, to glean further information about

economic conditions as well as clues about

family and community associations. The

geographic logging of signers of wills, their

beneficiaries and witnesses on antebel-

lum city maps may make possible the

reconstruction of neighborhood net-

works.

The relationship between the Com-

munities Project and its host has been

mutually advantageous, according to Dr.

Horton. The Smithsonian’s sponsorship

has conferred welcome visibility and

prestige upon the Communities Project,

while the Communities Project enhances

the visibility and popularity of the Smith-

sonian among the black community. The

Smithsonian setting also has promoted

132

healthy cross-pollination of the expertise

of project and museum staff. By rubbing

shoulders with specialists in material cul-

ture on a routine basis, Dr. Horton has

become acquainted with primary sources

that he might previously have over-

looked. The material culture experts en-

couraged the current intensive focus on

probate records and suggested the in-

vestigation of modes of dress, the latter

study revealing that clothes served as a

“common badge of circumstance” for in-

dentured whites and indentured or en-

slaved blacks alike during the eighteenth

century.

With the enrichment of his own schol-

arly endeavors through heightened ap-

preciation for material culture as evi-

dence, Dr. Horton advocates that all

written treatments of American history

take the artifactual record into greater

account. In turn, Dr. Horton has been

called upon to deliver lectures to mu-

seum docents, to assist in the preparation

of educational kits for school children,

and to review and comment on exhibi-

LEA R. WALKER

tion scripts. The Communities Project’s

research has contributed to the exhibi-

tion, AFTER THE REVOLUTION,

which exemplifies Dr. Horton’s view that

museums have an obligation to acknowl-

edge “‘the warts on the American com-

plexion. History museums may find it

more comfortable to concentrate on the

Frederick Douglasses of this society, but

museums have a public responsibility to

present information as well on non-elite

blacks.”

By offering balanced, accurate inter-

pretations of our country’s past, the his-

tory museum can be of great service

in shaping America’s future. Through

truthful presentations about the past,

museums can contribute to lowering the

barriers which currently segment our so-

ciety. The ultimate goal of the Afro-

American Communities Project and nu-

merous other social history projects is to

ensure that the diversity found in Amer-

ican society throughout our history is ad-

equately represented within the mu-

seum’s walls.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 133-138, June 1986

“BARKING DOGS” and the

Visitor:

Museum Evaluation and the

Search for Effective Exhibits

Lee Oestreicher

Museum Education and Staff Training Consultant, Washington, DC

The following is an edited version of an

interview with Harris H. Shettel. Mr.

Shettel has been active in the study of mu-

seum exhibit effectiveness for more than

20 years and is a recognized expert in the

field. Since 1962 he has carried out nu-

merous evaluation studies for museums and

exhibitions in the United States, Europe,

Asia, and South America and has pub-

lished widely on the subject. He is cur-

rently conducting a survey for the African-

American Museums Association to assess

the status of black museums in the United

States. He lives in Washington, D.C.

What led you to believe that a need for

evaluation existed in the museum world,

and what special perspective did you

think you could bring to bear?

I would /ike to say that, as a student, I

studied and read about museums and de-

cided to go into exhibit evaluation as an

early career choice, but the fact of the

matter is that I stumbled into the field

quite by chance. A telephone call came

into the American Institutes for Research

office (then in Pittsburgh) from an expert

in trade fairs and expositions who was at

133

the time employed by the National Sci-

ence Foundation. He was interested in

finding out if people who worked in the

area of audiovisual research and devel-

opment would have anything to offer by

way of research findings that would be ap-

plicable to exhibit effectiveness for the

museum and trade show community.

The call was routed to me because I had

been engaged in media research for a

number of years. As we talked, I began

to wonder whether anyone had actually

studied the development and impact of ex-

hibits from the perspective of the educator

or the communicator.

Well, as a result of that call, I began to

look at the museum literature to see what

had been done. While I found a few well-

designed empirical studies in my review,

I found many more apparently unsup-

ported assertions about what was or was

not a characteristic of a “good” or “‘bad’”’

exhibit. What did those who made such

assertions really know? Had they discov-

ered through trial and error and years of

experience the essence of exhibit effec-

tiveness? Such musings led me to write my

first request for funds.

134 LEE OESTREICHER

What I proposed was to try to find out

whether the people who wrote about, de-

signed, and/or bought exhibits—museum

directors, curators, exhibit designers—

“really knew” what a good exhibit was. I

began to go through the literature system-

atically, pulling out all the phrases used to

describe exhibit effectiveness, like “A good

exhibit should have coherent unity.”

Based on such statements, I developed

a 36-item rating scale for exhibits. I gave

this scale to “‘exhibit experts” and asked

them to rate a given exhibit. My thesis was

that if everyone tended to rate an exhibit

the same way, that would suggest some

agreement about the presence or absence

of those qualities that were claimed to con-

stitute a successful exhibit. After all, re-

liability must precede validity. Without a

fairly high level of agreement (reliability),

there would be no point in asking the much

more difficult question, ‘“‘Do these char-

acteristics actually relate to the objectively

measured effectiveness of the exhibit as a

communicator to the visitor?”

And how did your results look?

As it turned out, there was almost no

agreement. Exhibit expert ““A” would say

that an exhibit had all of the fine qualities

listed in the rating scale, and exhibit ex-

pert “B,” looking at the same exhibit,

would say that it had very few of those

qualities. I am oversimplifying a bit here,

but the basic results strongly suggested that

the experts didn’t appear to know what a

‘“‘s00d” exhibit should look like or should

have. That convinced me that there was a

need to sort out what those variables are

that lead to exhibits that communicate

successfully to the public and suggested to

me that my experience as a training de-

veloper and media researcher could pos-

sibly bring a useful perspective to such an

effort.

I want to point our before we get too

far along that there were a number of peo-

ple who took a similar approach to mu-

seum studies at about the same time. There

seemed to be a surge of interest in mu-

seum research of all kinds in the mid-1960s,

as reflected in the increase in published

studies at that time. I did not know it then,

but I was not totally alone in my interest

in the educational potential of museums.

How do you “‘diagnose”’ a given exhib-

it’s evaluative characteristics and needs?

First of all, I find it useful to divide ex-

hibits into three basic categories—the aes-

thetic, the intrinsically interesting, and the

didactic or educational. The aesthetic ex-

hibit has as its primary purpose the display

of beautiful things. A Ming vase or a

painting by Titian is displayed so visitors

can be in the presence of “beauty.” In

most cases, no specific educational claims

are made; it is simply hoped that visitors

will have an aesthetically pleasing and re-

warding experience. The second category,

intrinsic interest, includes displays of ob-

jects that have significance to a sizable

portion of the population by virtue of their

history or context. A piece of rock from

the moon possesses (or did) such intrinsic

interest, although it looks like an ordinary

rock. Not so long ago people waited in

lines that wrapped around the block to see

this small piece of the moon, and I was

one of them. The First Ladies’ inaugural

gowns, the Wright Brothers’ flyer, and the

Hope Diamond are all examples of this

type of intrinsically interesting exhibit.

The didactic or educational exhibit has

as its objectives conveying information to,

changing the attitudes of, and/or provok-

ing interest in the casual visitor. A didactic

exhibit, I believe, ought to be able to con-

vey what its originator intended it to con-

vey and be subject to the same type of

analysis that is applicable to other kinds

of educational materials.

I should quickly point out that I do not

consider these three categories to be mu-

tually exclusive or contradictory. In fact,

some of the most effective exhibits I have

worked with had all three elements pres-

ent. But I do find the distinction useful

because it avoids the confusion and frus-

tration that occurs when evaluation con-

cepts are applied to exhibits that really

have no clear educational intent.

“BARKING DOGS” 135

So, to get back to your question, the

diagnosis of a didactic exhibit’s effective-

ness is based on the extent to which it can

convey its intended messages to its in-

tended audiences. To do so it must do three

things—attract that audience, hold it, and

communicate with it. A weakness in any

one of these areas reflects on the others.

A complete diagnosis requires that we ob-

tain information about all three of these

factors—and this is what we try to do.

What, in your view, is the ideal course

of development for a museum evalua-

tion project?

I prefer to be involved as early as pos-

sible in the exhibit development process,

preferably in the conceptualization of the

exhibit. To me, evaluation is a process,

not a product; it is not something to be

“tacked on” after an exhibit is finished.

Evaluation is a way of thinking, and that

way of thinking ought to be introduced

when people first begin to have the germ

of an idea for an exhibit. The evaluator at

that point might be called more of a plan-

ner. He or she is not evaluating per se,

but introducing notions like defining ob-

jectives and deciding what the intended

audience is like (age, sex, education, etc.).

These critical factors ought to be deter-

mined in the early design stages of an ex-

hibit, not after it is built and put on the

floor.

Later the evaluator will consider and

offer guidance on the selection and place-

ment of objects, the content and reading

level of labels, and the selection of media

(films, models, interactive computers, vis-

itor-controlled videodisc presentations,

etc:).

As the exhibit continues to evolve, the

evaluator continues to remind the devel-

opers and designers of their original intent

and of the audience they are trying to reach.

In short, the evaluator might be consid-

ered as the “ombudsman” for the eventual

visitor.

Toward the end of this process, when

the design is beginning to firm up and the

objects and labels and media are initially

decided upon, I strongly recommend con-

structing a mock-up of the exhibit for pur-

poses of pre-validation and revision. Such

a mock-up can have labels that are typed,

not silk-screened, and objects placed in

approximate positions, not mounted per-

manently. If needed, working models can

be built in rough form, but they should be

finished well enough to give an idea of

how they will perform in the actual ex-

hibit. The point is, we want to be able to

change those things that are not perform-

ing as intended.

Incidentally, the first mock-up study I

did in 1967 (and I believe it was the first

one that was ever done) was done back-

wards. I had evaluated in great detail a

large exhibit that had many models and

objects. I knew what parts were effective

in meeting the exhibit’s educational ob-

jectives and what parts were not so effec-

tive. I then took color photographs of the

objects in the exhibit, made copies of all

the labels, and mounted this two-dimen-

sional exhibit on the walls of our AIR of-

fice in Pittsburgh. I brought in people who

were comparable to the visitors I had al-

ready tested in the real exhibit and asked

then to tour the mock-up exhibit.

I found that, while the mock-up was not

quite as effective overall as the actual ex-

hibit, the profile of the results from both

studies matched each other almost per-

fectly: where the real exhibit was weak,

the mock-up was weak; where the real ex-

hibit was confusing, the mock-up was con-

fusing. J thought at that time, and still do,

that the mock-up validation of exhibits

ought to be a requirement of every exhibit

development effort.

Are there any limitations of mock-up

studies?

Based on the many mock-up studies that

have now been done, I believe that well-

developed mock-ups have, in surrogate

form, the basic educational characteristics

of the finished exhibit. They are not, how-

ever, effective surrogates for measuring

the attracting and holding power of such

exhibits. As I said earlier, exhibits, to be

136 LEE OESTREICHER

effective, must also attract and hold the

attention of visitors. If one can’t get peo-

ple to come over to the exhibit, then one

can’t inform them. If people come over

and glance but don’t stay to look and read

or listen, then they aren’t going to learn

very much either. Mock-ups, as a general

rule, do not have good attracting or hold-

ing power. Because of this limitation in

mock-ups, we usually test them under more

controlled conditions, where visitors are

asked to look at them so that we can get

an adequate and representative sample. I

have also tested mock-ups in settings out-

side the museum where an even broader

cross-section of the population may be

found (for example, lobbies of buildings,

public libraries, etc.). Mock-up validation

studies are becoming more accepted, and

some museums, like the British Musuem

of Natural History, do them routinely.

Having looked at the results of the mock-

up study, one can then consider making

the necessary changes in the exhibit. One

can correct labels that don’t make sense

to the visitor, move objects that are placed

ineffectively, remove objects that only add

clutter, rework a visitor participation idea

that ‘“‘bombed,”’ and so on and so forth.

One can also retest the exhibit to see if

the changes made a difference. When we

put the finished exhibit out on the floor,

we may want to carry out other and more

traditional evaluation studies, such as

summative evaluations (if we can afford

them) and tracking studies. But even if we

don’t do asummative study, we have some

reasonable assurance that our exhibit is

effective. If I had to make a choice, I would

do the mock-up rather than the summa-

tive. I would also do a tracking study,

however, after the exhibit is installed. They

are very useful and revealing.

What are tracking studies, and how do

they work?

Tracking studies are essentially a form

of refined snooping. Very detailed dia-

grams of every part of the exhibit or ex-

hibit area are developed. Then we literally

(but unobtrusively) follow people through

the exhibit and document carefully where

they go and in what order, how much time

they spend and what they do at each ex-

hibit or each part of the exhibit (depend-

ing on the level of detail desired).

Tracking studies provide us with a great

deal of information about the attracting

and holding power of an exhibit. Some

exhibits or exhibit areas have poor attract-

ing power but are able to hold the visitor

very well. Other exhibits have very high

attracting power but poor holding power.

Sound, for example, has great attracting

power. I’ve often said that I will guarantee

the 100 percent attracting power of any

exhibit if I am permitted to put barking

dogs in it. Anyone who is within earshot

of barking dogs would go over to find out

what’s going on, although once they get

there, they may or may not stay. Lights

and colors are more traditional methods

used in an effort to attract visitors. But

there is a drawback to making everything

flashy. If there were barking dogs in every

exhibit, the novelty would soon wear off!

One has to think of other more intrinsic

ways to attract and hold the attention of

visitors.

But I digress. Now that we have carried

out our tracking study, we know where

people go, how long they spend in each

site or area within the exhibit, and what

they do—whether they talk, point, laugh,

read, or glance. The evaluator documents

these data for the designers and the cu-

rator and may recommend changes where

there are problems. Even though the ex-

hibit is finished, one can still revise the

lighting scheme, or move objects and even

cases around, or change the traffic pattern

through the exhibit. One can even exper-

iment to see what works best. A number

of museums, by the way, routinely carry

out tracking studies. They are relatively

inexpensive and persons on the museum

staff can be trained to do them in a short

time.

How do you conclude an evaluation

study?

We usually prepare a final evaluation

“BARKING DOGS” 137

report that assesses both visitor learning,

changes in attitude, or interest and the

results of the tracking studies. We try to

be as specific as possible, relating the find-

ings to the original intent of the exhibit.

We also make recommendations for

changes where they are possible. “Dos”

and ‘“‘don’ts” for future work are pointed

out when appropriate. I also like to review

the entire exhibit development process, not

just the evaluation results. Oral briefings

with the museum staff are always helpful.

The emphasis throughout the process is

on the positive; we try to emphasize the

half of the glass of water that is full (and

how to make it fuller), not the half that is

empty. —

Unfortunately, I have seen such reports

more often than not sit on the shelf of the

museum director’s office, having had no

visible impact on subsequent exhibit de-

velopment activities. It is for this reason,

as I said earlier, that I believe that an eval-

uator ought to be a member of the de-

velopment team and that he or she be in-

volved in the entire development process,

not only of exhibits, but of educational

programs as well. Of course, it may not

be feasible to do a mock-up of an edu-

cational program, although... .

Programs could be developed and tested

in pilot form.

Exactly. I’ve been involved in the train-

ing world for more than 30 years, and I

still pilot-test all of my training courses

and materials. I am not able to write a

training course that will work as well as it

could the first time. There is always some-

thing wrong with it. I make mistakes be-

cause I still don’t (and never will) know

enough about human behavior to predict

everything that will happen when some-

one uses one of these programs. What I

think is perfectly clear and intelligible,

someone else may find confusing and ob-

scure. I have to revise; and I revise will-

ingly, as a natural part of the development

process. When museums can accept eval-

uation as a helpful tool—as an aid in their

work, rather than as a report card—eval-

uation will really begin to play a major

role.

It does seem that there is a persistent

belief that ‘‘evaluation’’ means destruc-

tive criticism.

Yes, it’s seen as a negative reflection on

the wisdom and perspicacity of the people

responsible for the exhibit or program,

which is really too bad. Designers are es-

pecially sensitive to findings that show that

visitors are not always as entranced with

their exhibits as they “ought’’ to be. A

number of us have tried to think of a word

that does not convey the _ pejora-

tive implications of “evaluation,” but we

haven’t come up with anything yet.

What other obstacles, in your view, make

it difficult for museum professionals to

accept—and seek out—evaluation?

What I’ve been talking about up to now

could all be called formal evaluation.

However, there is another sense in which

the word ‘‘evaluation”’ is used. ’ve heard

museum people say, “Well, of course I

evaluate. I review and approve the design,

the label copy, the selection of objects,

etc. I go out on the floor and watch people

as they look at the exhibit. I even talk to

some of them. I’m evaluating all the time.”

But that’s not what I’m talking about. That

species of self-assessment and professional

judgment—informal evaluation—is used

by all of us in our work every day, and it

should be. But, it leaves out the crucial

factor—objectivity—that distinguishes

formal from informal evaluation. I sub-

mit—and I have a lot of evidence to sup-

port this statement—that there is a fun-

damental difference between what the

individual who participates in the exhibit

development process thinks about the ex-

hibit and the way in which that exhibit is

perceived and received by visitors.

As one example out of many I could

cite, I recently helped a small local history

museum set up a tracking study in a new

wing of the museum, where a large (and

impressive looking) exhibition had been

installed. It cost a bundle. The director of

138 CONTRIBUTORS

the museum, a very savvy person, was

proud of it. Other exhibit people liked it.

The designers liked it. But my director

friend was shocked to his professional toes

(“Shattered our views of our audience!’’)

to find out that the typical casual visitor

spent only a few minutes in this area.

There are two ways to deal with this

kind of finding—ignore it and don’t do any

more tracking studies, or try to remedy

the problem. He is choosing the latter

course of action, and I dare say, he will

do more studies of that type in the future.

He will also think harder about the design

and layout of his next exhibit. He may

even do a mock-up study!

So, starting the process of formal eval-

uation, as we have discussed it briefly here,

definitely takes courage. I believe, how-

ever, that when enough museum profes-

sionals accept evaluation as a normal ev-

olutionary process, they will see that it

really isn’t as painful as they thought it

would be. In any case, we owe it to our-

selves to be as accountable as we can for

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 138-140, June 1986

the money we spend and for the effec-

tiveness of our exhibits—and we certainly

owe it to our visitors!

Selected Bibliography

‘“‘An evaluation of existing criteria for

judging the quality of science exhibits.”

Curator, 1968, XI(2).

“Exhibits: Art form or educational me-

dium?’’ Museum News, 1973, 52(1), 32-

41.

An evaluation of visitor response to ““Man

in His Environment” (AIR-43200-7/76-FR).

Washington, D.C.: American Institutes for

Research, 1976.

‘A critical look at a critical look: A re-

sponse to Alt’s critique of Shettel’s work.”

Curator, 21(4), 1978.

‘Evaluation in Science Museums: Proc-

ess or Product?’’, published by the Na-

tional Council of Science Museums (Cal-

cutta, India, 1984).

Contributors

MICHAEL JUDD, who was born in

London and grew up in Australia, ac-

quired his early teaching experience in the

public school system of Kansas City, Mis-

souri,where he designed a special curric-

ulum for learning disabled students incor-

porating the resources of museums and

audio-visual collections into American

history, world history and archaeology

programs. Mr. Judd’s museum experience

includes projects in living history, educa-

tional programming, film series, photo-

graphic surveys of Historic Alexandria and

Washington, DC, and the creation of mu-

seum-centered learning materials. He has

worked with the Kellogg Project of the

Smithsonian Institution and is currently

serving on the Museum Education

Roundtable board.

MARK P. LEONE received his Ph.D.

in anthropology from the University of

Arizona. He is currently an associate pro-

fessor in the Anthropology Department at

the University of Maryland, College Park.

CONTRIBUTORS 139

Dr. Leone’s research activities include two

posts in Annapolis, Maryland. He is co-

director of ‘Archaeology in Annapolis”

and director of ‘‘Archaeology in Public,”

urban archaeology projects designed to

teach the public about the process of doing

history. His work has been funded with

grants from the National Endowment for

the Humanities, the Maryland Humanities

Council and the Maryland Heritage Com-

mittee. Dr. Leone is editor of Contem-

porary Archaeology and Religious Move-

ments in Contemporary America and

author of Roots of Modern Mormonism.

In addition, he is author of many articles

in anthropology, archaeology, history and

museum publications.

MARY ELLEN MUNLEY holds grad-

uate degrees in social science research from

the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and

museum education from the George

Washington University. She is currently a

faculty member in the Museum Education

program at the George Washington Uni-

versity and a museum evaluation re-

searcher. She has conducted evaluations

and audience studies for several museums

at the Smithsonian Institution, the Rhode

Island Historical Society, the Lyceum in

Historic Annapolis, and the Red River In-

terpretive Center in Minnesota. Ms. Mun-

ley conducts workshops on museum eval-

uation for the Smithsonian Institution, the

Bank Street College, and other museum

professional groups across the country. She

lectures widely on museum learning and

evaluation and is a regular contributor to

the Journal of Museum Education and other

museum publications.

LEE OESTREICHER, a graduate and

faculty member of the Museum Education

program at the George Washington Uni-

versity, is now a museum education and

staff training consultant based in Wash-

ington, DC. Mr. Oestreicher, who holds

an M.A. in history from the University of

Toronto and an A.B.—also in history—

from Colby College in Maine, gained his

early museum experience as director of

the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse in To-

ronto. Later, he worked in the education

department of the National Portrait Gal-

lery of the Smithsonian Institution where

he specialized in program development and

outreach training. He has also held faculty

positions at the Universities of Toronto

and Vermont and has pursued graduate

studies in history, education and counsel-

ing at those institutions and the London

School of Economics.

PARKER B. POTTER, JR. holds a

M.A. in anthropology from Brown Uni-

versity where he is currently a doctoral

candidate—also in anthropology—con-

ducting dissertation research on the eth-

nography of history in Annapolis, Mary-

land. Since 1982 Mr. Potter has been an

archaeologist, research assistant and tour

guide for “Archaeology in Annapolis.”

Earlier in his career he conducted an oral

history project for Brown University, re-

searched documents in Rockbridge County,

Virginia, and served as an excavator of the

Liberty Hall Archaeology Project in Lex-

ington, Virginia. Mr. Potter is the author

of numerous scholarly publications and is

co-author with Mark Leone of Archaeo-

logical Annapolis: A Guide to Seeing and

Understanding Three Centuries of Change.

DANIELLE RICE received a B.A. with

honors from Wellesley College and then

worked as a National Endowment for the

Arts fellow in museum education at the

Toledo Museum of Art. As a graduate stu-

dent at Yale University she worked in the

Department of High School Programs at

the Metropolitan Museum of Art and

started the education program at the Yale

Center for British Art. Dr. Rice received

her Ph.D. from Yale in 1979, worked as

curator of education at the Wadsworth

Atheneum and as curator in charge of ed-

ucation at the National Gallery of Art.

This spring she became director of the ed-

ucation department at the Philadelphia

Museum of Art. She has taught at Yale

University and at the University of Hart-

ford and has curated several museum ex-

hibitions for the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Her publications include an essay on

women artists in French Women and the

Age of the Enlightenment. Dr. Rice lec-

140 CONTRIBUTORS

tures widely both on issues related to mu-

seum education and art history.

FATH DAVIS RUFFINS is a Ph.D.

candidate in the history of American civ-

ilization at Harvard University. She served

as administrator of the W.E.B. DuBois

Institute of Afro-American Research at

Harvard and currently works as an his-

torian in the Department of Social and

Cultural History at the National Museum

of American History, Smithsonian Insti-

tution. Most recently, Ms. Ruffins was

project director for a major permanent ex-

hibit, “After the Revolution: Everyday

American Life in America 1780-1800.” Her

current projects include research on

American gender culture through costume

1920-1980, which will culminate in a book

and a new exhibit at the National Museum

of American History—‘‘Men and Women:

Dressing the Part.’ Ms. Ruffins has writ-

ten several articles on Afro-American

public history and museum exhibitions as

teaching media.

CAROL B. STAPP, director of the Mu-

seum Education program at the George

Washington University, is currently on

sabbatical completing dissertation re-

search toward a doctorate in American

civilization at the same institution. She

holds an M.A. in art history from the Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania and worked as a

museum teacher at the Philadelphia Mu-

seum of Art for seven years. Ms. Stapp

has been a panelist for the National En-

dowment for the Humanities; she col-

laborated on the reinterpretation of the

Woodrow Wilson House in Washington,

DC, and she represents the Museum Ed-

ucation Roundtable on the Journal of Mu-

seum Education advisory board. Recently

Ms. Stapp served as a member of the na-

tional advisory board that planned the In-

ternational Congress on Museum Learn-

ing hosted by the Children’s Museum in

Indianapolis in May 1986. She has pub-

lished in museum journals and organized

numerous sessions at museum conferences

on museum learning, educational excel-

lence and museum ethics.

LESLEY VAN DER LEE is the direc-

tor of the Sandy Spring Museum in Sandy

Spring, Maryland. She is currently devel-

oping a multi-generational, social history

participatory exhibit for the museum’s new

building. Educated at the Universities of

Oxford, Toronto, Leiden and London, she

also holds an M.A.T. in Museum Edu-

cation from the George Washington Uni-

versity. She initiated plans for the Hands

on History exhibit at the Smithsonian’s

National Museum of American History and

began the National Directory of Discovery

Rooms at the National Museum of Natural

History. She serves on the Montgomery

County Council Commission on the Hu-

manities and is a Member of the Mont-

gomery County Committee of the Mary-

land Historical Trust.

LEA R. WALKER is a M.A. candidate

in American studies with an emphasis in

museum studies at the George Washing-

ton University. Currently Ms. Walker

works as the administrative assistant for

the Afro-American Communities project

at the National Museum of American His-

tory, Smithsonian Institution. She has

worked with the National Park Service and

as a museum technician in Australia where

she registered aboriginal sites and exca-

vated a stone terrace. Her travels and work

have taken Ms. Walker to Tours, France,

where she participated in the excavation

of a late Roman-early medieval occupa-

tion site.

DELEGATES TO THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,

REPRESENTING THE LOCAL AFFILIATED SOCIETIES

Se SES TCE 7 cr Barbara F. Howell

RS CT) rrr Edward J. Lehman

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nae em OIE WWASMITIPION. . 2. oe ccc ee ence ee ee cence eee Manya B. Stoetzel

ERE cle os os os SY FG eae aw ew eee ml ee diol we eaten Gilbert Grosvenor

ee ME ASIMIIOLOVD «sc ose ee ec eee ect gece neces aceens James V. O’Connor

Pee cicty of the District of Columbia ...............-.2.--- 600s eceeeeee Charles E. Townsend

IE RC eee Pe of een Oa, oe ig ae ee a ne eee See aE x a oa Paul H. Oehser

ENED = 28 Sue fos ye ibaa wee De eerie ree aha eme eee e ee Conrad B. Link

eee eas Porcsters, Washington Section ........ 2... ee eee eee ee eee eens Mark Rey

PIE SIEEIPUHEETS: 5 Sic e wn bs onic oes oS sew ee ee ee es ee George Abraham

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington Section................. George Abraham

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Washington Section.......................-4. Michael Chi

i ennrmsanmaicty OF WaShinpion .......... 2.2... 2 ee eee eee tects c ences Robert S. Isenstein

Aanchican society for Microbiology, Washington Branch .........---..--..2-..00e eee eee eee Vacant

Society of American Military Engineers, Washington Post....................... Charles A. Burroughs

American Society of Civil Engineers, National Capital Section..........................4.- Carl Gaum

Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, DC Section ...................... Cyrus R. Creveling

Pade eciesy tor Metals, Washington Chapter ........--. 2-2-0 eee eee cee cece James R. Ward

American Association of Dental Research, Washington Section......................... Eloise Ullman

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Capital Section............... Paul Keller

eae nee aanorical Society, DC Chapter ........-..------2--- eee eee cece A. James Wagner

Clee ELLE LE ESS DTN 001 RR Albert B. DeMilo

Pea secicry Of America, Washington Chapter.........-.............e eee noes Richard K. Cook

Pane teneicar society, Washington Section ..............5....0c cee eee een Re tater Paul Theiss

Institute of Food Technologists, Washington Section .....................002-005- Melvin R. Johnston

American Ceramic Society, Baltimore-Washington Section........................ Joseph H. Simmons

RR ETE Sas ye SS ie ee Alayne A. Adams

0 LP TE SLi Ss SSSR © 1 nn Marg Rothenberg

American Association of Physics Teachers, Chesapeake Section ....................--. Peggy A. Dixon

Optical Society of America, National Capital Section..............--.....-.....--- William R. Graver

American Society of Plant Physiologists, Washington Area Section............... Walter Shropshire, Jr.

Washington Operations Research and Management Science ..................---.04-- Doug Samuelson

oem meaetety OF America, Washinpton Section...........-.-------------0----0+-2--- Carl Zeller

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical

anc Enpiicers, Washington Section............-.-/------------+----- Ronald Munson

REM ORMMONHCES co. Ss xs a dcie Sa win coc Seda eee cede cceen Robert H. McCracken

Mathematics Association of America, MD-DC-VA Section......................0-5- Alfred B. Willcox

ls 2S DE STSS Soae6 US Gi ae een rr Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr.

LLL E SDELL ip EET EUS ee ee eek ar ger See eee Bert T. King

Pane MINED ETT NEON) 6 eS Se 2 ies os enad awa deena 3s Robert F. Brady

American Phytopathological Society, Potomac Division..................-..000000- Roger H. Lawson

Society for General Systems Research, Metropolitan Washington Chapter ..... Ronald W. Manderscheid

Ceri tOrIcty. POlmiliae (HARICE = 2-522. ... << -5 fs2 ge ade eee dees eee Stanley Deutsch

Pere Ristciics Society, Potniae Chapter 2... 2. - 2... -.- scones be eee eee ee = Irwin M. Alperin

Peeneme ior scicice, lechnolury and Innovation....................-.-226sc02cees:- Ralph I. Cole

eee Ie IPIEAL SEEMS Se eS eu nes 4 eee eee ee ES Ronald W. Manderscheid

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Northern Virginia Section.............. Ralph I. Cole

Association for Computing Machinery, Washington Chapter.......................- James J. Pottmyer

mae SEINE NE, SeINTEED TROON TNO 0 ae eR Rainic) Gb o's 3 2 de Rn be eee eee koe R. Clifton Bailey

Delegates continue in office until new selections are made by the representative societies.

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VOLUME 76

Number 3

September, 1986

j Journal of the

ACADEMY .-SCIENCES

ISSN 0043-0439

Issued Quarterly

at Washington, D.C.

CHESAPEAKE BAY

A CASE STUDY OF ECOLOGICAL CHANGE

THROUGH HISTORY

CONTENTS

Editors’ Introduction:

SNE MARE MIOIAS 9202 3 coo 2 BER Rove a.o.5 > sas RES es aigee aed UR ists Oe wee

Articles:

Dr. Kent Mountford, Ecological Change Through History—An Introduction 141

Dr. Grace Brush, Geology and Paleoecology of Chesapeake Estuaries ......

Dr. Jay Custer, Prehistoric Land Use in the Chesapeake Region ...........

Dr. Henry Miller, Transforming a “Splendid and Delightsome Land”: Colonists

and Ecological Change in the 17th and 18th-Century Chesapeake ..........

Dr. L. Eugene Cronin, Fisheries and Resource Stress in the 19th Century ...

Ms. Paula Johnson, ““The Worst Oyster Season I’ve Ever Seen’’: Collecting and

abe esThe FOR OPAL ARBONNE WALCRABIEND 5.22 3-2 Sd cjclc hw sae ea» soe Sie ele ae we oe sea

Dr. Abel Wolman, Summary and Overview: The Lesson of Long-Term Data

Sets—Man’s Impact Against Natural and Forced Ecological Change ........

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 3, Page i, September 1986

Editors’ Introduction

James P. Thomas

Rosemary K. Monahan

NOAA Estuarine Programs Office, Washington, D.C.

In this era of ever-increasing speciali-

zation, the symposium recorded in these

pages is unusual. On December 5, 1985,

experts from a variety of disciplines met

to exchange their views on ecological

change through history, using the Chesa-

peake Bay as a case example. Dr. Kent

Mountford of the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency provided much of the

driving force behind bringing these ex-

perts together at this symposium, which

was sponsored by the National Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency, and the

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In his directive to the speakers, Dr.

Mountford pointed out that mankind can

and must learn from the past if we are to

protect and restore our natural resources

for future generations. This task is becom-

ing increasingly urgent as we see our coast-

lines and living resources disappearing or

becoming contaminated. Much can be

gained by a careful examination of what

history has to teach us, and the authors

contained in this volume have provided us

with many valuable lessons.

The broad range of disciplines repre-

sented at the symposium includes archae-

ology, history, paleocology, and terres-

trial and marine science. The blend of topics

addressed by these authors provides a

unique, long-term perspective on changes

in the Chesapeake—both those caused by

natural forces as well as those caused by

humans. Although the changes and trends

discussed are specific to the Chesapeake,

the insights gained should be applicable to

many of the nation’s estuaries. Now it is

up to us as responsible citizens to learn

from the lessons of the past and act to

ensure that our natural resources will be

protected for generations to come.

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 3, Pages 141-145, September 1986

Ecological Change through

History—an Introduction

Dr. Kent Mountford

Environmental Scientist and Monitoring Coordinator

US Environmental Protection Agency, Chesapeake Bay Program,

Annapolis, Maryland 21403

I took some time before this symposium

to consider how I might insightfully intro-

duce such a diverse suite of subjects. My

conclusion is, first, to emphasize how im-

portant this kind of interchange can be

among very different disciplines, not only

to each of us as scientists, but to those of

us who are managers working to restore

damaged ecosystems. The lessons we can

learn from bringing together at one sym-

posium the diverse group of experts re-

corded here include the following.

@ The application of new tools from a

previously unfamiliar field can result

in quantum leaps in understanding.

@ The very long term perspective we

discuss here can help greatly in un-

derstanding the magnitude of change

that ecosystems, in this case Chesa-

peake Bay, have undergone.

Understanding the kinds of cyclic long-

and short-term events that have oc-

curred in the past can help us in the

management struggle to decide how

far back we are likely to be able to

bring the Bay from its currently im-

paired state.

My current job is to coordinate, for the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),

141

a monitoring program that covers Ches-

apeake Bay, this Nation’s largest estuary,

from the fall line to its confluence with the

Atlantic Ocean. The purpose of this pro-

gram is to look carefully, but with broad

vision, at trends in environmental quality

and the Bay’s living resources, and to de-

termine if either or both show ameliora-

tive results from the expenditure of some

$200 million in tax dollars each year.

When we aggregate the EPA waste-

water treatment dollars, the commitments

of state and local governments, and the

moneys Congress has earmarked for

Chesapeake Bay, the cash investment is

prodigious and we had better be able to

demonstrate positive results or our con-

stituents, and their elected representa-

tives, will rapidly lose interest.

At the same time, I have been an en-

vironmental scientist for some 21 years and

have watched the incredibly complex re-

sponse estuaries have to the passing sea-

sons, the stunning contrast between drouth

of record when, for example, the Potomac

flowed at under 19.8 m°/sec (<700 cfs)

and floods with return frequency of a cen-

tury, when the same river flowed at 7,084

m?/sec (>250,000 cfs). Consider also the

far-reaching effects when a severe winter

142 DR. KENT MOUNTFORD

like 1976 locks up freshwater flow in snow

and ice-cover for two months at a time,

then releases it in a brief melt period.

Each of these events has had profound

effects, sometimes persisting years, even

decades, on water quality and living re-

sources in Chesapeake Bay. The principle

is unaltered in other habitats as well. How

can we hope to elucidate trends in a pro-

gram where sampling has (at this writing)

only gone on nineteen months? Ignore that

time scale and consider all the historical

data we have. Almost none of the water

quality data for this estuary pre-date Dr.

Abel Wolman, who summarizes the con-

tributions contained in this symposium

volume.

I wonder quite frequently if we would

sometimes maximize our information by

sitting down with senior investigators like

Dr. Wolman, his colleague Dr. Reginald

Truitt, or even watermen with long ex-

perience, and documenting their percep-

tions carefully. ve certainly done this to

advance my own understanding, but the

skills and precautions necessary in this

profitable exercise are considerable, as

noted by Paula Johnson in her paper ““The

Worst Oyster Season I’ve Ever Seen”:

Collecting and Interpreting Data from

Watermen.

In the face of my day-to-day difficulty

assessing trend in the estuary, I maintain

a few points of very long perspective that

help keep me on an even keel. One of

those points is a copy of John Smith’s

‘““Generall Historie,’ a facsimile of the

original 1629 text. He writes there on the

two winters 1607 and 1608:

‘In the yeare 1607 was an extraordinary

froft in moft of Europe, and this froft was

found as extreame in Virginia but the next

year, for 8. or 10. days of ill weather, other

fourteen days would be as Sommer.”

We are, comfortingly, not alone in our

perception of environmental variability; in

trying to gauge the mean, or describe what

one might expect next from nature.

Paula Johnson recounts later in this vol-

ume a tale from the great 1950’s Patuxent

croaker run. It’s a tale, that with most of

the essentials intact, came to me from

Maryland Senator Bernard Fowler over

three years ago. Consistency in the basic

elements, recounted from independent

sources, allows the astute interviewer to

sort out fact from embellishment. Where

fisheries statistics support the stories, we

can begin to home in on what conditions ~

in the past really were.

When you have read Ms. Johnson’s ac-

count, consider a moment if that was the

Chesapeake we should strive to restore,

or were we then somewhere along the

course of a long-term cycle in specific spe-

cies abundances that are but dimly under-

stood? Might they reoccur, or are we never

to see a fishery like that again?

Henry Miller (Transforming a “‘Splen-

did and Delightsome Land”: Colonists and

Ecological Change in the Chesapeake

1607-1820) will hint at other such cycles.

His work offers immense possibilities for

extending our perceptions of fisheries use

and yield far into the past. The keys to

interpreting these data may lie in history

and folklore, which in their turn, allow

comparison with the record, and cross

checking with the participants. L. Eugene

Cronin (Chesapeake Fisheries and Re-

source Stress in the 19th Century) draws

from the quite extensive records that de-

veloped in the 1800s to help us understand

a period when the white man’s massive

harvest pressures were most brought to

bear.

As aresult of his voyages of “discovery”

(exploration) in 1607-08, John Smith pro-

duced a remarkable, accurate map of the

Chesapeake that has survived in several

published versions. It shows the mouth of

the creek where I am privileged to live,

which was flanked by two Indian vil-

lages—Opament (the apparent site of which

was excavated by the Maryland Historical

Trust in 1984), and Quomocac, the site of

which is probably now preserved on State

land. The remains of an encampment site,

likely spun off from one of these villages,

lay buried in my yard until two years ago

INTRODUCTION 143

FIRE SITE

-_—

—_ - __.

BREAKDOWN ae

CLIFF oo}

Seer oe Oo 6 f 6 9 IO li l2 I3

NORTH—=—

Fig. 1. A. Site plan of the feature at Osborn Cove,

St. Leonard Cr., MD (Lat. 38 deg 28’ 53” N, Long.

76 deg 24’ O” W showing quadrats where artifacts

were recovered: S = pottery sherds, F = quartz

flakes, C = charcoal, M = Mya arenaria (softclam)

shell, B = fish and mammal bone. B. Oyster shell

from the Osborn Cove dig showing abrupt disap-

pearance of the boring sponge Cliona, the result of

apparent environmental changes in the creek during

the late woodland period (750-1650 AD). C. A 15

cm “cove” oyster from the Osborn Cove dig, to-

gether with associated spat ranging upwards from 15

mm size. Spatfall is essentially nonexistent on the

present-day oyster bed at this site. D. Colonial Mary-

land tobacco Nicotiana sp., collected by Dr. David

Krieg in 1698, and preserved in Britain as a botanical

specimen (photo by Mountford, with cooperation of

Dr. James Reveal, University of Maryland Depart-

ment of Botany).

144 DR. KENT MOUNTFORD

when shoreline erosion caused a break-

down of the cliff.

Shoreline erosion is just one of many

phenomena on a geological scale that af-

fect us daily. People around the Bay per-

ceive shoreline erosion as a serious prob-

lem, but Grace Brush will sharpen our

perspective (Geology and Paleoecology of

Chesapeake Bay: A Long-Term Monitor-

ing Tool for Management). Erosion has

been going on for millenia, and the rates

of innundation, rates of retreat, and other

records stored in the sediment have told

us much about where the Chesapeake has

come from and literally at what rate she

is making the journey through time.

If one picks through the shell in my front-

yard Indian midden, which was occupied

some time in the “late woodland” (AD

750-1650), one can find oysters larger than

those living today on the same bed off-

shore. Many of the shells are riddled by a

boring sponge, Cliona, the presence of

which is indicative of higher salinity than

we experience in most years today.

In 1979 I wrote to Maryland’s Tidewater

Administration indicating the lack of oys-

ter set on the oyster-bed that I lease. . .

the same bed my Indian predessesors har-

vested in the 16th century. Tidewater re-

plied that this creek was an acceptable

growing habitat but never, in the three

decades of my respondent’s experience,

had this area had any substantial oyster

set. I have, in fact seen only three or four

spat in eleven years on the creek.

My Indian site, however, was salted with

(probably) thousands of spat from the late

1500s. Here is something that has changed,

and it is beyond what we can perceive from

our own experience. This is where ar-

chaeology and modern fisheries biology

and management come together in unique

combination. Jay Custer will enliven that

relationship for us today (Prehistoric Use

of the Chesapeake Estuary: A Diachronic

Perspective).

I am an ecologist, and when I pick up

one of those big oyster shells from 400

years ago I see a growth structure repre-

senting seventeen to twenty years of this

estuary’s history in my hand. Modern sec-

tioning and acetate replication techniques

can reveal something about virtually every

day in the life of this oyster, even some-

thing about predator stress and the oxygen

levels the animal experienced. If we could

fix a single point in time for this chronol-

ogy, the rest, like tree rings, would unfold

history.

Tree rings bring to mind the Maryland

dendrochronological record assembled by

H. J. Heikkenen. This has received much

less attention than is deserved for a record

virtually continuous from the 1500s to the

present. I would not be surprised if it could

tell us not only about climate, but about

some of the changes in forest response we

now ascribe to industrial pollution and

acidic precipitation.

Ecology and archaeology come to-

gether. The potentials for interactions go

on; my colleague Jim Reveal at Maryland

uncovered hundreds of herbarium sheets

in England. These sheets contain original

plant material that was gathered in Mary-

land in the late 1600s. I looked at these

plants—the original spindly Indian to-

bacco and other species now extirpated

from the Chesapeake flora—and won-

dered whether we could use these plants

to compare conditions today with those of

the 1600s. Perhaps we could examine

pollution by using nondestructive elemen-

tal tests to measure heavy metal concen-

trations. In the same archives are algae

and molluscs from the 17th century Ches-

apeake with which no one has worked at

this writing.

My colleagues at Martin Marietta Cor-

poration recently used historical records

and modern computer modelling tech-

niques to extend probable river flows back

a hundred years in several East coast riv-

ers, including some in the Chesapeake.

Much can be inferred from records like

these about nutrient loading, and the link

with older fisheries data sets is obvious.

The series of papers contained in this

volume is sufficient only to whet our ap-

INTRODUCTION 145

petites, and I hope the participants, and

you as readers, will revisit the topic and

expand on its potential.

I am most encouraged that we can ex-

tend our vision back through time in sur-

prising and sophisticated ways to gain a

meaningful perspective. I think you, as

readers, will find there are exciting pos-

sibilities from sharing technology among

the several sciences, and that we can de-

fine in useful ways what Chesapeake Bay,

and other troubled habitats on this planet,

were like in the distant past.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 3, Pages 146-160, September 1986

Geology and Paleoecology of

Chesapeake Bay:

A Long-Term Monitoring Tool

for Management

Grace S. Brush

Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering

The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218

ABSTRACT

A long-term record of selected organisms, parts of organisms, charcoal, and other

biological and chemical components preserved in sediments deposited in Chesapeake Bay

tributaries is used to reconstruct the history of the estuary, and to compare the effects of

natural and anthropogenic factors on the estuarine system. A continuous record of pollen

of terrestrial plants, metals, and charcoal spanning 4000 years shows irregular sequences

of wet and dry conditions, with the most pronounced wet period ~2500 years ago and the

most pronounced dry period ~800 years ago. The magnitude of the climatic change as

reflected in the vegetation suggests that, at different periods of time, fresh water flow into

the Chesapeake Bay and salinity were substantially different from present conditions. The

record of diatoms and seeds of submerged aquatic plants shows the effect of European

settlement. Diverse benthic estuarine communities, which occupied the upper estuary

some 300 years ago, were converted to predominantly planktonic assemblages as the rapidly

expanding human population discharged increasing amounts of sediment, nutrients, and

toxics into the tributaries. This paper presents some examples of how the stratigraphic

record can be used to trace the history of changes in the estuary and to separate effects of

natural events from anthropogenic activity.

Introduction

In designing a management program for

an ecosystem, regardless of the objectives,

it is important to know how those vari-

ations in the environment controlled pri-

marily by nature, i.e., geologic and cli-

matic change, differ from those caused

primarily by man. For example, do pres-

ent variations in biological populations

represent growing, stable, or declining

trends related to climatic fluctuations, or

do they reflect permanent shifts in species

distributions and possible extinction, re-

lated to anthropogenic activity. Environ-

mental factors of natural origin influenc-

ing growth patterns of populations include

short-term seasonal changes in tempera-

ture and precipitation, periods of drought

or higher than average rainfall extending

over decades, catastrophic events recur-

ring on the order of decades, such as hur-

ricanes, or on the order of centuries, for

example 100-year floods, and finally long-

146

ESTUARINE BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC MONITORING 147

term climatic trends associated with con-

tinental glaciation, spanning millenia.

These factors, which can cause major

changes in both terrestrial and estuarine

habitats (e.g., days below freezing and soil

moisture on land, and salinity, light, and

nutrients in the estuary), are superim-

posed on a suite of species that include

generation times ranging from several hours

in the case of some algal species to decades

for many animals, and centuries for some

shrubs and trees, and can be expected to

affect species with different generation

times differently. Environmental factors

of anthropogenic origin include increased

siltation from erosion with intensification

of land use, which can affect light condi-

tions in the estuary, nutrients from fertil-

izers and sewage which can alter the nu-

trient composition of the waters, and toxic

materials which can selectively affect cer-

tain species or life stages of species. In

addition, the structure of estuarine habi-

tats is altered by activities such as chan-

nelization of wetlands and the building of

dams for reservoirs. Changes in the en-

vironment resulting from both natural and

anthropogenic factors are ultimately

translated into changes in species com-

position and abundance.

In the case of Chesapeake Bay, there is

much anecdotal and historical documen-

tation of declines in fish and shellfish pop-

ulations, particularly those populations

used extensively by man. Historical rec-

ords clearly show local extinctions of sub-

merged aquatic vegetation’ and changes

in waterfowl populations.'° But there is

very little information on populations not

of commercial or recreational importance

to man, but that nonetheless may have

significant interactions with commercially

important species. Neither anecdotal nor

historical records are complete enough to

assess whether the decrease in productiv-

ity of particular species represents a nor-

mal declining trend or is a precipitous event

leading to extinction. Except in rare in-

stances, the historical record of environ-

mental factors, such as precipitation and

temperature, is not complete or long

enough to display patterns or trends needed

to formulate predictive models.

Even if the historical record were com-

plete, it would not contain the prehistoric

information necessary for comparing con-

ditions in the estuary prior to the occu-

pation of man with conditions after human

occupancy. However, there is preserved

in sediments deposited in the Chesapeake

Bay and its tributaries a paleontologic re-

cord of selected organisms, parts of or-

ganisms, and chemicals, which can serve

as a surrogate of environmental condi-

tions. At some locations, this record is

continuous, covering the history of the es-

tuary since it was formed some 10 to 12

thousand years ago. A disadvantage of the

paleontological record is that not all or-

ganisms, etc. are preserved equally and

some are not preserved at all. Therefore,

the sediments do not include a complete

suite of all species occupying the area at

the time of deposition. Consequently, those

organisms that are preserved must be used

as indicators, and their present ecological

boundaries must be known fairly precisely

in order to reconstruct environmental con-

ditions based on their occurrence in the

sediments. On the other hand, the pa-

leontological record has a large advantage

in that some components, such as pollen

and diatoms, representing many terres-

trial and estuarine species, are extremely

abundant in the sediments, allowing quan-

titative estimates of populations to be made

for different periods of time.

Using the record in the sediments of

pollen and seeds of terrestrial and aquatic

plants, diatoms, chlorophyll, charcoal, and

metals as a surrogate record of environ-

mental conditions, I have compared rates

of sediment accumulation and conditions

of eutrophication prior to the tenure of

European man, when the estuary was con-

trolled by climatic variables, with the most

recent 200 to 300 years, during which time

the human population in the Chesapeake

drainage area has expanded from an es-

timated few hundred thousand to several

million.

In this paper, I shall discuss first the

148 . GRACE S. BRUSH

geologic history of the Chesapeake Bay

and the history of climatic variation, based

on a record of several thousand years. Sec-

ond, I shall compare sediment accumu-

lation rates in the Chesapeake Bay system

before and after the tenure of European

man, and address the factors affecting sed-

iment accumulation, based on a record of

several hundred years. Third, I shall com-

pare the effect on eutrophication of point

source nutrients with non-point source

nutrients, using the record in the sedi-

ments of a few to several decades. And

finally I shall demonstrate the combined

effect of sediment and nutrient input on

community structure by comparing the

kinds of organisms that grew in the Upper

Chesapeake Bay before European settle-

ment, 600 to 1000 years ago, with those

that occupied the same location after Eu-

ropean settlement, 200 years ago and from

50 to 30 years ago.

Geologic History of the Chesapeake Bay

Frequency of changes in sea level in-

dicated by oxygen isotope curves* suggest

that the present Chesapeake Bay (Fig. 1)

is the latest of several estuaries occupying

various parts of the Coastal Plain of Mary-

land and Virginia over the last several mil-

lion years. During the warm interglacial

periods, each of which lasted for about

10,000 years, existing river valleys were

submerged by rising sea level and estu-

aries formed. Estuarine deposits were

subsequently eroded with lowering of sea

level during the glacial periods, each of

which is estimated to have lasted approx-

imately 100,000 years. Hence, sediments

of only the most recent estuary are pre-

served. However, patchy occurrences of

paleochannels filled with estuarine sedi-

ments and terraces of different elevations

throughout the mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain

provide evidence of ancient estuaries” (J.

Halka, unpublished data). The actual lo-

cation, configuration, and extent of each

of the estuaries would have differed de-

| CHESAPEAKE BAY

ie) 5 10 NAUTICAL MILES

SUS QUE HAWN ee e Pan cae

= FURNACE Barges 14 2 i

Le) 10 20 KM a

BALTIMORE | *

bes

ay &

TI zee V

i ~~ ’

a bp

thi

Bil)!

Fig. 1. Map of Chesapeake Bay with tributaries

labelled where sediment cores have been collected

and analyzed.

pending on sea level elevations, which were

not necessarily similar for the different in-

terglacial periods. However, the sequence

of events leading to the formation of the

estuaries can be assumed to be similar.

Stratigraphic sequences of multiple gla-

cial advances and retreats, contained in

some lake deposits, show that the species

composition of the flora present in North

America over the past two million years

resembles the extant North American flora.

Species distributions shifted with climatic

ESTUARINE BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC MONITORING 149

change, however, from cold at the begin-

ning of the interglacial period to warm at

its height and then to cool again with the

readvance of the glaciers and the end of

the interglacial period. The repeated shift

of species distributions in response to gla-

cial advances and retreats in non-estuarine

deposits, along with the assumption that

changes in sea level corresponding with

glacial advance and retreat is the most im-

portant variable in the formation and ero-

sion of estuaries, provide strong evidence

that the present Chesapeake Bay can be

considered an analog of older estuaries in

this region. A reconstruction of its climatic

history then can be used to project

possible future climatic conditions over the

next decades and centuries, assuming that

geologic history repeats itself. Rapid ex-

pansion of the human population within

the few hundred years since European set-

tlement distinguishes this estuary from

those of the past, however. The record

contained in the sediments allows us to

compare the imprint of European settle-

ment on the estuary with the effects of

climatic change that triggered the accu-

mulation and mass movement of ice, the

displacement of sea level by tens of me-

ters, and the migration of plant and animal

species thousands of kilometers south of

their present ranges.

Schubel” presents the following chro-

nology for the evolution of the present

Chesapeake Bay. Ten thousand years ago,

oceanic waters began to flood the mouth

of the old Susquehanna River, now the

mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Sea level con-

tinued to rise at ~0.2 cm/yr (Fig. 2) so

that 8000 years ago, the head of the Ches-

apeake Bay was at Smith Island; 5000 years

ago it had reached Annapolis, and 3000

years ago the head of the Chesapeake Bay

was at the mouth of the Sassafras River.

About that time, the rise in sea level began

to decline to ~0.12 cm/yr, and the Ches-

apeake Bay reached its present geo-

graphic configuration. Recent deposition

of estuarine sediments, similar in com-

position to sediments that filled the pa-

leochannels in the upper two thirds of the

AGE: 107 YEARS BEFORE PRESENT

DEPTH: BELOW PRESENT MEAN LOW SEA LEVEL

Fig. 2. Sea level curve for the Delaware coastal

zone (redrawn from 7). Radiocarbon dated peats

from the Patuxent” and St. Marys’ River (Kraft and

Brush, unpublished data) indicate a similar sea level

curve for the Chesapeake Bay.

present Bay (J. Halka, unpublished data),

suggest that infilling of this estuary has be-

gun, and that unless the rate of rise in sea

level increases significantly, the Chesa-

peake Bay has reached its maxium extent.

Climatic History of the Chesapeake

Bay Area

Pollen contained in radiocarbon-dated

sediments deposited at the mouth of the

present Chesapeake Bay some 15,000 years

ago show that at the end of the last gla-

ciation, the forests in the area consisted

mainly of spruce, pine, and fir with some

birch and alder.® The presence of these

boreal species indicates a much colder cli-

mate, on the order of 3 to 8°C lower than

at present, based on modern isotherms.

Ten thousand years ago, oak became

abundant as temperatures increased, and

rising sea level resulting from melting gla-

ciers began to submerge the ancestral Sus-

quehanna River Valley to form the pres-

ent Chesapeake Bay. This was followed

by increases in hemlock and hickory. Five

thousand years ago, the species of plants

were similar to those present in the area

150

today, but their abundances fluctuated in

response to climatic variations.

Pollen of terrestrial plants extracted from

sediment cores collected in the Magothy

River (Fig. 1) include a continuous record

of many species growing in the forests sur-

rounding the river for the last 4000 years.

Vertical (time) profiles of pollen in these

cores show major shifts in “dry” and “‘wet”’

taxa over that time period (Fig. 3). The

period from 2750 B.C. to ~1450 B.C.,

some 1300 years, was characterized by for-

ests in which black gum (Nyssa sylvatica)

and sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua)

were the dominant trees. River birch (Be-

tula nigra) and ferns belonging to the ge-

nus Osmunda were also important com-

ponents of the vegetation. These species

POLLEN

(e)

‘“ wy

WJ = <q <q

a | > an w

(o) 2 2 zi.

a Ee

r =o 2

anwe

OO Cie

0.1800

1150

B.c. 150

1450

1725

2100

2425

5 2750

1X10

GRACE S. BRUSH

are indicators of a wetter environment than

characterized the area later. After 1450

B.C., both sweet gum and black gum were

greatly reduced. Total pollen production

during this early “‘wet”’ period was much

higher than at any other time prior to Eu-

ropean settlement. Since there is a direct

relationship between pollen production and

the size of tree populations,’ the increased

pollen abundance may signify a greater

abundance and size of trees, and high bi-

omass production. After European settle-

ment, when the landscape was largely de-

forested, increases in pollen abundance are

related instead to the longer distances pol-

len can be transported atmospherically in

an unforested terrain, and therefore the

larger source area of pollen for eventual

THE MAGOTHY RIVER

<q o- <q

a =& ©)

2 Pas)

saad < Od aq

P= f, ey ae

wea <q Go" >=

az oO oO 30 2H

INFLUXES (NOS. POLLEN DEPOSITED cm ~ yr. FROM 1800 A.D. - 2550 BC.)

CALE SCALES Ix 107)

Fig. 3. Influxes of total pollen and pollen of selected taxa plotted against a time scale of 4000 years from

a core collected in the Magothy River. Sphagnum moss (Sphagnum); royal fern (Osmunda regalis); erica-

ceous shrubs including azalea, blueberry, etc. (Ericaceae); holly (//ex); river birch (Betula nigra); chestnut

(Castanea); hickory (Carya); sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua); black gum (Nyssa sylvatica). The influxes

are arranged in 65 year intervals, and show major changes in the abundances of plants that occupy dry and

wet habitats over the past 4000 years.

ESTUARINE BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC MONITORING 151

deposition."° By ~400 A.D., about 1500

years ago, plants that occupy drier sites

today, such as holly (//ex), chestnut (Cas-

tanea), and ericaceous shrubs were the

dominant taxa; they remained dominant

until European settlement, 300 years ago.

Within the time period from ~40 A.D. to

~1700 A.D., however, there were fairly

significant oscillations in the abundance of

dry taxa. For example, from 400 to 500

and 1000 to 1200, holly and chestnut were

much more abundant than in the inter-

vening or subsequent periods.

Pollen, charcoal, and metals extracted

from a sediment core taken in the Nan-

ticoke River (Fig. 1), with a 1500 year

record, shows a pronounced dry period

from 1000 to 1200 A.D., synchronous with

one of the dry periods recorded in sedi-

ments from the Magothy River. The pe-

riod is characterized by a high ratio of “dry”

taxa (oak, hickory, pine) to ‘‘wet” taxa

(river birch, sweet gum, black gum), and

high charcoal and metal influxes (Fig. 4).

The influxes of metals are of a magnitude

similar to the historical influxes, believed

to be of industrial origin. A more recent

sedimentary horizon characterized by an

extremely high influx of charcoal in the

Magothy River is synchronous with the

1904 fire in Baltimore City. These data

lead to the hypothesis that the earlier dry

period from 1000 to 1200 A.D. was char-

acterized by intermittent fires, releasing

metals from the soil and vegetation, which

were then deposited in the estuary.

The pollen record of two herbaceous

taxa preserved in sediments deposited in

BED FIN CREEK, THE NANTICOKE -RIVER

POLLEN CHARCOAL Cd/Fe Cu/Fe

OAK,HICKORY pum* cm* yr |

PINE: BIRCH ne ae

A.D. GUMS

2000

1900

1800

1700

1500

1300

1100

900

700

500

50 25 5.0

Pb/Fe Mn/Fe Zn/Fe

pg aS

= aBe = =e

oh eon x10” x lO

20.0 20.0 30.0 10.0

Fig. 4. Influxes of pollen, charcoal, and metals plotted against a time scale of 1500 years from a core

collected in the Nanticoke River. The profile shows a period from ~1000 to ~1200 A.D. characterized by

a high ratio of dry plants (oak, hickory and pine) to wet plants (sweet gum, black gum, and river birch), a

high influx of charcoal, and high metal influxes, leading to the hypothesis that this particular interval was

dry and characterized by intermittent fires that released metals from the vegetation and the soil that were

then washed into and deposited in the estuary.

152 ~ GRACE S. BRUSH

the Nanticoke River show variations over

the last 200 years that are related in one

case to the record of precipitation and in

the second to siltation. The precipitation

record (Fig. 5) is a reconstruction of rain-

fall for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, based

on scattered records prior to 1820 and more

complete data since that time.* Despite

deficiencies in the early record, the data

show a period of highest precipitation from

the mid-1800s to the late 1800s and a dry

period from the late 1800s until about 1940.

At the same time increasing amounts of

land were being cleared for agriculture (Fig.

10). Pollen of burreed (Sparganium) pre-

served in the sediments over the past 200

years indicates that its occurrence is re-

lated to precipitation more directly than

to land clearance. Burreed grows in open

water, in ditches or along the edges of

ponds. It began to increase in the late 1700s

and early 1800s when there were inter-

mittent years of high precipitation, reach-

ing its maximum at about the time of the

longest period of high precipitation. The

data suggest that more open water habi-

NANTICOKE RIVER

AS 2

fa) Or

5 Oo

A coe ee

a & rad

- WZ as =e

a WW

oe vee =. mee

tee Si raza

er. & x a = a2

<I OW Oz qiIqga

wu 2 cw > yw

~ Ss oe =e

oe Trae! = leu

1980

1930

1880

1830

1780

500 500 40

NOS. POLLEN DEPOSITED ,o99

cm yr"!

LOWEST

PRECIPITATION

HIGHEST

42 44 in

105 110 cm

Fig. 5. Influxes of pollen of Chenopodiaceae and burreed (Sparganium) plotted against a time scale of

200 years from a core collected in the Nanticoke River. The profile of burreed shows a relationship to the

precipitation record, whereas the profile of chenopods is more closely related to the history of land clearance

and siltation.

ESTUARINE BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC MONITORING 153

tats became available for the plant as pre-

cipitation increased, but with increasing

rainfall, the plant, which is an emergent,

was drowned out. During the dry period,

there were few suitable habitats of open

water at the correct depth for its occu-

pancy. Later, its occurrence becomes spo-

radic with the occurrence of some years

of high precipitation intermingled with

years of low rainfall.

The occurrence of plants belonging to

the Chenopodiaceae, on the other hand,

appears to reflect the history of land clear-

ance and the filling in of marshes through

siltation. The Chenopodiaceae include

plants that grow in marshes and also in

fields after initial clearance. The pollen of

the different taxa included in this group

are not distinguishable. The group as a

whole began to increase with initial land

clearance, and remained abundant until

the marshes were eventually reduced by

siltation. With increased crop production,

there was less open field space for chen-

opods. At the same time, increased sil-

tation from intensive agriculture resulted

in a reduction of marshlands. These proc-

esses are reflected in the decrease in chen-

opodiaceous pollen from ~1830 to ~1930,

a period of intensive agriculture. Later,

there is an expansion of this group of plants

concurrent with efforts to control soil ero-

sion, reduce siltation, and preserve or en-

large the marshes.

Shifts, over 4000 years, of species oc-

cupying dry and wet sites today indicate

significant changes in precipitation during

that time period. The stratigraphic record

also indicates that these changes could oc-

cur for relatively short periods, possibly

on the order of decades. Such changes

would have affected dramatically the flow

of fresh water into Chesapeake Bay. This,

plus the nature of changes associated with

shifts in rainfall, such as high biomass pro-

duction on the terrain and fires accom-

panied by high metal influxes into the es-

tuary suggests that the impact on animal

species occupying both the land and the

water must also have been significant.

Anthropogenic History of the

Chesapeake Bay

As stated above, human activities that

play a large role in altering estuarine hab-

itats include the introduction of sediment,

nutrients, and other chemical substances

into estuarine waters, and physical alter-

ations of the estuary and its tributaries. I

shall discuss here the effects of sediment

and nutrient loading on some estuarine

populations.

Sediment accumulation

Using historically dated pollen horizons

in the sediment, average rates of sediment

accumulation since European settlement

were calculated, by dividing the length of

the sediment core between the dated ho-

rizons by the number of years. An ex-

ample of a pollen dated core with derived

sedimentation rates is shown in Fig. 6. The

pollen horizons represent historically doc-

umented land clearance for agriculture and

the demise of chestnut trees due to dis-

ease. Sediment accumulation rates prior

to European settlement are calculated be-

tween radiocarbon dated horizons, in a

manner similar to the calculations based

on pollen dated horizons. Average rates

of sediment accumulation spanning cen-

turies are highly variable within and be-

tween cores (Fig. 7). Despite the varia-

bility, however, the rates are always higher

after European settlement than before.

A summary of the rates of sediment ac-

cumulation since European settlement

(Table 1) shows that there is a twofold

increase in the amount of sediment

accumulation when the amount of land

cleared changes from =20% to 40 to 50%.

The increase in sedimentation rates occurs

mainly in the upstream and midstream parts

of the tributaries. Average sediment ac-

cumulation in the downstream areas, close

to the mouths of the tributaries, generally

is not affected by land clearance.’

Using a method for calculating sedi-

mentation rates for any desired increment

154

GRACE S. BRUSH

FURNACE BAY

Depth

Oak: —Chest- Dated

(cm)Sediment Ragweed Ragweed nut g/cm* horizons cm/yr

O Oo —— 1978

10 0.54+0.05

20 2

= 0.80 £0.07

40 5 39 ~— 1910

i 40

y : +0;

60 : NO POLLEN OS bina

a 50

— 1780

0.16 0.04

70 +—— 1730

> 2

100 < =

a | —}

120 7) 90

130 35

10 % 20 oF,

Fig. 6. Pollen chronology of a core collected in Furnace Bay showing four historically dated pollen horizons.

1730: the time of initial agriculture recognized by an increase in ragweed pollen from <1 to 5%. 1780: the

time of intensified agriculture recognized by an increase in ragweed pollen to >10%. 1910: the beginning

of the chestnut blight recognized by a decrease in chestnut pollen. 1930: the demise of chestnut trees

recognized by the absence of chestnut pollen. The occurrence of chestnut pollen at the top of the core

represents pollen of Oriental chestnut trees planted in the 1940s. Sedimentation rates are calculated by

dividing the length of a core between dated horizons by the number of years.

of a core (Brush, ms in preparation), I

compared sedimentation rates in two

cores from Furnace Bay (Fig. 1), 0.5 kilo-

meters distant from each other. Principio

Creek, a small stream, drains into Furnace

Bay. The two cores have generally similar

profiles of sediment accumulation (Fig. 8).

Prior to European settlement, Core 5,

which has the longest record, shows very

low rates of sedimentation. After Euro-

pean settlement, rates gradually increase

during early and developing agriculture,

and are greatest during the period of com-

mercial agriculture. They decrease after

ESTUARINE BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC MONITORING 155

FURNACE MAGOTHY NANTICOKE

BAY RIVER RIVER

cm cm/yr ybp cm/yr ybp cm/yr ybp cm/yr ybp

fe)

I7+2

(ja)

ioo4 4

o 200+15

i504 i

200 Ig20+100°

SILT AND PEAT

fo)

ice)

oO:

1390 +170"

Fig. 7. Average sedimentation rates between pollen and radiocarbon dated horizons in four cores with

the longest records collected so far. Asterisked dates are based on radiocarbon measurements; ybp =

years

before the present. Note the variability in rates within and between cores. Post-European settlement rates

are at least four times greater than rates prior to European settlement.

the late 1930s, when soil conservation

measures were put into practice; in some

areas there was also a decline in agricul-

ture at this time. Two local land activities,

however, mask the general pattern, one

of which is reflected in each core. Histor-

ical maps of the area show that in the late

1700s, the mouth of Principio Creek was

close to the location of Core 2. In the eary

1700s, local forest clearance for charcoal

production resulted in high sedimentation

rates at the mouth of the creek, in prox-

imity to the location of Core 2. Later the

channel of Principio Creek migrated, as a

delta formed due to increased siltation,

and the mouth was relocated eventually

close to the location of Core 5. In the 1960s,

sand and gravel mining were an important

activity in the Furnace Bay area, and re-

sulted in high sedimentation rates at the

mouth of the creek, which at this time is

reflected in Core 5, but not in Core 2. In

addition to an increase in sedimentation

rates due to local land clearance, many of

the major storms are also reflected by high

sedimentation rates in both cores (Fig. 8).

Patterns of sediment accumulation over

time, recorded stratigraphically, show that

rates of accumulation are controlled by

climatic events (storms) and local anthro-

pogenic activity. The lower rates of sedi-

ment accumulation at the mouths of the

tributaries compared with the upper and

middle reaches indicate that fine sediment

is not transported far once it enters the

estuary (Table 1). The preservation of

variations in sedimentation rates attrib-

utable to land use and meteorological

events over centuries also suggests that

there is very little secondary transport of

fine sediment after initial deposition, at

least in the areas studied.

Eutrophication

A comparison of vertical profiles of sed-

imentary degradation products (an indi-

cator of algal production and eutrophi-

cation) from cores taken in Back River

with Middle River (Fig. 1) shows a pro-

nounced difference between the effects of

point source and non-point source nu-

trients.' The watersheds of both estuaries

156 GRACE S. BRUSH

Table 1.—Rates of Sediment Accumulation Since European Settlement*

<20% land cleared

cm/yr g/cm?/yr

Upstream 0.15 + 0.03 0.11 + 0.01

Midstream 0.24 + 0.05 0.10 + 0.02

Downstream O:17-= 0.01 0.11 + 0.005

40-50% land cleared

Upstream 0.39 + 0.03 0.20 + 0.015

Midstream O37 = 0.03 0.20 + 0.02

Downstream 0.17 + 0.02 O45 20:01

“(summarized from Reference 2)

have a similar history of extensive agri-

culture and urbanization. The Baltimore

Sewage Treatment Plant, however, is lo-

cated on Back River and has been dis-

charging varying amounts of secondarily

treated waste water into the river since

1912. Treated sewage discharged into the

river doubled between 1917 and 1940. In

1943, a large fraction of the effluent was

diverted to the Bethlehem Steel Plant, lo-

cated on Baltimore Harbor (Fig. 1), to be

used for cooling water, accounting for the

sharp decline in degradation products of

chlorophyll. During a steelworkers’ strike,

which lasted for four months in 1958, all

of the effluent was pumped into Back River,

and degradation products of chlorophyll

increased. The profile of the influx of sed-

imentary chlorophyll degradation prod-

ucts, then, mirrors changes in the volume

of waste water discharged into the river

over time (Fig. 9). The amount of sedi-

mentary chlorophyll resulting from non-

point source fertilizers prior to 1912 in Back

River and throughout the core from Mid-

dle River is very small, however, in com-

parison with the effluent from the sewage

treatment plant.

Siltation, Nutrient Input, and

Community Structure

For centuries prior to European settle-

ment, Furnace Bay, which drains rich sap-

rolite weathered from igneous rocks, sup-

ported abundant and diverse benthic

populations, according to the stratigraphic

record of seeds of submerged macro-

phytes and cell walls of diatoms (Fig. 10).

The evidence indicates clear water that was

rich in nutrients. As the land was cleared,

increasing siltation and turbidity reduced

the amount of light available to these bot-

tom-dwellers. The occurrence of macro-

phyte species became sporadic. Reduc-

tions in these populations also reduced the

habitat for many benthic diatoms that used

the submerged grasses as a substrate. Their

populations also were reduced. Where-

ever sewage was introduced into these

stressed environments, planktonic dia-

toms proliferated, reducing still further the

light available to benthic populations.

Eventually, the benthic species were elim-

inated. This sequence, which is clearly re-

corded in the sediments deposited in Fur-

nace Bay,’ has been demonstrated in

experimental ponds,” and also has been

observed in sediment cores extracted from

the Great Lakes.

The sequence of changes following sil-

tation is different in the Ware River (Fig.

1), which drains nutrient-poor Coastal Plain

sand. There, prior to European settle-

ment, estuarine populations were ex-

tremely sparse, indicating an unproduc-

tive, oligotrophic system. The effect of land

clearance was to enrich the system with

nutrients mainly from fertilizers and to in-

crease its productivity. The composition

ESTUARINE BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC MONITORING 157

FURNACE BAY

SEDIMENTATION RATES

YEARS

(A.D) CORE 5 CORE 2

1980 St d

PEHIcS eeauel Guacryina

CAMIL PE. 72. ee CONSERVATION

1950

— 1955 COMMERCIAL

NP ISI| AGRICULTURE

oo 589

1850 DEVELOPING

AGRICULTURE

1800

NPE. 1786 ; EARLY

Charcoal Production AGRICULTURE

1700 1700

PRE-EUROPEAN

1500

1000

500

1@)

1.0

cm/yr.

Fig. 8. A comparison of detailed sedimentation rates in two cores collected in Furnace Bay, 0.5 km distant

from each other. NP = no pollen in the sediment, indicating an almost instantaneous deposition of a slug

of sediment. Zones of no pollen are associated with two major storms in 1786 and 1911. Note the high

sedimentation rates associated with major storms of 1889 and 1933 and with Hurricanes Camille, Agnes,

and David. The rates of sedimentation show the relationship between land clearance for agriculture and

sediment accumulation, as well as the relationship between local forest clearance for charcoal production

and stone and gravel quarrying and sediment accumulation. The pattern of sediment accumulation in the

cores reflects the migration of the channel with progressive siltation, so that the mouth of the channel which

was close to Core 2 in the late 1700s was 0.5 km distant in the vicinity of Core 5 in the late 1900s. This

explains why sediment accumulation resulting from charcoal production in the late 1700s is reflected in Core

2 while siltation resulting from quarrying is reflected in Core 5. It also infers that there is very little secondary

transport of sediment after initial deposition, at least in this area.

of the diatom flora remains similar

throughout, but the abundance increases

with increased runoff, except where sew-

age is introduced. Then, one or two plank-

tonic diatom species become dominant,

transforming the system into one similar

to Upper Bay tributaries after the intro-

duction of sewage.

Summary

Vertical profiles of seeds and pollen of

terrestrial and aquatic plants, degradation

products of sedimentary chlorophyll,

charcoal, and metals extracted from sed-

iments deposited in Chesapeake Bay tri-

butaries over a period of 4000 years are

158 | GRACE S. BRUSH

BACK RIVER

=-=—— MIDDEE RIVER

UNITS SCDP/gm dry wgt/ YEAR

1780 1800 1820 1840 1860

1880

1900 1920 1940 1960 1980

TIME IN YEARS

Fig. 9. A comparison of influxes of sedimentary chlorophyll degradation products (SCDP). The source

of nutrients was fertilizers (Middle River from the early 1800s to the present and Back River from the early

to middle 1800s to 1912) and sewage plus fertilizers (Back River from 1912 to the present). The drop in

sedimentary chlorophyll in Back River after 1940 reflects the diversion of part of the sewage into Baltimore

Harbor via the Bethlehem Steel Plant, where it was used as cooling water. The increase in sedimentary

chlorophyll in the late 1950s reflects the discharge of all of the sewage into Back River during a steelworkers’

strike, which lasted for four months in 1958.

characterized by variations, due both to

climatic and to anthropogenic factors. The

close correspondence between historical

records (where they exist) and strati-

graphic records provides evidence of the

accuracy of the stratigraphic record and

its usefulness in the compilation of long-

term data bases. For example, compari-

sons of paired historical and stratigraphic

records show: (1) the disappearance of

submerged aquatic vegetation within the

past decade in the Upper Chesapeake Bay,

reflected by the absence of seeds of all

species of submerged macrophytes in sed-

iments deposited in that area during the

last decade; (2) the demise of chestnut trees

between 1920 and 1930, due to disease,

reflected by the absence of chestnut pollen

in sediments deposited since 1930; (3)

fluctuations in the discharge of second-

arily treated waste water into an urban

estuary since 1912, mirrored by similar

fluctuations in the amount of degradation

products of chlorophyll found in sedi-

ments deposited after 1912; and (4) the

1904 fire in Baltimore, reflected by high

concentrations of charcoal in sediments

deposited in a neighboring tributary at the

time of the fire.

The stratigraphic record shows that, prior

to historical records, dramatic shifts in

abundances of pollen of dry and wet land

plants indicate extreme variations in pre-

cipitation extending over decades and cen-

turies during the last few thousand years.

The co-occurrence of high metal concen-

trations, abundant charcoal, and high per-

centages of pollen of trees that grow in

dry habitats, suggest that during dry pe-

riods, fires resulted in the discharge of

metals, released from burned soil and veg-

etation, into estuarine waters.

The stratigraphic record also shows that

the impact of European man is unique in

ESTUARINE BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC MONITORING 159

UPPER CHESAPEAKE BAY

GENERALIZED BIOSTRATIGRAPHIG PROFILES

Dee POLLEN DIATOMS SEEDS

A.D. 5 SPECIES OF SEDIMENTATION

nan LAND CLEARED RAGWEED CHESTNUT FREE FLOATING MACROPHYTES

-e ee eS =

RATE (cm/yr.)

4.0

UZ SEEDS PRESENT

[__] SEEDS ABSENT

FERTILIZERS

Fig. 10. A generalized biostratigraphic profile compiled from cores collected in Furnace Bay showing

changes in populations of submerged macrophytes and diatoms associated with increased sediment and

nutrient loading. The system changed from one dominated by diverse and abundant benthic populations to

one dominated by planktonic species.

the record of 4000 years. Clearing of land

for agriculture and discharging wastes into

the estuaries has resulted in sediment, nu-

trient, and toxic loadings that over time

have transformed upper Chesapeake Bay

tributaries, draining thick saprolite, from

a system that supported diverse and abun-

dant benthic populations to one domi-

nated by planktonic organisms. The change

was gradual, with benthic populations dis-

rupted as siltation increased (and light de-

creased). The record also shows that the

effect of increased sediment and nutrient

loading is not similar throughout the Bay,

but is a complicated response to the hy-

drologic character of individual tributaries

and the geology of the drainage areas. In

the Lower Bay, where the majority of tri-

butaries drain nutrient-poor sandy Coastal

Plain sediments, low productivity of the

estuaries was enhanced with land clear-

ance and use of fertilizers for agriculture,

resulting in a greater abundance of species

already occupying the areas, and less dis-

ruption of populations. Wherever dis-

charged, however, the effect of sewage is

an immediate and overwhelming increase

in planktonic algae dominated by one or

two species.

The stratigraphic record provides a

continuous data base, analogous to a

long-term monitoring system, which can

provide necessary information for the de-

velopment of practical management ob-

jectives—information that is not other-

wise available. The record can be exploited

beyond the topics of sedimentation and

eutrophication discussed in this paper, to

address several other environmental ques-

tions, including the spatial and temporal

dimensions of anoxia, and the effects of

deforestation on precipitation and the hy-

drologic record in general. In order to use

the record, it is necessary to determine as

precisely as possible the ecological re-

quirements and tolerances of those orga-

nisms that will be used as indicators of

environmental conditions and to under-

stand as clearly as possible the processes

that govern the introduction and distri-

bution of chemicals and other substances

in the estuary.

160

Acknowledgments

I thank J. Halka, F. Scatena, A. Miller,

and R. Jacobsen for many discussions and

much information during the course of

writing this essay. M. Jarosewich com-

piled much of the historical information.

I also am grateful to Dr. Abel Wolman

for conversations regarding the use of his-

torical information for making rational de-

cisions. Thanks also to M. G. Wolman and

L. M. Brush, and several anonymous re-

viewers for critical reading of the manu-

script and for offering valuable sugges-

tions with regard to the presentation. I am

especially grateful to the several state and

federal agencies who have funded this re-

search over the years and allowed me to

try to find out what I could about the his-

tory of the Chesapeake Bay as recorded

in the sediments.

References Cited

1. Brush, G. S. 1984a. Stratigraphic evidence of

eutrophication in an estuary. Water Resources

Research, 20(5): 531-541.

2. Brush, G. S. 1984b. Patterns of recent sediment

accumulation in Chesapeake Bay (Virginia-

Maryland, U.S.A.) tributaries. In: J. A. Rob-

bins (Guest-Editor), Geochronology of Recent

Deposits. Chemical Geology, 44: 227-242.

3. Brush, G. S. and F. W. Davis. 1984. Strati-

graphic evidence of human disturbance in an es-

tuary. Quaternary Research, 22: 91-108.

4. Dansgaard, W., S. J. Johnsen, H. B. Clausen

and C. C. Langway, Jr. 1971. Climatic record

revealed by the Camp Century Ice Core. In: K.

K. Turekian (ed.) The Late Cenozoic Glacial

Ages. Yale University Press: 37—S6.

5. Davis, M. B., L. B. Brubaker and T. Webb.

1973. Calibration of absolute pollen influx. In:

Quaternary Plant Ecology. H. J. B. Birks and

R. G. West, eds., Blackwell, London, pp. 9-25.

6. Harrison, W., R. J. Malloy, G. A. Rusnack and

J. Terasmae. 1965. Possible late Pleistocene uplift

10.

Mle

12:

13;

14.

15st

16.

17.

GRACE S. BRUSH

Chesapeake Bay entrance. Journal of Geology,

73: 201-229.

. Kraft, J. C. 1971. Sedimentary facies patterns

and geologic history of a Holocene marine

transgression. Geological Society of America

Bulletin, 82: 2131-2158.

. Landsberg, H. E., C. S. Yu and L. Huang. 1968.

Preliminary reconstruction of a long-time series

of climatic data for eastern United States. Uni-

versity of Maryland Institute of Fluid Dynamics,

Technical Note BN/571.

. Mixon, R. B. 1985. Stratigraphic and geo-

morphic framework of uppermost Cenozoic de-

posits in the southern Delmarva peninsula, Vir-

ginia and Maryland. United State Geological

Survey Professional paper 1067-G: 53 pp.

Munro, R. E. and M. C. Perry. 1981. Distri-

bution and abundance of waterfowl and sub-

merged aquatic vegetation in Chesapeake Bay.

United States Department of the Interior FWS/

OBS-78/D-X0391: 180 pp.

Owens, J. P. and C. S. Denny. 1979. Upper

Cenozoic deposits of the Central Delmarva pen-

insula, Maryland and Delaware. United States

Geological Survey Professional Paper 1067-A:

28 pp.

Phillips, G. L., D. Eminson and B. Moss. 1978.

A mechanism to account for macrophyte decline

in progressively eutrophicated freshwaters.

Aquatic Botany, 4: 103-126.

Schelske, C. L., D. J. Conley and W. F. War-

wick. 1985. Historical relationships between

phosphorus loading and biogenic silica accu-

mulation in Bay of Quinte sediments. Canadian

Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 42(8):

1401-1409.

Schubel, J. R. 1981. The Living Chesapeake.

The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,

Md.

Stevenson, J. C. and N. M. Confer. 1978. Sum-

mary of available information on Chesapeake

Bay submerged aquatic vegetation. United States

Department of the Interior FWS/CBS-78/66: 469

PP.

Tauber, H. 1965. Differential pollen dispersion

and the interpretation of pollen diagrams. Dan-

marks Geologiske Undersogelse II. Raekke. NR.

89: 69 pp.

Wilke, S., J. Demarest, W. Hoyt and R. Stuck-

enrath. 1981. Archeological implications of the

Holocene development of the Patuxent Estuary.

Maryland Historical Trust Manuscript Series, 20:

28 pp.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 3, Pages 161-172, September 1986

Prehistoric Use of the

Chesapeake Estuary:

A Diachronic Perspective

Jay F. Custer

Department of Anthropology, University of Delaware

Newark, Delaware 19716

ABSTRACT

During the 12,000 years of prehistoric human occupation of the Chesapeake Bay region,

there were pronounced environmental changes that had significant effects upon the Ches-

apeake Bay and its prehistoric inhabitants. Climatic changes associated with the end of

the Pleistocene and post-Pleistocene sea level rise were the most important of these changes.

Although the data from the pre-5000 B.P. period are incomplete due to innundation of

many coastal sites, intensive utilization of estuarine resources does not seem to have taken

place during this early time period. After 5000 B.P., there is a marked increase in the

intensity of utilization of coastal resources as the rate of sea level rise slowed. A concom-

ittant series of middle Holocene climatic changes caused a trend toward more sedentary

lifeways supported by hunting and gathering of interior and coastal resources. Complex

mortuary sites, extensive trade and exchange networks, and developed social ranking

characterized many of these nonagricultural societies. Throughout much of the Eastern

Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, similar adaptations existed until the time of European

Contact. On the Western Shore, agricultural village life developed. Even the agricultural

chiefdoms of the Lower Potomac and Virginia Tidewater relied heavily, however, upon

the estuarine resources of the Chesapeake Bay for their subsistence needs.

Introduction

This paper provides an overview of pre-

historic maritime adaptations for the

Chesapeake Bay region. It should be noted

that to date there are no data to suggest

how the prehistoric inhabitants of the

Chesapeake Bay affected its ecology;

however, there are abundant data on the

ways in which prehistoric peoples adapted

their lifeway to the estuarine environ-

ment. The configuration, extent, and pro-

ductivity of the Chesapeake Bay have

161

changed dramatically under the effects of

post-Pleistocene sea-level rise during the

last 15,000 years’ and this paper will trace

the development of societies adapted to

these coastal environments during these

changes. Specifically, three basic issues are

considered: (1) the chronology of early

coastal resource utilization; (2) the devel-

opment of intensive coastal resource util-

ization during Mid-Holocene times (3000

B.C.-A.D. 1000) which supported incip-

ient ranked societies; and (3) the relation-

ship between agricultural food production

162 JAY F. CUSTER

\ Sil Jones River

Murdarkill Rive

Patuxent

AN/

SITES

1-—White Oak Point

2-18PR166

3-Barker’s Landing, Kiunk Ditch

4-Wilgus

5-Sandy Hill, Cambridge

6-Island Field

ieee. RABI 7-Oxford

ee Awaine 5 8-St. Jones Adena

Fig. 1. Site locations.

CHESAPEAKE PREHISTORY 163

TIME PERIODS| COMPLEXES SITES

(EASTERN EASTERN WESTERN

SHORE) SHORE SHORE

1600 AD- Pate Slaughter Creek

~{| __ Woodland

800 AD- Middle | Island Field

18PR166

= Woodland eee Oxford

0 AD-

Early

Woodiand

eo =

Archaic

Delmarva

Adena

Barker's

Landing

St onesiadend aero Sais

Wilgus

Sandy Hill

Piscataway

White Oak Point

Portsmouth, VA

: Sites

Barker s Landing

Kiunk Ditch

Middle

Archaic

Named

Complexes

~ Early

Archaic

8000 BC-

ii Paleo-

Indian

10,000 BC-

Fig. 2. Time periods, complexes, and sites.

systems and intensive coastal resource util-

ization in late prehistoric times (A.D. 1000-

A.D. 1600).

Many earlier discussions of prehistoric

coastal adaptations for Eastern North

America suffer from the fact that they do

not consider the overall adaptations of the

societies utilizing coastal environments.’

This difficulty will be avoided here by us-

ing data from summaries of paleoenviron-

mental data from the Middle Atlantic

area* > along with sea level rise data from

164 JAY F. CUSTER

the western flank of the Baltimore Canyon

geosyncline® to develop tentative paleoen-

vironmental reconstructions for the Ches-

apeake Bay region. The adaptive strate-

gies of the prehistoric inhabitants of the

area as revealed through reconstructions

of their settlement-subsistence systems are

also considered. Figure 1 shows some of

the sites and locations noted in the text

and Figure 2 lists the major time periods,

complexes, and sites.

Early Holocene Coastal Adaptations

There is some disagreement about the

extent, and indeed the possibility, of coastal

resource utilization in the Middle Atlantic

prior to 3000 B.C. Some researchers’* have

reported early Holocene sites with exten-

sive shell midden deposits in the Middle

Atlantic region. In both cases the early

radiocarbon dates (3000 B.C. and earlier)

have been questioned in a critical review

of Brennan’s work by Snow’ and in a re-

view of Wilke and Thompson’s work by

Custers-”

Furthermore, recently available accel-

erator radiocarbon dates from one of the

middens excavated by Wilke and Thomp-

son show major problems with their shell

radiocarbon dates.!!\"

Extensive shell midden sites pre-dating

3000 B.C. may be buried by sediments in

drowned estuaries such as the Chesa-

peake; however, the configuration and

geomorphology of these areas argues

against this possibility. Because of their

limited tolerance range for temperature

and salinity and their immobility,’

shellfish require stable water conditions.

Given rapid rates of post-Pleistocene sea

level rise in the region prior to 3000 B.C.°

and the relatively flat slope of most of the

Chesapeake estuary, pronounced lateral

disruption of temperature and salinity

clines occurred prior to 3000 B.C. The

absence of extensive shell beds in drill

cores from the Delaware Bay prior to 2700

B.C.' supports this contention. Unfortu-

nately, comparable and reliable dates and

cores are not available for the Chesa-

peake.

The extent to which estuarine resources

may have been utilized by prehistoric so-

cieties prior to 3000 B.C. can be ascer-

tained by considering terrestrial settle-

ment-subsistence systems. The traditional

view of Eastern North American Paleo-

Indian/Early Archaic societies dating from

ca. 12,000 B.C. to 6500 B.C. suggests that

the hunting of Pleistocene megafauna, such

as mastodons, mammoth, and caribou was

the dominant resource procurement activ-

ity.!" Recent data and interpretations sug-

gest a hunting adaptation probably fo-

cused more on white-tailed deer than on

megafauna or tundra-adapted species, such

as caribou, for the area south of central

Pennsylvania and New Jersey.’® Collecting

of wild plant foods and fishing is also sug-

gested by data from the Shawnee-Mini-

sink Site in the Upper Delaware Valley.””

A greater emphasis on hunting compared

to later time periods, is indicated for the

early Holocene, however. Populations

during this time period are seen as mobile,

although not as mobile as once thought,

with movement scheduled on an aseasonal

basis around fixed resource sites such as

lithic resources or favorable hunting/gath-

ering locales.'*!” For example, the Del-

marva Peninsula data on Paleo-Indian site

distributions suggest settlement focused on

lithic resources in the area of ancestral Po-

tomac, Nanticoke, and Susquehanna River

cobble beds and the Delaware Chalce-

dony Complex in the northern Delmarva

Peninsula.'”-'°”° An additional focal point

is the complex of hunting sites in the

swampy mid-Delmarva Peninsula drain-

age divide. In sum, Paleo-Indian group

adaptation is seen as emphasizing hunting

with the opportunistic use of other gath-

ered resources where available. Locations

of fixed and predictable resources pro-

vided focal points for population move-

ments.

In light of this adaptation and the nature

of coastal resource distributions, some

limited use of coastal resources might be

expected during the late Pleistocene and

CHESAPEAKE PREHISTORY 165

early Holocene. Occasional use of shell-

fish, fish, or sea mammal resources, when

available, could have been a part of the

collecting strategy of Paleo-Indian groups.

Given the adaptations of Paleo-Indians,

however, as well as the limited and

ephemeral nature of estuarine settings at

this time, intensive utilization of estuarine

resources would not be expected. An op-

portunistic, short-term use of these re-

sources, when they were available, is the

expected utilization pattern. A possible

analogy to this adaptation can be drawn

from Fitzhugh’s study of types of northern

maritime adaptations.*! Fitzhugh notes a

“Modified Interior’ adaptation which is

characterized as a dual economy with sea-

sonal subsistence on both the coast and

the interior. The technology of this ad-

aptation has an interior focus without any

specialization for intensive maritime hunt-

ing or fishing. Although the Paleo-Indian

tool kit is generally characterized as more

specialized than the tool kits that Fitzhugh

envisions for the Modified Interior adap-

tation, it is generalized enough to allow

the opportunistic exploitation of available

sea mammals or estuarine resources.

For the Middle Archaic Period (6500

B.C.—3000 B.C.), Gardner notes that large

interior swamps form the main settlement

foci with large base camps present

throughout the Chesapeake Bay region.”

Site distribution studies in Delaware’ and

Maryland*~’ support this contention. In

most areas, the innundation of pre-3000

B.C. landscapes makes it difficult to gen-

eralize further about site distributions.

Recent research near Portsmouth, Vir-

ginia, at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay

provides additional information, how-

ever. Gardner notes that by 8800 B.C. the

Chesapeake Bay mouth is innundated, and

stable estuarine settings would have been

present.* Nevertheless, the only sites older

than 3000 B.C. in these coastal settings

are small procurement sites or transient

camps with no associated shell middens.

These sites are not as large as sites at the

interior swamps and they do not show the

Same wide range of tools as the large in-

terior sites. In Gardner’s view, these coastal

sites are outlying components of a regional

settlement system that is primarily focused

on interior resources. Thus, the main fo-

cus of settlement is in areas away from the

coast and use of coastal resources is ephem-

eral, at most, prior to 3000 B.C. Based on

present data this generalization holds for

most of the Middle Atlantic region.

Middle Holocene Coastal Adaptations

By 3000 B.C., two major environmental

changes occurred in the Middle Atlantic

and these changes had important effects

upon societies living in coastal areas. The

first change was a dramatic reduction in

the rate of sea level rise.° The result of

this reduction was an increase in the sta-

bility of estuarine settings which allowed

the development of more extensive shell-

fish beds and habitats conducive to spawn-

ing of fish, including anadromous species. _

These contentions are supported by the

fact that the earliest extensive shell beds

found in the drill cores from the Delaware

Bay date to after 3000 B.C.' In sum, coastal

resources would have been richer, more

predictable, and more extensively distrib-

uted than ever before. The second change

is the onset of dramatic changes in vege-

tation. Analysis of pollen data*>!"”’"° shows

pronounced increases in xeric species such

as hickory and pine in Coastal Plain areas,

as well as the spread of grasslands. Some

data also suggest that periodic oscillations

of temperature and moisture availability

also characterized this period.*! Geomor-

phological evidence and soils analysis sug-

gest that major changes in streamflow pat-

terns and aeolian erosion and deposition

occurred at this time as well.*? Drying of

minor and ephemeral streams also seems

to have taken place.

The human response to these changes

is a shift in settlement patterns and site

distributions from Late Archaic through

Middle Woodland times (3000 B.C.-A.D.

1000). In general, this shift can be char-

166 JAY F. CUSTER

acterized as an emphasis on the rich and

predictable resources on the major river

valley floodplains and the estuarine marsh

settings. In some areas, the adaptations in

these settings show stability; in others,

however, there are changes through time.

Also, the societies in some coastal areas

show evidence of increases in social com-

plexity.

In the Outer Coastal Plain at the mouth

of the Chesapeake Bay, Gardner has de-

scribed site distributions for the Dismal

Swamp and Portsmouth, Virginia area.”

Beginning in Late Archaic times (3000

B.C.-1000 B.C.), there is a focus on the

Dismal Swamp area and some large base

camps are present. By 1000 B.C., how-

ever, the beginning of the Early Woodland

Period, there is a shift in settlement pat-

terns to coastal areas. These sites are large

and are located at junctions of freshwater

streams and estuaries. Shellfish utilization

is seen as an important subsistence base

for these sites although other terrestrial

resources played equally important roles.

Coastal settlement patterns also include

small ephemeral procurement sites and

compared to Late Archaic patterns, the

Early Woodland Coastal focus seems to

be more stable and sedentary. These pat-

terns continue through the Middle Wood-

land Period and last until A.D. 1000. No

indications of trade and exchange or in-

cipient ranked societies are noted by

Gardner.

Studies by Potter and Waselkov on Vir-

ginia’s Northern Neck in the Lower Po-

tomac River Valley represent one of the

most complete sets of localized data on

coastal adaptations in the Middle Atlan-

tic.*-* Potter’s study considered settle-

ment patterns on the lower Coan River,

a tributary of the Potomac, while Wasel-

kov’s studies focused on a single large

multicomponent shell midden, the White

Oak Point site. Initial use of shellfish, in-

cluding oyster, periwinkle, soft-shell clam,

and ribbed mussel appeared in Late Ar-

chaic times and is radiocarbon dated to

approximately 2100 B.C.—2000 B.C. A

variety of plant foods including hickory

nut and grape are also present with a va-

riety of terrestrial fauna including deer,

dog, and small mammals. Turtles, snakes,

and fish are also present in shell middens.

Sites seem to be intermittently occupied

small base camps and the major utilization

of coastal settings occurred during the early

spring. Residence may have been partially

sedentary and early studies by Holmes

suggest that house structures may have

been present at some sites.» After 1000

B.C., midden remains show a decrease in

a variety of shellfish species utilized, with

oysters being utilized most intensively.

Because invertebrates provide the major

meat source at these coastal sites, a rather

specialized subsistence pattern is inferred.

These subsistence patterns, established in

Early Woodland times, continued until at

least A.D. 900. Potter’s regional settle-

ment pattern data indicate that after A.D.

200 a series of small and intermediate sized

shell middens, complemented by interior

upland sites, were present in the Coan

River area. These sites are seen as indic-

ative of a seasonal fusion/fission cycle of

local and regional bands. Focal adapta-

tions based on molluscs are dominant in

the floodplains adjacent to estuaries with

supplemental food sources derived from

deciduous forest edge settings further in-

land. By A.D. 900, a series of large mid-

den sites were present in the necklands

and are viewed as semi-sedentary villages

occupied at least for most of the year. No

indications of complex organizations are

evident up to A.D. 1000, although some

degree of trade and exchange may have

been present, as suggested by the pres-

ence of chipped stone artifacts manufac-

tured from metarhyolites (which are de-

rived from the Blue Ridge area of western

Maryland and central Pennsylvania) in

Middle Woodland contexts. The presence

of steatite bowls in Late Archaic midden

contexts also suggests that long range trade

networks may have been in operation as

early as 2000 B.C.

Further north on the Potomac River,

Gardner has described site distributions in

the Popes Creek vicinity as well as along

CHESAPEAKE PREHISTORY 167

the Piscataway Creek.**“° In the Piscata-

way locality, just south of Washington, a

series of large base camps with large hearths

and extensive lithic remains are present

and are believed to represent camps sit-

uated to maximize exploitation of anad-

romous fish. These sites are initially oc-

cupied during Late Archaic times and their

utilization continues through the end of

Middle Woodland times. Gardner sug-

gests that these sites may have been semi-

sedentary and there is evidence of some

storage pits with preserved seed remains.~’

Known features at site 18PR166 seem to

date primarily from Middle Woodland

times and may indicate an intensification

of food production. Slightly further south

along the Potomac, extensive shell mid-

den sites are noted, including the Popes

Creek site. Gardner sees these sites as in-

itially occupied during Early Woodland

times (ca. 1000 B.C.) and believes that

they may represent semi-sedentary occu-

pations similar to those of the Piscataway

area. The intensively utilized resource was

shellfish, however, rather than anadro-

mous fish. Similar adaptation patterns con-

tinued through Middle Woodland times

until approximately A.D. 900, although

some fissioning of Middle Woodland com-

munities may have occurred. As was the

case in the Coan River studies, the only

indications of regional trade and exchange

appeared in the form of rhyolite during

Middle Woodland times although small

quantities of steatite are present in local

Late Archaic components. Similar site dis-

tributions are present further north, as in-

dicated by survey data from the Patuxent

drainage.*>

The middle section of the Delmarva

Peninsula provides an interesting contrast

to the previously described societies be-

cause the Late Archaic-Middle Woodland

societies of the middle Delmarva Penin-

sula show evidences of incipient social

ranking including complex cemeteries with

mortuary ceremonialism and extensive

trade in non-local raw materials and spec-

ialized artifact forms. These societies would

include the Delmarva Adena groups, as

well as some earlier Late Archaic cul-

tures, and later Webb Complex cul-

tures.” 10833” Initially, ca. 3000B.C., Late

Archaic societies of the middle Delmarva

Peninsula look very much like other Late

Archaic coastal groups of the Middle At-

lantic. In Delaware, there are large macro-

band base camps sites located at the fresh-

water/saltwater interface along the St. Jones

and Murderkill Rivers.’ In general, there

was an intensified use of major drainage

floodplains and an extensified use of in-

terior locales on an ephemeral basis.* At

the large base camps there are significant

accumulations of non-local lithic mate-

rials. At the Barker’s Landing site in Kent

County, Delaware, argillite from the Mid-

dle Delaware River Valley (over 150 miles

away) is the major lithic resource utilized

for the manufacture of narrow bladed

stemmed projectile points and broad-

spears. Debitage indicative of second-

ary biface production is also present and

finds of large primary bifaces, made from

large flakes with initial edging, suggest that

argillite was traded and exchanged in the

form of relatively unprocessed raw ma-

terials. Some rhyolite from the Blue Ridge

and steatite from the Piedmont are also

present at Barker’s Landing and other sites

in the area. Most of these raw materials

were used to produce artifacts that func-

tioned as everyday tools. In a few cases,

however, caches of these non-local ma-

terials have been noted. One cache from

Kiunk Ditch on the lower St. Jones River

is significant because it is composed ex-

clusively of 190 early stage bifaces of agil-

lite.“ These caches are interpreted as the

initial conspicuous consumption of non-

local raw materials and may be linked to

the earliest appearance of artifacts with

symbolic functions.*'° Preliminary re-

search on the Lower Choptank drainage

on the Chesapeake side of the Delmarva

Peninsula shows similar artifact and site

distributions.**~*

By 500 B.C., fully-developed mortuary

ceremonialism was present in the Del-

marva area, represented by the Delmarva

Adena Complex.” These sites contain di-

168 JAY F. CUSTER

agnostic Adena biface forms manufac-

tured from lithic materials from Ohio along

with copper beads, tubular pipes, gorgets,

paint cups, and cut mica. Complex burial

treatments mixing in-flesh, secondary, and

cremated interments are also present.”

Recent reconsideration of these sites sug-

gests a hierarchy of site complexity with

major mortuary centers differentiated from

minor centers.!°°? Also, differential dis-

tributions of grave treatments and grave

goods within cemeteries suggests the ex-

istence of ascribed status categories that

cross-cut age and sex lines. A rudimentary

‘“big-man” social organization with ranked

kin groups has been hypothesized for these

societies. There are no habitation sites di-

rectly associated with the larger mortuary

sites, although occasionally projectile points

and bifaces manufactured from Ohio cherts

are present at living sites, such as the Wil-

gus site in southern Delaware.” Living sites

of Delmarva Adena groups have been

identified in Kent and Sussex County,

Delaware, and are found in locations sim-

ilar to those of Late Archaic sites, except

they tend to be slightly further upriver than

Late Archaic sites. This change in site lo-

cations is seen as a response to movements

of the freshwater/saltwater interface

brought on by continuing post-Pleistocene

sea level rise. In southern Delaware, shell-

fish middens are linked to Delmarva

Adena living sites. Recent data from the

Wilgus Site have demonstrated that shell-

fish utilization is primarily a late winter-

early spring activity and that intensive use

of Amaranth and Chenopodium helped to

support a semi-sedentary existence.*’ Data

from the Wilgus Site also show the oc-

currence of large amounts of charred

amaranth in shell middens that were de-

posited in late winter and early spring. Be-

cause Amaranth is available primarily in

late summer, storage of seed plant foods

is very likely.

Initial research with Delmarva Adena

sites on the lower Choptank drainage shows

a slightly different pattern for the Ches-

apeake Bay side of the Delmarva Penin-

sula. Many large multi-component Late

Archaic-Middle Woodland sites are pres-

ent on the lower reaches of the Choptank

River. Delmarva Adena sites are included

in this area and contain some of the largest

accumulations of burials and specialized

Adena artifact forms, such as the Sandy

Hill Adena site near Cambridge, Mary-

land.” The composition and overall con-

figurations of sites on the Choptank are

similar to the sites on the Delaware side

of the Delmarva Peninsula; the primary

difference, however, is that the Choptank

sites show a greater stability of location

through the Woodland period whereas the

Delaware groups continue to shift their

site locations up the major drainages. This

difference is attributed to the varied slope

of the drainages. The Choptank gradient

is generally steeper than either the St. Jones

and the Murderkill and sea level rise would

not have had as great an effect on the

location of the freshwater/saltwater inter-

face in the Choptank. Consequently, the

most productive resource zones would have

been more stable on the Chesapeake side

of the Delmarva Peninsula.

By A.D. 200, a fissioning of commu-

nities is apparent on the Delmarva Pen-

insula, along with a disappearance of mor-

tuary ceremonialism and extensive trade."

By approximately A.D. 700, however,

complex mortuary ceremonialism re-

emerges in limited areas as evidenced by

the Island Field Site and the Oxford

Sites.*'* There are no single large living

sites associated with these sites and a set-

tlement pattern consisting of dispersed

small camps characterized most of the

Delmarva Peninsula during Middle Wood-

land times up to A.D. 1000.

A common theme to the middle Holo-

cene coastal adaptations of the Chesa-

peake region is a focus on especially pro-

ductive estuarine and riverine environ-

ments. Resources utilized vary depending

on the particular environmental setting,

and include anadromous fish, shellfish, and

wild plant foods, especially seeds such as

Amaranth and Chenopodium. Sites in these

settings vary between large and small base

camps; an overall tendency toward in-

CHESAPEAKE PREHISTORY 169

creased sedentism was present, however.

Subsistence practices focused on increas-

ingly limited sets of resources as time pro-

gressed and community fissioning was

prevalent in most areas. Some forms of

exchange systems were present in most

coastal areas. All of the trends in adap-

tation noted above can be viewed as ad-

aptations to the effects of the mid-post-

glacial environmental change. Movement

to the highly productive riverine and es-

tuarine settings would have minimized

subsistence risks in the face of reduced

surface water and climatic oscillations.

These zones were sufficiently productive

to have allowed the support of high pop-

ulation densities. These higher population

densities would have required focal ad-

aptations that in turn required relatively

sedentary lifestyles. The processes of sed-

entism, local population growth, and in-

tensified food production combined to

create social environments where some

adjustments in social organization became

necessary.”’ One possible adjustment would

be fissioning of communities into smaller

groups as evidenced in many Woodland

settlement pattern sequences. This ad-

justment would be most common in areas

where productive zones were large such

as the Piscataway area, Popes Creek area,

and Northern Neck area. These areas show

no evidence of complex organizations and

primarily low-level exchange networks.

In areas such as the central Delmarva

Peninsula a different pattern seems evi-

dent. The productive zones are small along

the drainages of the central Delmarva

Peninsula and shifts in site distributions

up the drainages through time accentuate

the focused nature of the adaptation to the

freshwater/saltwater interfaces. Addi-

tionally, in the Coastal Plain the differ-

ence between the rich riverine/estuarine

settings and surrounding areas is accen-

tuated by the differential edaphic effects

of local soils, especially regarding mois-

ture retention.” In these areas, groups

would be environmentally circumscribed”!

and fissioning of communities would not

be a viable option. Therefore, increases

in social complexity and the emergence of

incipient ranked societies with big-man

organizations redistributing labor oc-

curred as an alternative to community fis-

sioning. Complex mortuary ceremonial-

ism in these areas and the existence of

high-level exchange systems are seen as

consequences of the development of these

more complex social systems.

In sum, the combination of circum-

scribed environments and intensive coastal

resource utilization focusing on a variety

of resources created biosocial environ-

ments where more complex social organ-

izations had an adaptive advantage. In areas

lacking circumscription, sedentary life-

ways slowly emerged with little change in

basic social organization complexity.

Late Prehistoric Coastal Adaptations

By A.D. 1000, the beginning of the Late

Woodland Period, maize agriculture made

its appearance in the Middle Atlantic. In

some areas there is good evidence that it

played an important role in supporting

sedentary village life while in other areas

there was little impact on societies living

in coastal areas. In the Northern Neck area

of the western shore of the Chesapeake

Bay, Waselkov notes that there is a con-

tinued reduction in the varieties of shell-

fish species utilized, and focused oyster

utilization reaches its peak.** Also, roast-

ing basins appeared and more varied meat

sources were utilized. Waselkov suggests

that these trends indicate an intensifica-

tion of oyster gathering and preparation,

perhaps linked to large scale drying of

shellfish for storage. Potter’s settlement

data also indicate a shift to simple maize

horticulture at the same time.** Between

A.D. 900 and 1300 there was an increase

in the number of intermediate-sized hab-

itation sites that seem to show a mix of

horticulture and shellfish utilization. After

A.D. 1300, large villages appeared and

the typical site distributions of the Pow-

hatan chiefdom and related petty chief-

doms emerged.» Ethnohistorical and ar-

170 JAY F. CUSTER

chaeological data both indicate that coastal

resources are mainly a supplement to the

diets of these groups and agricultural food

production systems provide the subsis-

tence basis for ranked chiefdoms through-

out the western shore of the Chesapeake

Bay.

In the Piscataway and Popes Creek area,

a marked settlement pattern shift is seen

at A.D. 900. Productive coastal environ-

ments were abandoned and interior flood-

plains with large extents of arable land

became the locations of sedentary vil-

lages.** These shifts are associated with

the beginning of agriculture in the area

and relatively complex societies with os-

suaries and possible chiefdom organiza-

tions are also present.*’ In the upper Del-

marva Peninsula, there is no settlement

pattern and subsistence shift moving into

Late Woodland times and a hunting and

gathering band level organization lasts un-

til European Contact.'°*

The middle and lower Delmarva Pen-

insula presents a variety of subsistence and

settlement systems during Late Woodland

times; in all parts of the Delmarva Pen-

insula, however, there is a disruption of

the complex social organizations that pro-

duced the Delmarva Adena site and the

high-level exchange networks. Thomas

et al. have described several possible site

distribution models and subsistence sys-

tems for Late Woodland times in Dela-

ware’s Coastal Plain.°° The models pro-

pose various levels of sedentism and

archaeological examples of three of the

models are extant in different areas at the

same time.’”

A general pattern that emerges from the

Late Woodland data is the fact that where

sedentary or semi-sedentary villages ap-

peared, they were supported, at least par-

tially, by some form of agriculture. Also,

an initial dispersal into scattered small vil-

lages or farmsteads seems to have char-

acterized the initial stages of the adoption

of maize agriculture. More simple organ-

izations and less sedentary lifestyles were

supported by coastal resources in much

the same manner as Middle Woodland so-

cieties. Thus, although coastal resources

supported some incipient ranked social

organizations during Early and Middle

Woodland times, the establishment of more

complex social organizations and seden-

tary villages in the Chesapeake Bay region

required agriculture. |

In conclusion, except for possible small

scale effects on local resources, such as

shellfish, prehistoric populations had little

impact on the ecology of the Chesapeake

Bay. Nonetheless, an intricate set of eco-

logical relationships linked prehistoric so-

cieties and their surrounding environmen-

tal setting. The environmental changes of

the middle Holocene, which had signifi-

cant effects on the Chesapeake estuary,

caused some of the most significant cul-

tural changes seen in the 15,000 year time

span of prehistoric occupation of the

Chesapeake Bay region. Changes in re-

source distributions triggered an array of

interrelated changes in demography, sub-

sistence, and group mobility, which in turn

caused major alterations in social struc-

ture. The resulting prehistoric societies

were nothing like their precursors or their

descendants. There can be a lesson for

modern societies in the prehistoric ar-

chaeological record of the Chesapeake Bay

region. Even though we may feel more

aloof from the natural environment of the

Chesapeake Bay region than our prehis-

toric predecessors, we are still a part of

the same web of ecological relationships.

Because we are a part of that web, the

human-induced changes in the Chesa-

peake ecological system of past decades

cannot help but have major effects on our

future lives. Only the extent and nature

of these changes remain to be seen.

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15: 1-44.

Custer, J. F. and K. R. Doms. 1984. Analysis

of collections from the Oxford site (18TA3), Tal-

bot County, Maryland. Maryland Archaeology,

20(2): 10-15.

Catlin, M., J. F. Custer and R. M. Stewart. 1982.

The Late Archaic of Virginia. Quarterly Bulletin

of the Archaeological Society of Virginia, 37: 123-

140.

Brush, G. 1982. An environmental analysis of

forest patterns. American Scientist, 17: 18-25.

Carniero, R. L. 1970. A theory of the origin of

the state. Science, 169: 733-738.

Turner, E. R. 1976. An Archaeological and Eth-

nohistorical Study on the Evolution of Ranked

Societies in the Virginia Coastal Plain. Ph.D. dis-

sertation, Penn State University. University Mi-

crofilms, Ann Arbor.

Ubelaker, D. H. 1974. Reconstruction of dem-

ographic profiles from ossuary skeletal samples:

A case study from the Tidewater Potomac.

Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, No.

18. Washington, DC.

Stewart, R. M., C. Hummer and J. F. Custer.

1986. Late Woodland cultures of the Upper Del-

marva Peninsula and Lower and Middle Dela-

ware River Valley. In Late Woodland Cultures

of the Middle Atlantic Region, J. F. Custer, ed.,

University of Delaware Press, Newark, pp. 58-

89.

Custer, J. F., and D. R. Griffith. 1986. Late

Woodland cultures of the southern Delmarva

Peninsula. In Late Woodland Cultures of the

Middle Atlantic Region, J. F. Custer, ed., Uni-

versity of Delaware Press, Newark, pp. 29-57.

Thomas, R. A., et al. 1975. Environmental ad-

aptation on Delaware’s Coastal Plain. Archae-

ology of Eastern North America, 3: 35-90.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 3, Pages 173-187, September 1986

Transforming a “Splendid and

Delightsome Land”:

Colonists and Ecological Change

in the Chesapeake 1607-1820

Henry M. Miller

Department of Research, Historic St. Mary’s City, St. Mary’s City,

Maryland 20686

ABSTRACT

The modern Chesapeake Bay is radically different from the estuary observed by Captain

John Smith in 1607. In this paper, historical and archaeological data are used to provide

a new perspective on the early Chesapeake and its resources during the colonial period.

For the first 150 years of settlement, the use of hoe-based agricultural practices produced

little soil erosion. Fish exploitation focused upon benthic species, mostly caught with hooks

and lines, and had little impact upon fish populations. About the time of the American

Revolution, high population densities and economic factors brought about a change in

land use to intensive plow agriculture. This produced major surface erosion and a greatly

increased rate of siltation in the tributaries of the Chesapeake. It is hypothesized that this

significantly altered the ecology of the tributaries and had an impact upon the reproductive

success of a number of fish species. Data from sites on the St. Mary’s River in Maryland

suggest that the composition of fish species in this tributary was altered by the early 19th

century. This paper represents an initial effort to synthesize the archaeological and his-

torical data pertaining to the early Chesapeake and its resources. Through the use of these

previously untapped data sources, a unique and detailed perspective on the changing

ecology of estuaries can be produced.

The first European colonists in the

Chesapeake region encountered a re-

markably fertile land covered with virgin

forests and interlaced with rivers and

streams containing an extraordinary abun-

dance of life. Today, the Chesapeake is a

shadow of its former self, with species

within its once bountiful waters dramat-

ically reduced in both variety and number.

To understand the Chesapeake Bay and

its current condition, a perspective that

extends beyond the span of a single human

life is essential. Processes of change re-

quire time for their effects to become

readily apparent and the transformation

of the Chesapeake is no exception. In this

paper, the nature of the estuary during the

period of European colonization is ex-

plored through the historical and archae-

ological records. Questions to be ad-

173

174 ’ HENRY M. MILLER

dressed include: What species were ex-

ploited by the early settlers? How did fish

resources and their exploitation change

through time? Did colonial land use ac-

tivities have any impact upon the ecology

of the Chesapeake Bay? When did an-

thropogenic change become a significant

factor?

Colonial Demography

The growth and distribution of the co-

lonial population is important and a nec-

essary beginning point. The process of col-

onizing the Chesapeake region, which

began in 1607, was marked by an explosive

rate of population growth. By 1635, there

were 5000 colonists living in Virginia and

this number increased to 60,000 by the end

of the century.' Maryland experienced an

equally rapid growth rate. Following its

establishment in 1634 with about 150 set-

tlers, the population grew to 34,000 by

1700, reached the 100,000 mark about 1740

and by the end of the colonial period, there

were over 300,000 people in Maryland.’

During the 17th century, this popula-

tion was concentrated in the Tidewater

areas. Colonists lived on isolated planta-

tions scattered along the numerous rivers

and creeks of the region. Examination of

cartographic evidence, especially the Au-

gustine Herman map of 1673, strongly

suggests that the colonists had a prefer-

ence for waterfront property; nearly every

plantation depicted by Herman lies 1m-

mediately adjacent to the water. This dis-

tribution is confirmed by archaeological

data on site location. Of the 211 known

17th-century sites, 97% lie within one mile

of the water and three fourths of these are

less than 1000 feet from the shore.’ This

settlement pattern was the result of readily

available land, the agricultural focus of the

economy, a marketing system reliant upon

water transportation and a desire to live

near the water for easier travel and ex-

ploitation of the estuarine resources.*

Only in the 18th century, as the pre-

ferred waterfront lands were completely

occupied, did settlement expand into the

interior sections of the tidewater area and

begin in the Piedmont.” By the time of the

American Revolution, all of the Tidewa-

ter and most of the Piedmont of Maryland

and Virginia were occupied or actively

being settled.

17th-Century Land Use

How did the colonists use the land and

what impact did this have upon the estu-

ary? For much of the colonial period, a

single staple crop—tobacco—dominated

the Chesapeake economy. Tobacco plant-

ers attacked the wilderness around them

with the axe and hoe, using an agricultural

method learned from the Indians. Called

slash and burn agriculture, this method

first required the cutting of the bark to kill

the trees and then the burning of the ground

litter to clear the land and release nu-

trients. Afterward, the rich soil was bro-

ken up with hoes, and formed into small

hills about one foot high in which tobacco

or corn was planted. Good tobacco crops

could be obtained from these fields for

four or five years, followed by a few years

of corn production. The old fields were

generally exhausted after six or eight years

of use. They were then abandoned to per-

mit reforestation and new fields were

cleared. Documents suggest that after about

20 years of lying fallow, the fertility of the

old fields was replenished and they could

be brought back into production.® In es-

sence, planters used a long-term fallow

system by which the fields rather than crops

were rotated.

With this approach, only asmall amount

of land was worked each year. One la-

borer could tend 2 or 3 acres of tobacco,

or about 10,000 plants, and another acre

or two of corn. In All Hallows Parish, Md.,

near Annapolis, less than 3% of the land

was under cultivation at any one time dur-

ing the late 17th century.’ It has been es-

timated that by the turn of the 18th cen-

COLONISTS AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGE 175

tury in southern Maryland, only about 1.4%

of the total land was used to produce the

annua! tobacco crop.® Despite the small

quantity of land cultivated annually, a large

acreage was needed for the fallow system

to operate. To maintain continuous pro-

duction, 40 to 50 acres of land was re-

quired for every laborer.’

This agricultural system and the em-

ployment of the hoe as the chief agricul-

tural tool have important implications for

the Chesapeake during this period. First,

only a small portion of land was exposed

to surface erosion each year. Second, the

agricultural method of planting in hills cre-

ated a land surface that resisted erosion

since the many tiny hills and valleys served

to trap much of the water before it could

run off. Since the land was recently cleared,

the stump-infested nature of the fields also

acted to deter the erosional process. This

would have been especially effective at re-

tarding erosion on the low relief lands cul-

tivated during the 17th century, but even

on lands with greater slope, the hilled fields

dotted with stumps would still have pro-

vided resistence to soil removal. A third

factor is that this agricultural system cre-

ated a patchwork of land, some being ac-

tively farmed, other fields recently aban-

doned, and former fields in the process of

regeneration. Because of this, the cleared

fields in production were bordered by veg-

etated tracts so that runoff water would

often have to trickle through scrub or for-

ested tracts before reaching streams, thus

helping to trap sediment. An absence of

huge open fields also meant that the forces

of the wind could not act to erode and

deflate the land. As a consequence, soil

erosion produced by humans was minimal

during the 17th and early 18th centuries

and hence, the estuary probably experi-

enced little increase in sediment loads.

Evidence suggests that this form of land

use not only produced minimal erosion but —

preserved the soils’ fertility. European

travelers to the Chesapeake during the co-

lonial period often commented on the

abandoned, exhausted fields and viewed

the planters as wasteful and negligent in

agricultural matters. What they and many

20th-century agricultural historians failed

to realize is that the fields were only tem-

porarily exhausted and the apparent aban-

donment was merely a replenishment phase

during which fertility was restored.'® This

shifting fields system was an efficient, self-

sustaining approach that did not destroy

soil resources so long as the proper ratio

of laborers to land was maintained to al-

low a sufficient fallow period.'! Instead of

declining crop yields from exhausted soils,

recent historical research has revealed that

the amount of tobacco produced per la-

borer in Tidewater Maryland remained es-

sentially constant throughout the colonial

period, strong evidence that the soils’ fer-

tility was preserved.”

17th-Century Fish Usage

What fish resources were exploited dur-

ing this period and how were they har-

vested? Historical accounts of the period

frequently describe the varieties of fish en-

countered by the colonists. In 1614, Ralph

Hamor wrote that

For fish, the rivers are plentifully stored

with sturgeon, porpoise, bass, rockfish,

carp, shad, herring, eel, catfish, perch,

flat-fish, trout, sheepshead, drummers,

jewfish, crevises, crabs, oysters, and di-

verse other kinds.»

Unfortunately, these accounts cannot be

considered solid evidence for the presence

of a species since the names were often

imprecisely applied, and they reveal little

of how abundant different species were.

The historical record is nevertheless quite

valuable and provides important insights.

Household inventories, for example, re-

veal the types of fishing equipment owned

by the colonists at different times. Study

of inventories from southern Maryland and

York County, Virginia, dating between

1640 and 1745, indicates that the predom-

inant fishing equipment was nothing more

elaborate than hooks and lines. In the

176 HENRY M. MILLER

sample of nearly 900 Maryland house-

holds, 95% of the homes with fishing gear

only had this; the others had fish gigs or

nets in addition to hooks and lines. Sur-

prisingly, most of the homes with fish gear

did not own boats or canoes. It thus ap-

pears likely that the major fishing method

consisted of throwing the baited hook and

line out from the shore, with the hook

resting on or near the bottom. This is a

significant piece of information because it

indicates that for most of the colonial pe-

riod, fishing efforts focused upon the

benthic habitat in relatively shallow waters.

What fish were being caught by the col-

onists with this simple technology?

Archaeological Data and Fish Usage

To learn about the nature and exploi-

tation of fish resources in the past, it is

necessary to consult the archaeological re-

cord which contains the physical remains

of the species caught by the colonists.

Through the study of these faunal mate-

rials, it is possible to reconstruct the meat

diet of past peoples and gain insight into

the environment they occupied. Archae-

ological data is especially valuable be-

cause it is independent of the historical

record, can reveal the species actually ex-

ploited by the colonists and provides some

insight regarding harvesting intensity.

Archaeological data are not without

biases, however. The fish remains found

at sites do not represent random samples

of all the species in the estuary. Their pres-

ence is determined by a variety of factors.

Some species, due to flavor or other rea-

sons, may be preferred by a group of peo-

ple and consistently exploited while other

fish are used infrequently or not at all.

Nevertheless, when similar species are

found at multiple sites in a specific area,

it is possible to make some inference re-

garding species availability in the past. The

presence of an animal at a site is also re-

lated to the harvesting technology em-

ployed by the occupants because a partic-

ular type of equipment may be effective

in only one habitat or only capture certain

species. Fortunately, the study of house-

hold inventories and other documents re-

veals that the hook and line was the pri-

mary fishing gear used in the Chesapeake

so that the fish remains from most colonial

sites were obtained with the same tech-

nology and from similar habitats. Another

potential bias is the differential preser-

vation of bones. The effects of this prob-

lem can be partially accounted for by the

analyst through careful selection of the

samples and consideration of variables such

as soil acidity and site hydrology that af-

fect preservation. Faunal preservation on

the sites discussed in this paper ranges from

good to excellent.

Despite potential biases, if the archae-

ological remains from the Chesapeake are

studied and interpreted with caution, they

can provide a unique temporal perspective

on the estuarine ecosystem and its chang-

ing resources. Samples of faunal materials

are available from 24 households dating

between c. 1620 and c. 1750 in Maryland

and Virginia.'* All of these sites are lo-

cated near the shores of the Chesapeake’s

tributaries, mostly on the James and Po-

tomac Rivers (Figure 1). Given the sim-

ple, agrarian nature of society during the

colonial period, there is unlikely to have

been much seafood marketing and little

evidence exists for commercial fishing un-

til the later 18th century. Most of the sites

were tobacco plantations that were self-

sufficient in food. Planters raised their own

meat and grains and exploited the nearby

forests and streams for wild game. Con-

sequently, it is very likely that the species

found on these rural sites were obtained

locally. Faunal remains from 18th and 19th

century urban sites, however, derive from

complex marketing networks so that it is

difficult or impossible to determine pre-

cisely where the fish were obtained. Hence,

urban faunal samples offer less potential

for evaluating ecological change in estu-

aries, except on the most general level.

An important variable in the sample of

archaeological materials discussed here is

COLONISTS AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGE 177

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178 HENRY M. MILLER

the geographic location of the sites. This

is Significant because one of the most pow-

erful environmental factors in estuarine

systems is water salinity, which changes

from marine to fresh in a discernible gra-

dient. A knowledge of prevailing salinities

in the waters adjacent to sites therefore

provides the means of dividing the sites

into two ecologically meaningful samples.

These are (1) sites along low salinity streams

near the salt/fresh water interface (Tidal

Fresh and Oligohaline), and (2) sites along

moderate to high salinity waters (Meso-

haline to low Polyhaline).

The low salinity samples are from sites

on the James River in the vicinity of

Jamestown, which is approximately at the

salt/fresh water interface (Figure 1). Fish

recovered from these sites are primarily

fresh to brackish water species and an-

adromous fishes (Table 1). Catfish and

white perch are the most abundant but

bones of the striped bass and longnosed

gar are also commonly found. Sturgeon

appear consistently on sites located around

Jamestown and at Flowerdew Hundred,

located further upstream near Hopewell,

Virginia.’ They appear to be more abun-

dant on sites in low salinity areas. Remains

of oysters and the blue crab occur on most

of the sites, sometimes in large quantities.

Sites located along higher salinity waters

yield a quite different assemblage of spe-

cies. These samples derive primarily from

the lower Potomac area, although data are

also available from a site on the lower James

River and one on the lower Chesapeake

near the York River. Marine species pre-

dominate on these sites, especially the

sheepshead and black drum (Table 1). The

sheepshead is the most abundant of all the

fish, accounting for a large proportion of

the bone and identified individuals. This

is consistent with the historical record which

suggests that the sheepshead was both

abundant and considered an excellent

tasting fish. One traveler in 1676 observed

that

ax Planter does oftentimes take a dozen

or fourteen [Sheepshead] in an hours

time with hook and line.'®

White perch and red drum are consistently

recovered from these sites and striped bass

bones occur occasionally. Sturgeon re-

mains are rare. Oyster and blue crab, on

the other hand, are found in abundance

on most sites. It is notable that at the one

site on the lower Chesapeake, located ad-

jacent to high salinity waters, sheepshead

and red drum predominated with black

drum also present in considerable num-

bers. The remains of blue crab and oyster

were also found at this site but no other

fish were identified.

Since fishing during this period focused

on bottom habitats, it is not surprising that

the pelagic feeders such as bluefish, weak-

Table 1—Fish identified in 17th-century archaeological deposits in the Chesapeake region.

Upper James River

Abundant’ Catfish Ictalurus sp.

White Perch Morone americana

Common’? Striped Bass Morone saxatilis

Longnosed Gar Lepisosteus osseus

Sturgeon Acipenser sturio

Present? Black Drum Pogonias cromis

Red Drum Scianops ocellata

Sheepshead Archosargus probatocephalus

Sea Trout Cynoscion sp.

Lower Potomac River

Sheepshead Archosargus probatocephalus

Black Drum Pogonias cromis

Red Drum Scianops ocellata

White Perch Morone americana

Striped Bass Morone saxatilis

Longnosed Gar Lepisosteus osseus

Sturgeon Acipenser sturio

Oyster Toadfish Opsanus tau

White Sucker Catostomus commersoni

"Species represented by multiple individuals at all sites.

*Species represented by one or more individuals at most sites.

*Species occasionally represented by a single individual.

COLONISTS AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGE 179

fish, and sea trout are absent. It is notable,

however, that several species that are

present in the modern benthic community

were not identified in any archaeological

samples. Among these are spot (Leiosto-

mus xanthurus), Atlantic croaker (Micro-

pogonias oundulatus), and the kingfishes

(Menticirrhus sp.). Their absence is sur-

prising since they can be taken with the

Same gear used to catch the species that

were present on the sites. This may indi-

cate that the populations of these species

were much smaller during the 17th cen-

tury.

Overall, the species found at sites

matches those to be expected on the basis

of the prevailing salinities in the adjacent

waters. Occasionally, however, marine

species such as the black drum and sheeps-

head occur on sites located in areas where

modern water salinities are too low for

them. Black drum bones were recovered

at a site occupied c. 1660-1680 on the Elk

River at the head of the Bay, miles beyond

the modern range of this species. Simi-

larly, a few remains of black drum, red

drum, and sheepshead have been re-

covered at 17th-century sites near James-

town, Virginia, where the waters today

are of very low salinity. The presence of

these bones could be explained by the

marketing of fish caught in higher salinity

waters but there is no historical evidence

for this and it is unlikely given the settle-

ment pattern and simple economy of the

period.

On the other hand, these bones may be

evidence that high salinity waters once ex-

tended further up the Bay and its tribu-

taries during the summer and early fall,

thus extending the range of these marine

species. Before the lands in the James and

Susquehanna River watersheds were ex-

tensively cleared by settlers, it is likely that

the rate of fresh water inflow was consid-

erably less than today. This would have

permitted saltier waters to move further

up the estuary, especially during years of

dry weather. Although data from many

additional sites are necessary before this

can be further evaluated, it does suggest

that insights regarding past species and

salinity distributions can be derived from

the archaeological record.

During the 17th century, seafood was a

very important component of the colo-

nists’ diet. Archaeological evidence re-

veals that fish, oysters, and crabs were

heavily exploited and they account for up

to one fifth of the total meat at some sites;

seafood may have been even more signif-

icant seasonally.'’ Sheepshead, black drum,

sturgeon, striped bass, and catfish were

the major contributors to the diet. Never-

theless, given the small number of humans

in the Chesapeake during the 17th and

early 18th centuries compared to the

abundance of resources, is unlikely that

the colonists had any impact upon the fish

populations.

What about resources that are non-mi-

gratory, such as oysters? Shells from most

sites of the period are large, suggesting

that oysters were abundant and under lit-

tle harvesting pressure. With the colonists

living in plantations thinly scattered along

the rivers and creeks, it is unlikely that

oysters were Overexploited. Was this any

different in the vicinity of the few colonial

towns?

Data are available from Maryland’s 17th

century capital of St. Mary’s City. Founded

in 1634, it was the center of government

and chief town in the colony until 1695

when the capital was moved to Annapolis.

At its height in the 1680s and 1690s, St.

Mary’s had perhaps 200 permanent resi-

dents, and the population was consider-

ably larger for short periods each year when

the courts and Assembly met. Following

the move to Annapolis, most of the people

left St. Mary’s and the former townland

was slowly transformed into an agrarian

landscape.

Through excavations at several sites in

St. Mary’s, well dated samples of oyster

shells have been obtained from through-

out the 17th and early 18th centuries.

Analysis of these shells by ecologist Bret-

ton Kent'® has revealed a significant tem-

poral change in their size (Figure 2). The

median size class of shells in the early 17th

MILLER

HENRY

180

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COLONISTS AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGE 181

century was 80 mm, but by the late 17th

century, this fell to only 30 mm. In the

early 18th century, the size again rises to

80 mm. This rapid change over the course

of 60 years is in all probability the result

of harvesting pressure on the St. Mary’s

River oysters. A plot of the estimated hu-

man population reveals that there is a strong

inverse relationship between shell size and

the number of humans. Such a relation-

ship is probably due to the intense ex-

ploitation of the oysters so that there was

insufficient time for them to reach a large

size. When the government moved to An-

napolis, the harvesting pressure was quickly

reduced. This is the earliest evidence yet

found for the overexploitation of a Ches-

apeake resource and reveals that even small

numbers of humans could have a serious

impact if harvesting of shellfish was un-

controlled.

18th-Century Fish Usage

Did the 18th-century colonists use the

Chesapeake resources in a similar manner

and with the same intensity? Archaeolog-

ical excavations on sites occupied between

c. 1700 and c. 1750 indicate a dramatic

decline in the frequency of fish remains.

On the lower Potomac sites, fish make up

only 1.5% of the bone samples, compared

to an average of 34% on the 17th-century

sites.‘ James River sites display a similar

decline. The reasons for this remarkable

change are not fully understood, but it is

likely that the colonists began to place more

emphasis upon domestic animals. Re-

mains of domestic species predominate on

the post-1700 sites and they account for

over 90% of the estimated available meat.

Consequently, wild species no longer served

aS major staples of the diet in the way they

had during the earlier decades of settle-

ment. Thus, the change in the intensity of

seafood usage probably relates to a shift

in the cultural adaptation of the colonists.

Seafood was still consumed but it was more

of a supplement than a staple in the diet.

Most of the sites studied from this pe-

riod are located on the lower Potomac

River. The few faunal samples from the

James River sites contain the remains of

catfish and sturgeon. Sites along the Po-

tomac continue to yield bottom-oriented

species such as sheepshead, black drum,

red drum, white perch, and oyster toad-

fish, along with summer flounder (Para-

lichthys dentatus). Examination of house-

hold inventories from this period reveal

that the hook and line remained the pre-

dominant fishing method but suggests a

slight increase in the usage of nets. From

the John Hicks and Van Sweringen sites

in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, have come

the first identified elements from the blue-

fish (Pomatomus saltatrix) and the herring

family (Clupeidae) in the Chesapeake. The

later specimens appear to be from men-

haden (Brevoortia tyrannus), although

species identification in this family is dif-

ficult with faunal remains. Both are pe-

lagic fish that often feed near the surface,

and menhaden are a favorite food of blue-

fish. Significantly, most members of the

herring family cannot be taken with a hook,

but must be netted. Examination of the

historical situation in St. Mary’s and

household inventories from the area sug-

gests that these fish were taken with a seine,

owned by the most wealthy man in the

vicinity. Seine hauling appears to be the

only type of net fishing method used with

any frequency during the colonial period,

and inventories reveal that the seines were

generally owned by the very wealthy. Such

an ownership pattern is probably due to

the fact that the cost of purchasing, main-

taining, and using a seine was considera-

ble, and that preparation of the catch re-

quired much labor and large amounts of

high quality salt for preservation. Lack of

good salt was a serious problem through-

out the colonial period and it probably

deterred the development of commercial

fishing.” References to the use of seines

by wealthy plantation owners, including

George Washington, become more com-

mon in the second half of the 18th cen-

tury, and some commercial fishing ap-

182 HENRY M.

pears to have begun in the 1760s and 1770s,

primarily for herring and shad.”' Prior to

that time, there seems to have been little

harvesting of the pelagic fish species in the

Chesapeake Bay.

Oyster remains evidence another change

in harvesting technology. Shell shape re-

flects the environment in which an oyster

grew and this fact can be used to deter-

mine the habitat from which they were

harvested. On the 17th century sites, all

shells tend to be round or oval in form,

indicative of growth on firm bottoms. Cer-

tain features of the shells suggest that they

were collected from reasonably shallow

waters, probably using short rakes or by

wading out at low tide. On the 18th cen-

tury sites, however, a new shell form ap-

pears. At the John Hicks site in St. Mary’s

City (occupied 1721-. 1740), long narrow

shells of large size were recovered. These

are the shells of channel oysters, so called

because they are found in deeper water

habitats with silty bottoms, such as chan-

nels. Their form is a product of the oys-

ters’ need to rise above the turbidity layer

caused by daily tidal action so that their

gills are not repeatedly clogged with silt.

Their presence at the Hicks site is evi-

dence for the use of a new type of equip-

ment in harvesting—tongs. Historical data

from Maryland shows that oyster tongs first

appear in household inventories in the early

18th century, and there is evidence that

tongs were being used in Virginia by this

time.” Thus, a new harvesting technology

was being employed that permitted oyster

beds in deeper waters to be exploited for

the first time.

18th-Century Land Use

Evidence regarding human exploitation

of the Chesapeake during the colonial pe-

riod suggests that these activities had min-

imal impact upon the abundant aquatic

resources. What about the resources of

the land? Slash and burn agriculture in

MILLER

a long-term fallow system continued

throughout much of the 18th century, along

with some plowing. During the last dec-

ades of the 1700s, however, a complexity

of factors—demographic, economic, and-

social—led to the abandonment of this

traditional agricultural system.

The major factor was human demog-

raphy. By the last quarter of the 18th cen-

tury, the size of the human population in

the Tidewater areas reached the point

at which traditional agriculture could no

longer continue. Population densities in

areas such as All Hallows parish, near An-

napolis, Maryland, increased from 18 peo-

ple per square mile in 1705 to 42 at the

beginning of the Revolution. A similar

pattern occurred in Prince Georges County,

Maryland where the population density

reached 39 per square mile by 1776.” As

such densities were reached, planters es-

sentially ran out of space in which to con-

tinue the long-term fallow system. Along

with this increased population and re-

duced availability of lands came a predict-

able rise in land values. A result was that

the system of land tenure changed from

one based on long-term leases for up to

three lifetimes at low annual rents to short

term leases with high rents.** This may

have been intensified by inflation and the

unstable grain and tobacco markets that

followed the Revolution, when land own-

ers opted for quick, short-term profits from

their holdings. Plantations worked by a

tenant family and perhaps a few laborers

in a rotating field system often gave way

to small leaseholdings intensively cropped

by gangs of slaves.

Good markets for grain and the need

for greater yields per acre encouraged many

planters to turn to grain production and

intensive plow agriculture. The shifting field

agricultural system, which had yielded good

crops for over 150 years, rapidly gave way

to anew method of intensive cropping that

essentially mined the soil of its fertility

while providing little opportunity for it to

be renewed through natural processes. Plow

agriculture had been used by a growing

COLONISTS AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGE 183

number of planters since the early 1700s,

but it became widespread throughout much

of the Tidewater area in the last quarter

of the century. A dramatic example of this

comes from the tenants inventoried on a

tract of land in Charles County, Maryland.

In the decades before 1776, only 21%

owned plows whereas of those tenants in-

ventoried between 1776 and 1820, 73%

owned at least one plow and most pos-

sessed several. It has been estimated that

the amount of land in agricultural pro-

duction in southern Maryland rose from

about 2% of the total in 1720 to nearly

40% in the early 1800s.*

The 18th century also saw the settle-

ment of the Piedmont and clearance of

vast tracts of land for agriculture in that

area. At the same time, settlement in

Pennsylvania resulted in large scale de-

forestation and the beginnings of agricul-

ture along the Susquehanna River and its

tributaries.” Most of the agriculture in these

areas focused upon grain production using

plows. Hoe-based agriculture appears to

have given way to the plow much more

rapidly in the Piedmont than in the older

Tidewater areas.

An understanding of these changes in

agriculture is essential because they pro-

duced the first major human-induced

changes in Chesapeake ecology. In the

Piedmont, the large-scale clearance of lands

and use of plow agriculture greatly in-

creased rainwater runoff. Hence, the fresh

water input into the Chesapeake almost

certainly began to increase during the later

18th century. At the same time, soil ero-

sion of the hilly piedmont lands became a

serious problem. It was estimated that

within 25 years of being cleared, the top-

soil on Piedmont fields was washed away,”

and there are accounts of the large volume

of sediment carried by the James river dur-

ing periods of high water, when it report-

edly looked like ‘‘a Torrent of Blood.’

Much of this sediment was probably de-

posited long before it reached the Ches-

apeake but it certainly increased turbidity

in the streams in the upper Tidewater. This

suspension of the chemically rich Pied-

mont topsoil probably also increased the

nutrients in the waters flowing toward the

Chesapeake.

In the Tidewater, soil erosion and sil-

tation increased dramatically in a very brief

time. Before the Revolution, creeks

draining into the Potomac such as Port

Tobacco in Charles County and Matta-

woman, Piscattaway, and the East Branch

creeks in Prince Georges County were all

navigable. By 1807, they were silting up

and the small ports located along them

were being abandoned.” Streams on the

Eastern Shore of Maryland and near the

community of Joppa, north of Baltimore,

experienced a similar problem at this time.

In Baltimore itself, the port had to be reg-

ularly dredged after about 1780.°° One Ti-

dewater resident, a John Taylor of Caro-

lina County, Virginia, wrote in 1813 that

. . . few of the channels of the seaboard

streams retain any appearance of their

natural state, being everywhere ob-

structed by sands, bogs, bushes and rub-

bish, so as to form innumerable putrid

puddles, pools, and bogs upon the oc-

currence of every drought.*!

Most sedimentation in the Chesapeake

Bay is a product of natural processes such

as shore erosion, which have occurred over

thousands of years. Sedimentation pro-

duced by the late 18th and 19th century

agriculture was different. Consisting largely

of fertile topsoil, with a high phosphorous

and nitrogen content, this sediment was

mostly deposited in the tributaries of the

Bay, especially the smaller rivers and

creeks. Such a major increase in siltation

and the nutrient content of these waters

must have had a profound impact upon

the ecosystem, especially the benthic hab-

itat. Analysis of sediment samples by Grace

Brush confirms that the increased siltation

had a serious effect upon the epifauna of

these streams (Brush: this volume).

A knowledge of the type of siltation and

its location during this period is valuable

because it was focused precisely upon the

184 HENRY M. MILLER

habitat used by many fish species for

spawning or as nursery areas for the young.

These include forage fish such as kilhi-

fishes, silversides, and menhaden, and food

fish like flounders, herrings, shad, and

white perch. The sudden impact of mas-

sive quantities of silt and soil chemicals

into the tributaries must have had an im-

pact upon the reproductive success of these

and other species. The demersal eggs of

some fish, for example, would have been

more frequently covered by sediment.

There is a strong possibility that the re-

duction in the populations of some species

began in the late 18th and early 19th cen-

turies. A brief survey of historical docu-

ments failed to uncover any evidence of a

change in fish abundance but this 1s not

surprising. Given the extraordinary abun-

dance of fish that originally existed in the

Chesapeake, it would have taken a major

reduction in their numbers to be notice-

able to the casual observer and thus war-

rant comment. Accurate records of Ches-

apeake fish harvests only begin in the

mid-19th century and the best data are

from the 20th century.

This is of relevance because the later

19th century data cannot be considered

indicative of the original abundances. Our

fisheries records may begin in the midst

of a decline rather than before it started.

It is also likely that by the mid-19th cen-

tury, the composition of the Chesapeake

fish population was significantly altered

from what it had been when colonization

began. More research is clearly necessary

but the available data imply that changes

in the Chesapeake due to anthropogenic

factors were well advanced by the time the

first accurate fisheries data became avail-

able.

What impact did the extensive siltation

have on the fish populations in specific

tributaries? Is there any real evidence of

a change? To answer this, data are nec-

essary from 19th century sites in the same

area where earlier sites have also been ex-

cavated. Unfortunately, little effort has

been directed at sites of this period in the

Chesapeake region but there are some data

from 19th-century sites in St. Mary’s City

that warrant consideration.

Like many other streams in Maryland

during the late 18th and early 19th cen-

turies, the St. Mary’s River experienced a

greatly increased rate of siltation. A good

example is a small tidal stream, known

today as St. John’s Pond, which flows into

the St. Mary’s River at the site of the 17th-

century capital. This stream was open to

the river in the mid-18th century and suf-

ficiently deep for sailing vessels to enter

and tie up at a landing on the interior.

Over the course of the next sixty years,

this pond filled with a great amount of

sediment and the opening to the river be-

gan silting shut. An 1824 map reveals that

this entrance was so clogged with sediment

that a road was constructed across it.

Faunal materials dating to the 19th cen-

tury are available from the Tolle-Tabbs

site, located one quarter mile from St.

John’s Pond and within a mile of many of

the 17th and early 18th-century sites dis-

cussed previously. Tolle-Tabbs was a pri-

vate home, constructed about 1740, and

that stood until about 1860. The vast ma-

jority of the archaeological deposits on the

site date between about 1830 and 1860,

when the structure was occupied by a se-

ries of tenants. Faunal remains from these

deposits have been studied and they dis-

play a strikingly different composition from

that found on the nearby colonial sites.

Elements from striped bass and bluefish

are present, along with bones from mem-

bers of the Family Clupeidae, probably

the American shad (Alosa sapidissima).

The most abundant remains, however, are

from the oyster toadfish (Opsanus tau) and

especially the striped burrfish (Chilomyc-

terus schoepfi). No bones of the readily

identifiable burrfish have been found on

any colonial site in the area, and toadfish

remains are rare. Sheepshead and drum

bones are completely absent from the Tolle-

Tabbs site, in striking contrast to every

colonial site in St. Mary’s City.

The absence of these species is almost

certainly not due to a reluctance to con-

sume them; the sheepshead was widely re-

COLONISTS AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGE 185

garded as one of the best eating fish in the

Chesapeake. Both the sheepshead and

drum could be easily taken with the simple

hook and line, which even a poor tenant

family could have afforded. It is incon-

ceivable that they would have ignored such

an easily caught and delicious food source

if available, while consuming less desira-

ble species such as toadfishes and burr-

fishes. The most likely explanation is that

sheepshead and drums were no longer

present in the waters near the site. Toad-

fish and striped burrfishes may have be-

come more abundant.

Although not yet analyzed, another

sample of animal remains from this period

has been excavated at the c. 1840 Brome

Plantation, also in St. Mary’s City. A

preliminary examination indicates that

sheepshead and drum remains are very rare

or absent in this sample. All of this sug-

gests that there was a significant change

in the ecology of the St. Mary’s estuary

between the mid-18th century and the mid-

19th century. In particular, the benthic

habitat appears to have been significantly

modified. Sediment core analysis by Grace

Brush (this volume) reveals that the flora

and microfauna in the benthic environ-

ment of tributaries was severely affected

by sedimentation, thus lending support to

the archaeological findings. Although the

evidence is still quite limited, it suggests

that major transformations of the ecology

and the fish populations in the St. Mary’s

River were occurring during the early 19th

century. Almost certainly, other tributar-

ies of the Chesapeake were undergoing

similar changes.

Archaeology and Ecological Insights:

The Potential

Archaeological sites contain a virtually

untapped record of past ecosystems. Fish

remains from sites attest to the presence

of various species and provide some means

of inferring relative abundances. Identi-

fying changes in fish distributions and pop-

ulations is therefore possible. Determin-

ing why they changed is a harder task that

requires data on many other aspects of the

ecosystem, data that are either non-exis-

tant or difficult to extract from the his-

torical record. Fortunately, the same pits

and cellars that yield fish remains also con-

tain a diversity of ecological data locked

in the shell of the oyster.

Oysters can be thought of as small en-

vironmental monitors, constantly record-

ing data about the surrounding aquatic en-

vironment during their lives. Through the

archaeological excavation and dating of the

shells, these molluscan sensors can be

placed into a precise temporal sequence

and their data banks on the Chesapeake

environment decoded. Work by Bretton

Kent has revealed the diversity of insights

obtainable from the shells.*? Analysis of

the various organisms that lived on or in

the shell, for example, can reveal the water

salinities and nature of the benthic habi-

tat. Many benthic organisms, such as the

burrowing sponges Cliona sp., have spe-

cific salinity requirements and leave in-

dications of their presence on the shells.

By identifying and counting their frequen-

cies on shells, an indication of the pre-

vailing salinities in the waters near a site

at specific times can be obtained.

Oyster shells can also tell of the bottom

conditions in which they grew. Shell shape,

for example, reflects the nature of the sub-

stratum upon which an oyster lived. By

studying this and other attributes of the

Shell, the changing bottom conditions in

specific locations can be traced over

hundreds and perhaps thousands of years.

There is the possibility that many collec-

tions of oysters from sites can also provide

precisely dated samples of bottom sedi-

ments. This is due to the activities of the

oyster mud worm (Polydora_ websteri)

which burrows into the edges of the shell

and creates cavities that later fill with sed-

iment. On many shells from colonial sites,

these ‘“‘mud blisters” remain intact and

when opened, are found to contain sedi-

ment. With sufficient shell collections from

a given locality, it is possible that a se-

186 HENRY M. MILLER

quence of well dated sediment samples can

be obtained.

Other ecological clues lie hidden in the

hinge area of the oyster shell. This is a

location where annual, seasonal, and

probably daily growth rings are laid down

and they can be read through various an-

alytic methods. Variation of average growth

rates in shells from different periods could

be used to learn how nutrient availability

changed in a tributary. Climatic infor-

mation can also be obtained from these

shells since major storms, periods of se-

vere cold weather or drought all influence

shell growth by affecting the surrounding

aquatic environment. The collection and

study of oyster shell samples from rural

sites along the Chesapeake offers tremen-

dous potential for tracing the past ecology

of the estuary. When combined with data

from archaeological fish remains, these in-

dependent sources of evidence can pro-

vide a remarkable record of the estuarine

conditions and help determine how and

why they have changed.

Summary and Conclusions

Review of the historical and archaeo-

logical records from the 17th and 18th-

century Chesapeake provides a number of

important insights pertaining to the colo-

nists’ use and transformation of this es-

tuary. Over most of the colonial period,

the colonists appear to have had little im-

pact upon the Bay’s ecosystem. Agricul-

tural practices were of the type that re-

quired large quantities of land and provided

sustained yields without permanently de-

grading soil resources or causing serious

erosion. Fishing activities focused on the

benthic habitat over most of the colonial

period. Given the simple fishing equip-

ment and small human populations, it is

unlikely that harvesting pressure was suf-

ficient to have any impact upon the fish

populations.

Only in the late colonial period did sig-

nificant ecological change begin to occur.

Large sections of the Piedmont were un-

der cultivation or being actively cleared

for plow agriculture. In the Tidewater area,

due to both human demography and eco-

nomic forces, the land tenure system and

agricultural practices changed during the

last quarter of the 18th century. Evidence

suggests that after 150 years of use, the

soil conserving method of shifting field ag-

riculture was rather quickly abandoned for

an “Improved”? agriculture based on in-

tensive plowing and field fertilization. The

new method may have provided better

yields but its unanticipated side effects were

widespread surface erosion, deterioration

of soil resources, and rapid sedimentation

in the tributaries of the Chesapeake. By

1820, significant changes were occurring

in estuarine ecology and the aquatic re-

sources. This is a clear example of the im-

pact that changing land use practices can

have on estuaries.

The Chesapeake region has been oc-

cupied for thousands of years by a variety

of cultures who perceived and exploited

the environment in a diversity of ways.

These peoples have left us a remark-

able legacy, formed quite unintentionally

through the process of daily life. By de-

positing artifacts and food waste into the

ground, they created thousands of time

capsules that not only tell of their lives but

of the environment they inhabited. Through

the study of this archaeological record, and

the surviving historical accounts, it is pos-

sible to gain a unique insight into the ev-

olution of the Chesapeake. This paper

represents a first effort at synthesizing the

research findings of archaeologists and

historians to better understand how and

why the Chesapeake has changed. These

data sources have tremendous potential

for the development of the temporal per-

spective necessary to preserve and nurture

this magnificent estuary.

References Cited

1. Morgan, E. S. 1975. American Slavery-Ameri-

can Freedom. W. W. Norton & Co. New York.

2. Menard, R. 1984. Population, Economy, and

Society in Seventeenth Century Maryland.

Maryland Historical Magazine 79: 72; Wells, R.

V. 1975. The Population of the British Colonies

in America before 1776. Princeton.

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Century Chesapeake. Jefferson Patterson Park

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Craven, A. QO. 1926. Soil Exhaustion as a Factor

in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Mary-

land 1606—1860. University of Illinois Press; Hall,

A. R. 1937. Early Erosion Control Practices in

Virginia. U.S. Department of Agriculture Mis-

cellaneous Publication No. 256.

Earle 1975. “Tidewater Settlement System’’, 18.

Ibid, 26—27; Papenfuse 1972. “Planter Behav-

ior’, 305; Walsh, L. S. 1985. Land, Landlord,

and Leaseholder: Estate Management and Ten-

ant Fortunes in Southern Maryland 1642-1820,

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Hamor, R. 1957. A True Discourse of the Present

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Miller, H. M. 1984. Colonization and Subsist-

ence Change On the 17th Century Chesapeake

Frontier. Ph.D. Dissertation. Michigan State

University.

Personal Communication 1985: Matthew Emer-

son, University of California. Berkeley.

Glover, T. 1904. An Account of Virginia. Orig-

inal 1676. B. H. Blackwell. Oxford, 5.

Miller 1984. “Colonization and Subsistence

Change”.

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187

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in St. Mary’s City, Maryland Between 1640 and

1740. Report Submitted to the SeaGrant Pro-

gram, University of Maryland.

Miller, 1984. “‘Colonization and Subsistence

Change’.

Wharton, J. 1957. The Bounty of the Chesa-

peake. Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration

Corporation, 54—59.

Middleton, A. P. 1953. Tobacco Coast: A Mar-

itime History of the Chesapeake Bay in the Co-

lonial Era. The Johns Hopkins University Press,

Baltimore, 224.

Personal Communication 1981; Lorena S. Walsh.

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L. 1916. Report on the Journey of Francis Louis

Michel, 1701-1702. Virginia Magazine of History

and Biography, 24: 1-43.

Earle 1975. ‘“Tidewater Settlement System, 59;

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Stiverson, G. A. 1977. Poverty in a Land of

Plenty: Tenancy in Eighteenth Century Mary-

land. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Bal-

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Leaseholders’’.

Walsh 1985. ““Land, Landlords, and Leasehold-

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try. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Bal-

timore.

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on Navigation in Upper Chesapeake Bay. Geo-

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the Faunal Remains from the Tolle-Tabbs Site.

Manuscript on File, Historic St. Mary’s City.

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Archaeological Sites. Maryland Historical Trust.

Annapolis. In Press.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 3, Pages 188-198, September 1986

Chesapeake Fisheries and

Resource Stress in the 19th

Century

L. Eugene Cronin

12 Mayo Avenue, Bay Ridge, Annapolis, Maryland 21403

ABSTRACT

Chesapeake Bay contained large populations of fish, crabs, shellfish, and aquatic plants

at the beginning of the 19th century, although harvests were small. Vast spring runs of

anadromous fish were increasingly exploited to provide millions of pounds annually until

closing of rivers by dams, heavy predation by fishing, and perhaps pollution took their

toll. For oysters, the coincidence of the importation of deep-water dredges, development

of new technologies, high demand, and the discovery of large unknown beds resulted in

a new important industry and changed the ecology of the Bay. The effects of poor man-

agement were also discovered. Abundant blue crabs were caught and processed as new

methods were perfected and transportation became available. Waterfowl were harvested

for food and for sport in large numbers. The environment, which had been injured by

sediments from land, received growing quantities of human and industrial wastes, and the

first steps toward water pollution prevention were initiated.

The century provides dramatic and large-scale examples of discovery, innovations, ex-

ploitation, and decline in fisheries and of the dawning recognition of the needs for scientific

understanding, wise management, and the control of pollution.

The Beginning of the Century

As the century opened, the living re-

sources present in the tidal Chesapeake

Bay system were rich in variety and enor-

mous in quantity. Vast spring migratory

runs of shad, herring, and sturgeon en-

tered the Bay and moved to the tributaries

to spawn. Unmeasured but certainly mas-

sive populations of oysters, crabs, men-

haden and sea-sourced fish were present.

Clouds of waterfowl had been observed

since colonial days and their presence gives

evidence of abundant stands of aquatic

188

vegetation. The high diversity of fish, game,

and birds was noted in many reports. As

always, the stocks were certainly variable,

as noted in the accounts of George Wash-

ington and others.

The harvest at that time cannot be mea-

sured because there was no system or habit

of permanent recording. The scattered

records and occasional relevant writings

show, however, that the harvest was mod-

est, local, and highly seasonal. Only a few

fishing methods were available, those im-

ported by the immigrants or adapted from

native Indian practices. These included

19TH CENTURY FISHERIES AND RESOURCE STRESS 189

simple short tongs for shallow-water oys-

ters, small seines, wiers, and primitive fish

hooks. The largest harvest was from the

spring runs of fish. According to writings

of the period, crabs and oysters were not

highly esteemed, although oysters were

significant in the local tidewater diet

(Wharton 1957, Middleton 1953). Co-

lonial management by England had never

favored fisheries in the Maryland and Vir-

ginia colonies, which were expected to

produce tobacco while fishing was en-

couraged in New England. ‘“Good”’ salt

from Lisbon, Italy, and Cabo Verde was

prohibited for the Chesapeake colonies,

and only “weak” and inadequate salt from

Liverpool was permitted (Beitzell 1968,

Bayliff 1971). One of the results of lib-

eration was improvement in the preser-

vation of fish. By 1800, significant pro-

duction was only beginning.

From the perspective of modern knowl-

edge about the Chesapeake Bay system,

we can speculate with a degree of confi-

dence about the environment in the Bay

around 1800. All of the many habitats now

present were in the system (except for the

polluted ones). There was a wide variety

of depths and sediment types, the broad

seasonal swings in temperature and rain-

fall were similar to the present, the full

gradients from fresh water to marine sal-

inity existed with considerable variation,

and the physical circulation patterns were

not greatly different. Most of the same

species lived in or around the Bay, al-

though significant changes have occurred

from introductions and reductions or per-

haps extirpations. The populations of hu-

mans were relatively small, and included

about 350,000 in Maryland and 865,000 in

Virginia. Clusters of people were so small

that “city” is hardly an appropriate word.

Wastes were dumped freely into the near-

est waterway, where local effects probably

occurred.

The human population had, however,

achieved one change that had a substantial

effect on the estuary. Land had been rap-

idly and extensively cleared of trees in the

tidewater region, principally for the bare-

field culture of tobacco. Iron furnaces were

common, demanding mining of about three

tons of ore per day and 300 bushels of

charcoal to reduce it, causing additional

land clearing. These and other activities

resulted in massive surface erosion, faster

run-off of water, turbidity, filling of head-

water areas, larger chemical burdens to

the Bay, and eventual down-stream shifts

in the salinity patterns.

Still, the observed vast populations of

waterfowl and fish provide evidence that

they had not yet been destroyed by sedi-

ment, increased turbidity, or toxicants.

A Century of Harvesting the

Migratory Fish

Shad and several species of herring un-

dertook an anadromous migration from

the ocean to spawning grounds during about

six weeks of each spring. Gear were de-

veloped or adapted to harvest them while

they were crowded in the headwater and

tributary areas. Runs extended up the Sus-

quehanna into New York State, and at

least 40 fishing sites were regularly used

along the upper River from Northumber-

land to Towanda (McDonald 1887). In

other tributaries, the runs extended to the

fall line. In the upper Bay and Susque-

hanna River, large floats of logs were con-

structed and equipped with landing ramps

and processing houses (Wright 1967). These

were the foci for the operation of 10-15

long seines, which sometimes caught 600

barrels per haul, with 100 or more men

employed for each float. Fish were cut,

salted, placed in hogsheads and trans-

ported by wagons. Shad are described as

weighing 3—9 pounds, and as much as 13

(McDonald 1887).

The short-term employees on the floats

hardly present a romantic image of good

old days. They have been described as

wretched, scarcely clothed, and mostly

drunk—bringing up the rear of the human

race (Royall 1826). Farther up the Sus-

quehanna, near the Maryland-Pennsyl-

190 L. EUGENE CRONIN

vania line, one haul in 1827 is reported to

have yielded 100 wagon loads of fish, es-

timated to include 15,000,000 shad. A 1835

gazeteer published in Virginia stated that

22,500,000 shad and 750,000,000 herring

were caught per year in the Potomac River

(Bayliff 1971).

Changes were beginning. The first dams

in the Susquehanna, far upstream, were

built about 1830, and canals were built

that diverted a small portion of the river

flow. Perhaps the importation and devel-

opment of new fishing gear, permitting

unprecedented harvests from deeper and

more Open waters, was more important

(McDonald 1887). In 1835, gill nets were

the principal gear for fish. Pound nets,

blocking areas from shallow to moderately

deep water, were imported about 1858 from

New Jersey, and the revolutionary open-

water purse net was brought in from Long

Island in 1865. The fisheries were, how-

ever, still principally focused on the spring

and fall runs, although many new species

were taken by these additional tech-

niques.

From 1875 until the end of the century,

there was a phenomenal interest in the use

of hatcheries to augment stocks. Up to

10,000,000 shad fry were hatched and re-

leased each year and efforts were made to

hatch salmon, lake trout, European carp,

rock and even tench! (Ferguson and

Hughlett 1880). Mobile hatchery vessels

were created to move among the spawning

grounds to permit prompt hatching and

release, while other hatcheries were op-

erated at various sites on land. Even the

excellent zoologist W. K. Brooks was

caught up in the enthusiasm, and de-

scribed shad as ‘“‘a domesticated animal,”

for which “intelligence and knowledge of

nature .. . have enabled man to keep up

the supply by artificial means” (Brooks

1893, p. 239). It is useful to introduce a

later comment, based on extensive review

of shad fisheries and management in the

Chesapeake and elsewhere (Mansueti and

Kolb 1953, p. 85):

‘... the honest but mistaken feeling

toward hatcheries which seized not only

fishermen but biologists at the turn of —

the century, although even then the

premise should not have stood up under

more objective scrutiny.”

By 1880, there were 160 pound nets in

Virginia and two in Maryland, and 60

menhaden factories employed about 800

men (Goode et al. 1887). Shad, bluefish,

sea trout, menhaden, and mackerel were

important to the fisheries. Up to 14,000,000

pounds of shad were taken in the Susque-

hanna, where fisheries had been reduced

down-stream to the Columbia dam, about

40 miles above tidal waters. Gill nets were

‘still the most important gear, and hundreds

were fished each night in season in the

upper Bay and other tributary areas.

Twenty large seines, up toa mile in length,

were in use along with the attendant floats

or batteries near the mouth of the Sus-

quehanna. Some nets required 2% days

for emptying. The menhaden “‘swarming

our waters in countless myriads’ were

harvested for oil, fertilizer, and bait (Goode

et al. 1887). The rock or striped bass was

caught only in small quantities.

In the 1880s and 1890s, there was an

explosion of printed material of several

types on the fisheries of Chesapeake Bay

and other areas in the United States. They

included a major seven-volume survey and

description of the “Fisheries and Fisheries

Industries of the United States” by Goode

and many others for the U.S. Commission

of Fish and Fisheries, scientific summaries

(Brooks 1891, 1905; Bean 1883; Ryder

1890; etc.), popular summaries (Brooks

1893; Brooks and Knower 1893), federal

and state agency reports (Carroll 1880;

Ferguson and Hughlett 1880; etc.), and

illustrated newspaper accounts (Anon.

1873, 1874, 1882, 1883a and 1883b). It is

not possible to summarize these here, but

they describe vigorous and imaginative

fisheries, rapidly expanding the exploita-

tion of the Bay’s bounty. Figures 1—5 pres-

ent the available estimates of landings for

important finfish. In the 19th century, shad

catch increased dramatically (Fig. 1). The

take of rock or striped bass (Fig. 2) and

of croaker (Fig. 3) was small. Bluefish were

19TH CENTURY FISHERIES AND RESOURCE STRESS 191

HISTORICAL LANDINGS FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

(1880-1981) (Pounds)

17500000

15000000

12500000

10000000

7500000

5000000

2500000

Fig. 1. Available data on landings of shad, Alosa sapidissima, for Chesapeake Bay, 1880-1981.

HISTORICAL LANDINGS FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

(1880-1981) (Pounds)

Species——STRIPED BASS

nuUzCcCOUV r>7a0-

Fig. 2. Available data on landings of rock or striped bass, Morone striatus, for Chesapeake Bay, 1880-

1981.

192 L. EUGENE CRONIN

HISTORICAL LANDINGS FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

(1880-1981) (Pounds)

Species——CROAKER

Fig. 3. Available data on landings of croaker, Micropogon undulatus, for Chesapeake Bay, 1880-1981.

HISTORICAL LANDINGS FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

(1880-1981) (Pounds)

Species——BLUEFISH

S000000

4000000

3000000

2000000

ie)

1000000

Fig. 4. Available data on landings of bluefish, Pomotomus saltatrix, for Chesapeake Bay, 1880-1981.

19TH CENTURY FISHERIES AND RESOURCE STRESS 193

bee 0

300000000

400000000

300000000

200000000

1000000004 |

HISTORICAL LANDINGS FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

(1880-1981) (Pounds)

Species——MENHADEN

Fig. 5. Available data on landings of menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus, for Chesapeake Bay, 1880-1981.

harvested in significant numbers (Fig. 4),

and the capture of menhaden grew to

dominate the quantities of fish landed (Fig.

5). Later catches are beyond the scope of

this paper, but the perspective they pro-

vide on the 19th century patterns is im-

portant, so they are included. At the pres-

ent time, shad are so scarce from the

combined effects of over-fishing, dam-

ming of tributaries, and pollution that

Maryland has prohibited their capture since

1980. Rock or striped bass are under com-

plete moratorium in Maryland and se-

verely reduced harvest in Virginia.

The Sleeping Giant

The very abundant oyster, which had

been only locally utilized and sometimes

regarded as starvation food by the colo-

nists, was still harvested in relatively small

quantities in the early 19th century. Shal-

low beds furnished perhaps 500,000 bush-

els per year for local consumption (Bayliff

1971). Depletion of New England beds

drove opportunistic Connecticut oyster-

men to the Chesapeake, however—and

they brought their deep-water dredges.

New possibilities for both increased har-

vest and damage to beds immediately ap-

peared and Virginia (1820) and Maryland

(1830) outlawed the dredge. Maryland also

prohibited transportation of oysters by non-

Marylanders.

But the dredge remained, and a series

of triphammer events changed the econ-

omy of the region and the ecology of Ches-

apeake Bay. The Baltimore and Ohio

Railroad initiated service in 1828 and

opened new potentials for distribution

(Nichol 1937, Capper et al. 1983). Land

transport of fresh, pickled, and spiced oys-

ters was well established by 1836 (Nichol

1937). The discovery in 1840 of vast deep-

water stocks in Tangier Sound, available

only by dredging, encouraged a vigorous

frontier industry. In 1845, the ‘“‘cove”’ or

canned and processed oyster became fea-

194 L. EUGENE CRONIN

sible because a method was perfected for

hermetically sealing metal cans. Even the

California gold rush, with its demands for

portable canned goods for long voyages,

added new impetus. The Baltimore oyster

industry, greatest in the nation, handled

the following quantities of fresh, pickled,

and canned oysters (Nichol 1937):

1857 — 1,600,000 bushels

1865 — 4,000,000 bushels

1868 — 10,000,000 bushels

Dredging was legalized in 1865 and a

period of unprecedented activity and vio-

lence ensued. Over 900 dredges were li-

censedin Maryland by 1892-93. The hand-

winders for raising the heavy dredges

required many deck-hands and notorious

practices of human exploitation existed.

Wars developed at state boundaries and

when dredgers invaded tonging areas

(Wennersten 1981). Crisfield, Maryland,

the center of the Tangier Sound oystering,

was described as a “‘raw riotous commu-

nity with saloons and brothels filled with

lusty watermen.”’

Between 1836 and _ 1890, about

400,000,000 bushels of oysters were har-

vested in Maryland with virtually no effort

to protect brood stocks, avoid destruction

of small oysters, enhance reproduction, or

take other protective measures despite the

detailed analysis, warnings, and recom-

mendations of scientists and surveyors

(Winslow 1880, Brooks 1891, Brooks,

Waddell, and Legg 1884). Natural repro-

duction was no longer replacing the har-

vest (Brooks 1893, Stevenson 1894). Oys-

ter bars had been destroyed, enforcement

of laws and regulations was weak, and the

oyster wars were at their worst (Wenner-

sten 1891).

The human effects of the labor-inten-

sive dredge fishery for oysters were graph-

ically and sympathetically described in an

almost emotional summary on “oyster

dredgers” that appears unexpectedly in a

mostly prosaic volume on Maryland in-

dustrial statistics by Weeks in 1886. He

states:

“The oyster dredgers of Maryland are

the most ill-conditioned body of labor I

have met in the course of this inquiry.

It is labor that has no home, no money—

scarcely clothes. It is poor and beg-

gardly, exposed to cold and hardship

without restraint or protection of law.

... The man who has been dredging

oysters ‘down on the bay’ is a dilapi-

dated specimen. . . . he is never in so

good a condition as when subject to the

regulations of the Baltimore City jail.”

(p. 67)

Weeks’s interest and concern were

aroused. He describes the shanghating of

men by shipping agents at $2 a head as

labor for the handwinders on the deck of

the oyster boats, forced labor akin to slav-

ery, atrocious compensation if any, and

reported killing by “paying off with the

boom.” He developed a “‘synopsis of the

fatalities and injuries which came to the

public notice during the season of 1884—

85, including men abandoned with paral-

ysis, killings, drownings, frost-bite, jaw

fracture from the dredge handle, starva-

tion, swollen and wounded “oyster shell

hands,” injury from the jib-boom, and

freezing to death. He vigorously and spe-

cifically recommended humane reforms.

Toward the end of the century, declines

in the catch began (Fig. 6). Scientific rec-

ommendations for management were

largely ignored, although measures re-

quiring culling, use of shells to improve

the setting of young oysters, and other

partial corrections were adopted. Figure

6 shows the relationship of 19th century

extensive and intensive exploitation to the

subsequent declines. The early explosion

of tonging and dredging undoubtedly re-

moved accumulated stocks and it is im-

possible to make good estimates of the

maximum sustainable yield under wise

management and in a healthy environ-

ment. If, however, the harvest could have

been maintained near 70,000,000 pounds

19TH CENTURY FISHERIES AND RESOURCE STRESS 195

HISTORICAL LANDINGS FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

(1880-1981) (Pounds)

Species——OYSTERS

120000000

110000000

100000000

90000000

80000000

70000000

60000000

50000000

40000000

30000000

20000000

10000000

Fig. 6. Available data on landings of oyster, Crassostrea virginica, for Chesapeake Bay, 1880-1981.

per year (ca. 7,000,000 bushels for Mary-

land and Virginia combined), over

250,000,000 additional pounds of oysters

would have provided food and economic

benefit. At present prices for comparison,

this is equivalent to at least $1,000 ,000,000

at the market, lost to our failures.

The sleeping giant was, in one century,

discovered, overexploited, and on the path

to drastic decline. The longer history has

been ably summarized by Kennedy and

Breisch (1983).

Crabs in Indescribable Abundance

The blue crab had been used only for

local consumption, and that practice was

continued through most of the 19th cen-

tury. In 1873, however, the extension of

a rail line to Crisfield, Maryland, near the

great areas of marsh and aquatic vegeta-

tion where growing crabs concentrate to

shed their shells in protection and become

soft-shell crabs, stimulated the growth of

anew industry. Crabs could now be caught

in quantity by dipping, shed on floats,

packed in ice and shipped widely—at prices

like 1¢ apiece, 10¢ per dozen. In 1878, the

business of catching hard shelled crabs by

trotline and cooking, picking, canning and

shipping the meat was begun in Hampton,

Virginia (Van Engel 1962). The distin-

guished zoologist W. K. Brooks, who con-

tributed much new knowledge (and some

errors) about the blue crab, noted that

they were to be found in “indescribable

abundance.”’ He considered questions of

possible conservation measures, and pre-

dicted growing use of the resource (Brooks

1893). Figure 7 displays the increasing but

small harvest from 1880-1900, and shows

the later growth of the catch to a position

of world dominance.

196 L. EUGENE CRONIN

HISTORICAL LANDINGS FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

(1880-1981) (Pounds)

Species——CRABS

100000000

90000000

80000000

70000000

60000000

50000000

40000000

30000000

20000000

10000000

Fig. 7. Available data on landings of blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, for Chesapeake Bay, 1880-1981.

Millionous Multitudes of Waterfowl

Annual flights of migratory ducks and

geese, which had been described in these

exuberant terms by George Alsop in 1666,

continued to return each autumn to the

Chesapeake Bay, focus of the Atlantic

Flyway of North America. Hunting for both

recreation and profit flourished, especially

on the rich grassy shoals known as the

Susquehanna Flats at the head of the Bay.

There, 4000-5000 birds per day are re-

ported to have been harvested (Bayliff

1971). John James Audubon noted in 1840:

“The Chesapeake Bay with its tributary

streams, has from its discovery, been

known as the greatest resort of water-

fowl in the United States. This has de-

pended upon the profusion of their food,

which is accessible on the immense flats

or shoals that are found near the mouth

of the Susquehanna, along the entire

length of the North-East and Elk Riv-

ers, and on the shores of the bay and

connecting streams as far south as York

and James Rivers.’ (Audubon and

Chevalier 1840-1844, cited through

Meanley 1982, p. 171).

Ingenuity was applied to the practices

known as ‘“‘gunning,” and wooden decoys,

bushwhack rigs, blinds, sink-boxes, re-

triever dogs, and other tools were expertly

applied. One estimate is that about 40,000

decoys were in use on the 25,000 acres of

the Flats at the peak of ducking (Mc-

Kinney 1978). Detailed data are scarce,

but perhaps there was a perception by the

end of the century that intensive harvest-

ing was affecting the populations of birds,

leading to the national outlawing of com-

mercial wildfowl hunting in 1919.

The Quality of the Waters

Water quality was not examined during

the 19th century by any methods that per-

mit comparisons with modern data. Early

concern was limited to sediments and

19TH CENTURY FISHERIES AND RESOURCE STRESS 197

wastes that might fill channels and to highly

localized threats to aesthetics and health

from wastes and offal. The human popu-

lations of Maryland and Virginia approx-

imately tripled during the century, so that

the direct release of human and industrial

waste into waterways, the usual proce-

dure, increased substantially, but there ‘are

no adequate records. An excellent ac-

count of changes in pollution and its man-

agement appears in ““Chesapeake Waters—

Pollution, Public Health and Public Opin-

ion” by Capper, Power, and Shivers (1983),

and a brief summary is pertinent.

Wastes were normally carried into

waterways, usually without treatment, and

the capacity of the tidal waters seemed to

be infinite. Locally, obnoxious conditions

existed. In Baltimore, 15,000 households

poured wastes into the central creek known

as Jones Falls, and gave Baltimore a po-

sition “‘among the greatest stenches in the

world.”’ Washington was not sewered until

1889, and then only for the transmission

of wastes and run-off, not for treatment.

Agricultural run-off, industrial wastes, and

pollution from coal mining and other ac-

tivities added to the burden.

Several dramatic events very late in the

19th century created new concern and pro-

voked action. Yellow fever, malaria, and

cholera were common and sometimes ep-

idemic. Although water had long been

recognized as a potential source of dis-

ease, the germ theory of transmission and

cause was not established until just before

the turn of the century—and then amid

controversy and reluctance. In 1893, stu-

dents in Connecticut contracted typhoid

fever from eating oysters, establishing them

as a vector and providing the basis for use

of sewage treatment plants to protect

coastal waters (Capper et al. 1983). The

oyster was to become the most potent sin-

gle stimulus for the control of domestic

pollution around the Chesapeake (Cronin

1982). It is widespread, accumulates pol-

lutants, is eaten raw, has high economic

importance and has had remarkable po-

litical clout. Capper et al. note “Virtually

all significant issues over (water) quality

have had the welfare of the oyster and the

oysterman as a central concern” (1983, p.

77). The 19th century efforts in pollution

control were limited, however, to the rec-

ognition of dangers to human health and

the first effective planning of treatment

plants. Concern for the effects of pollu-

tants on the abundance and welfare of

aquatic species or on the health of the eco-

system had not yet affected public policy

or practice.

The Nineteenth Century

This was an exciting period in the his-

tory of Chesapeake Bay fisheries and the

stresses placed upon them. It was dramatic

in the discoveries of unknown resources;

innovative and inventive use of new meth-

ods of harvesting, processing, and distri-

bution; large-scale exploitation; excessive

harvests; growing pollution; and the be-

ginnings of scientific knowledge of the

fisheries and improved management. It

was a century replete with lessons for the

future.

References Cited

Anon. 1873. The oyster trade of Baltimore. Frank

Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. October 11, 1873,

p. 73. (illustrated)

Anon. 1874. A glimpse of the Baltimore oyster trade.

The Daily Graphic, Vol. IV, No. 350, p. 1. (illus-

trated)

Anon. 1882. Something about oysters. Harper’s

Weekly, Vol. XXVI, No. 1343, p. 582. (illustrated)

Anon. 1883a. Poached oysters. Harper’s Weekly, Vol.

XXVIII, No. 1414, p. 138. (illustrated)

Anon. 1883b. Crabbing on Chesapeake Bay. Frank

Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Sept. 15, 1883, p.

54. (illustrated)

Audubon, J. J. and Chevalier, J. B. 1840-1844. Birds

of America. 7 vols. Published by the authors. Phil-

adelphia Pa.

Bayliff, W. H. 1971. Natural Resources. Jn The Old

Line State—A History of Maryland. M. L. Ra-

doff, Ed., Publ. No. 16. Hall of Records Comm.

Annapolis. 498 p. pp. 267-307.

Bean, B. A. 1891. Fishes collected by William P.

Seal in Chesapeake Bay, at Cape Charles City,

Virginia, September 16 to October 3, 1890. Proc.

U.S. Natl. Mus., Vol. XIV, 1891, pp. 83-94.

Washington.

198 L. EUGENE CRONIN

Beitzell, E. W. 1968. Life on the Potomac River. E.

W. Beitzell, Abell, Md. 231 p.

Brooks, W. K. 1891. The Oyster—A popular sum-

mary of a scientific study. The Johns Hopkins Press,

Baltimore.

Brooks, W. K. 1893. Fish and Fisheries. Jn Mary-

land—Its Resources, Industries and Institutions.

Board of World’s Fair Managers of Maryland. 504

p. pp. 239-263.

Brooks, W. K. 1905. The Oyster—A popular sum-

mary of a scientific study. The Johns Hopkins Press,

Baltimore. 225 p. (revised and expanded)

Brooks, W. K. and H. McE. Knower. 1893. The

Oyster. Jn Maryland—Its Resources, Industries

and Institutions. Board of World’s Fair Managers

of Maryland. 504 p. pp. 264-312.

Brooks, W. K., J. I. Waddell and W. H. Legg. 1884.

Report of the Oyster Commission to the State of

Maryland. James Young, Annapolis, Md. 183 p.

Capper, J., G. Power and F. R. Shivers, Jr. 1983.

Chesapeake Waters—Pollution, Public Health &

Public Opinion, 1607-1972. Tidewater Publishers,

Centreville, Md. 201 p.

Carroll, J. L. 1880. Message of John Lee Carroll,

Governor of Maryland, to the General Assembly

at its Regular Session, January 1880. Wm. T. Ig-

lehart & Co., Annapolis, Md.

Cronin, L. E. 1982. The Chesapeake Bay—Produc-

tive? Polluted? Planned? Internat. Symp. on Util.

of Coastal Systems—Planning, Pollution and Pro-

ductivity. Rio Grande, RS, Brazil. Ches. Res.

Consort. Publ. No. 112.

Ferguson, T. B. and T. Hughlett. 1880. Report of

the Commissioners of Fisheries of Maryland. Jn

Carroll 1880. 78 p.

Goode, G. B. and Associates. 1887. The Fisheries

and Fisheries Industries of the United States. Sect.

V. History and methods of the fisheries, Vol. I.

U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries. U.S. Gov.

Printing Office. 808 p.

Kennedy, V. S. and L. L. Breisch. 1983. Sixteen

decades of political management of the oyster fish-

ery in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. Jour. of Env.

Met. 16, 153-171.

Mansueti, R. J. and H. Kolb. 1953. A Historical

Review of the Shad Fisheries of North America.

Publ. No. 97, Ches. Biol. Lab., Md. Dept. Re-

search and Education. 293 p.

McDonald, M. 1887. The fisheries of Chesapeake

Bay and its tributaries. Jn G. B. Goode and As-

sociates. The Fisheries Ind. of the United States.

pp. 637-654.

McKinney, J. E. 1978. Decoys of the Susquehanna

Flats and Their Makers. The Holly Press. Hock-

essin, DE. 96 p.

Meanley, B. 1982. Waterfowl of the Chesapeake Bay

Country. Tidewater Publishers, Cambridge, MD.

210 p.

Middleton, A. P. 1953. Tobacco Coast—A Maritime

History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era.

The Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, VA 482

Nichol, A. J. 1937. The oyster-packing industry of

Baltimore—Is history and current problems. Contr.

11, Ches. Biol. Lab. 32 p.

Royall, A. 1826. Sketches of the History, Life and

Manners in the United States. New Haven, Conn.

Ryder, J. A. 1890. The. sturgeons and sturgeon in-

dustries of the United States, with an account of

experiments bearing upon sturgeon culture. Bull.,

U.S. Fish Comm., Vol. VIII, 1888 (1890), pp.

231-328. Washington.

Stevenson, C. H. 1894. The oyster industry of Mary-

land. Bull. U.S. Fish Commission for 1892. pp.

205-297.

Van Engel, W. A. 1962. The blue crab and its fishery

in Chesapeake Bay. Comm. Fish. Rev. 24:9. 10

Weeks, T. C. 1886. First Biennial Report of the Bu-

reau of Industrial Statistics and Information of

Maryland. 1884-1885. State of Maryland. 249 p.

plus appendix.

Wennersten, J. R. 1981. The Oyster Wars of Ches-

apeake Bay. Tidewater Publishers, Centreville,

Md. 147 p.

Wharton, J. 1957. The Bounty of the Chesapeake—

Fishing in Colonial Virginia. University Press of

Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 78 p.

Winslow, F. 1880. Investigations of the oyster beds

in Tangier and Pocomoke Sounds and parts of the

Chesapeake Bay, conducted during portions of

the years 1878 and 1879. Part I, 1878, p. 105-158.

Part II, 1879, p. 159-219. Jn Carroll 1880.

Wright, C, M. 1967. Our Hartford Heritage—A his-

tory of Hartford County, Maryland. C. M. Wright,

Bel Air, Md. 460 p.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 3, Pages 199-213, September 1986

“The Worst Oyster Season [ve

Ever Seen”: Collecting and

Interpreting Data from Watermen

Paula J. Johnson

Calvert Marine Museum, Solomons, Maryland 20688

ABSTRACT

Chesapeake watermen, by virtue of their central role in the commercial fisheries, are

a source for information about the Bay, past and present. Their knowledge of seafood

resources, cycles and trends is gained through years of continuous observation and work

experience. Watermen keep track of their observations in different ways; a few keep

detailed written records while most recall the past through oral narratives. Both types of

data are presented: written sources include excerpts from journals of a party-boat captain

and the detailed monitoring system developed by a pound net fisherman. Oral sources

consist of watermen’s personal experience narratives collected through ethnographic field-

work in southern Maryland communities. Various limitations, strengths, and the reliability

of oral testimony are discussed. In interpreting such data it is possible to glean information

about the Bay, but interpretations should not overlook the fact that narratives also reveal

much about the watermen and the human response to specific environmental conditions

in the past.

A couple of years ago, before the an-

nouncement of the rockfish ban in Mary-

land, the president of the Maryland

Watermen’s Association, Larry Simns, was

musing about the future of his constitu-

ency. His comments were duly recorded

in the organization’s official newsletter, The

Waterman's Gazette, and read in part: “The

waterman who fishes for a living is an en-

dangered species in Maryland, and if we

lose him, we’ll lose more than anyone seems

to realize. What we’ll lose is generations

of knowledge about the fish, because the

fisherman knows and cares about the fish

like no one else . . . Commercial fisher-

men are out on the Bay all year round and

they’re the first to see any changes or deg-

199

radation . . . Lots of people would like to

see the waterman disappear entirely, but

the waterman is the watchdog of the Bay.

He’s out there when no one else is, and

he can see the degradation of the water.”’’

By now this sort of rhetoric is almost

commonplace as the controversy and de- .

bate continue over how the Chesapeake’s

fisheries can be restored. Yet such dec-

larations ought not to be dismissed as sim-

ply self-serving, for they do point to a val-

uable source for information about the Bay,

'Joe Valiant, ““Commercial fishermen fighting ex-

tinction’, The Waterman’s Gazette Vol. 11, No. 4

(1983): 4-5.

200 PAULA J. JOHNSON

past and present, that is largely un-

tapped—Chesapeake watermen. This pa-

per will discuss the range of records, both

written and verbal, that are kept by water-

men, focusing on the types of information

that can be discovered through these

sources. It will also evaluate the strengths

and weaknesses of such data.

Although I am certain such information

can be found all over the Bay region, my

focus will be on materials in the collections

of the Calvert Marine Museum in Solo-

mons. The museum is continually on the

lookout for any historical information about

watermen and their work, whether it be

old photographs or written documents, old

gear catalogues, artifacts, and the like. All

too often we learn about the existence of

records, such as those kept by pound net

fishermen at Flag Pond in Calvert County

from about 1919 to 1955, only to find that

someone—in this case, one of the fisher-

man’s wives—deemed them unimpor-

tant, a nuisance, and had tossed them

away.”

One fisherman’s records saved from the

trash heap were those kept by the late

Captain Al Seigel, who had been a party

boat captain for thirty-some years. He lived

in Washington, D.C., but kept his boat in

Southern Maryland, taking parties out of

ports such as Solomons, Smith Creek, and

Breezy Point. Seigel’s journals consist of

three volumes covering the years 1943 to

1960 and chronicle nine hundred and fifty-

seven separate fishing trips. His early

journal entries are very brief, consisting

*The Calvert Marine Museum’s archives contain

numerous historical records pertaining to the com-

mercial seafood industries, including business rec-

ords from J. C. Lore & Sons Oyster House in Sol-

omons; the Sollers & Dowell Company on St.

Leonard’s Creek; the F & H Benning Company in

Galesville; and the Warren Denton Company in

Broome’s Island. These documents provide infor-

mation about the extent of oyster harvesting and

processing in specific areas and are therefore quite

useful. This paper, however, will address only those

records kept by individual watermen.

of the bare minimum of information, such

as:

Sunday, June 21st 1943

Fished Tall Timber

trolled rock pile for rock fish

None 00

22 H head

It wasn’t long before Seigel began record-

ing a great deal of detail about his fishing

activities. Fifteen entries later he wrote:

Wed. Sept. Ist

Started early morning trolling: light

westerly breeze—then dead calm. Plenty

gulls. Fished around Breezy Point,

caught Rock & Blues. Stilled [sic] fished

afternoon on stiff southerly wind: not

much doing: fished around Cedar Pt.

Trolling—caught 68 Rock

26 Blue

1 Bonito ©

3 Trouts

12 Spots

Total 107

An entry three years later reads:

Wednesday, Dec. 11th, 1946

Left Smith Cr. 8 o’clock a.m. and headed

for Smith Pt. Very Foggy. Lifted around

1 p.m. Saw gulls dipping started troll-

ing. Caught 61 rock from 3 to 17 Ibs.

(21 of them from 7 to 17 lbs.) Very beau-

tiful day. Best catch of the season.

Clearly, Seigel recorded a wealth of in-

formation. He developed a format that he

followed in recording weather conditions,

specific areas he fished, the date and usu-

ally the time when fish were caught, the

species of fish, method of fishing (whether

trolling, still fishing, or chumming), the

bait or lures used, and often the names of

people in his party. At the end of each

year he tallied the numbers and types of

fish caught. Forexample, in 1944, he caught

894 spot; 1,197 pan rock; 690 trout; 369

large rock; and 368 hardheads for a total

of 3,518 fish.

Seigel was a serious fisherman and

NARRATIVES OF WATERMEN 201

Fig. 1. Sample page from waterman Tom Courtney’s journal. (Photo courtesy of Calvert Marine Museum.)

wanted to know as much as possible about

where the fish were likely to be and why

so that he could utilize that knowledge.

Therefore he attempted to explain the re-

sults of his fishing trips by analyzing what

he saw. For example:

Thurs. Aug. 7, 1947: Left the wharf at

Solomons 12:45 and headed for Cedar

Pt.—then the ““Hollow’—fished about

an hour then decided to fish below Cove

Pt.—On our way to Cove Pt. saw schools

of porpoises—you know the rest—for

where there are porpoises there is no

fishing ... ““Where there’s porpoises

there is no purpose.”’

At the end of his entry for Saturday, Oct.

4, 1947, a day when he and his party caught

94 trout and 6 blues, Seigel added a note:

“Spots seem to have left this vicinity right

after the first cold snap. Last season was

the same.” And late in October that same

year he tried to explain the habits of rock-

fish:

Thurs. Nov. 27th Thanksgiving: Started

from Wynne’s wharf after 9 a.m. Going

over the same grounds as the day pre-

vious. Did not locate any birds till late

in the afternoon, and the fish seem to

have dropped off. It seems to be the

opinion that the rock fish are feeding

during bright moonlight nights. Full

moon. Total 12 rock, 1% to 3 lbs.

Seigel’s journals provide a fine record

of one man’s experience, one man’s ob-

servations of general trends in the Bay over

a seventeen-year period. Because he tended

to record the same categories of infor-

mation for each trip, comparisons be-

tween one year and the next can be made.

Seigel used his journals for comparative

purposes himself, as there is an occasional

reference to a previous year, a previous

trip. Although I do not know how typical

202 PAULA J. JOHNSON

Seigel was of party-boat captains, I sus-

pect other journals lie gathering dust in

attics, garages, and boat houses through-

out the Bay region.

Another record-keeper I have come

across is Tom Courtney, a pound net fish-

erman from Ridge in St. Mary’s County.

Courtney sets and maintains three pound

nets in the Potomac River, doing most of

the work himself, although he is occasion-

ally assisted by a mate on the water and

by his father, also a waterman, on land.

Courtney, by any standard, is an extraor-

dinary waterman. He began keeping a

journal in 1969, in order to keep track of

certain information required by the Po-

tomac River Fisheries Commission. In

1974, however, his journal became more

detailed, as he began recording data he

wanted to keep track of himself.

Courtney’s current journal is a spiral

notebook marked ‘“‘FISH 1985’’. Inside he

has painstakingly drawn a series of lines

to mark categories of information. For the

week of September 8-14, for example, he

was keeping track of thirty-five different

items, although earlier in the year his jour-

nal contained more columns, reflecting the

greater variety of fish he harvested in spring

and early summer. The thirty-five col-

umns in September, however, recorded the

following:

1. Number of bushels of crabs harvested

in his crab pots

2. Number of peelers harvested in crab

pots

3. Number of crab pots fished

4. Percentage of male crabs harvested

5. Pounds of menhaden harvested in

pound nets

6. Pounds of trout harvested in pound

nets

7. Pounds of bluefish harvested in pound

nets

8. Pounds of spot harvested in pound nets

9. Pounds of croaker harvested in pound

nets

10. Pounds of flounder harvested in pound

nets

11. Pounds of black drum harvested in

pound nets

12. Pounds of sea bass harvested in pound

nets

13. Number of bushels of baitfish har-

vested from Point Lookout net

14. Number of bushels of baitfish har-

vested from Cornfield Harbor net

15. Number of bushels of baitfish har-

vested from Jones’ Shore net

16. Number of bushels of crabs harvested

in pound nets (distinct from his crab-

potting operation)

17. Number of peelers harvested in pound

nets

18. Number of small rockfish released

19. Number of large rockfish released

20-21. Columns devoted to two regular

buyers of bait fish. Invoice num-

bers are recorded so that Court-

ney can tally the total number and

cost of fish sold to them.

22. Total pounds of food fish harvested

23. Number of bushels of bait harvested

(total of #13-15) :

24. Number of bushels of freezer bait (This

is bait he stores in a freezer; keeping

track of this figure allows him to cal-

culate the cost of electricity he uses

for his bait business.)

25. Number of bushels of bait already in

freezer (an inventory control mea-

sure)

26. “ST’’, or the number of sea turtles

found in his nets

27. Weight of each sea turtle found (sea

turtles are released)

28. “JF’’, or jelly fish; (Courtney records

the abundance of jelly fish on a scale

of one to ten, with one being “‘just a

few,” and two “‘starting to be a nuis-

ance.” Ten is “the maximum nuis-

AMCes. )

29. Wave height (average)

30. Wind speed

31. “Sky”, or the percentage of cloud cover

32. ‘“T’’, or air temperature range

33. ““W DR”, or wind direction

34. Tide (a visual observation, not a mea-

surement; a typical entry is “+.5”,

NARRATIVES OF WATERMEN 203

indicating that the tide was one-half

foot above normal)

35. Water clarity/turbidity (the depth at

which Courtney can see 3-inch letter

clearly)

In addition to these columns of infor-

mation Courtney notes when there is a full

moon or a new moon, as well as when he

notices certain life forms, such as barna-

cles and osprey, appearing for the first time

each year. And before the fishing season

begins, he keeps track of when he accom-

plishes certain tasks having to do with set-

ting his nets and readying his rig. For ex-

ample, February and March contain entries

such as: “Drove 21 poles,” “‘tar nets,” or

“copper nets.”

In the face of these meticulously-kept

and highly-informative records of what

Courtney sees and what he does, several

questions come to mind: Why does Court-

ney bother? Does he actually use this in-

formation? How typical of his occupa-

tional group is he? Are there two hundred

more like him strategically located on all

the major tributaries and creeks of the

Chesapeake?

Courtney, like Seigel, is primarily mo-

tivated by economic concerns: he moni-

tors the water and keeps these records be-

cause he needs to know about the

environment upon which he depends for

his living. Yet Courtney’s monitoring ac-

tivities reflect a broader concern with the

resources, not just as fish to be caught but

as components of a natural system he wishes

to understand. This perspective is likely

an outgrowth of his years as a student at

St. Mary’s College, where he earned a

bachelor’s degree in biology in 1974, the

same year he began keeping records be-

yond those required by the Potomac River

Fisheries Commission. Courtney uses his

records, frequently referring to them for

information that will help him by telling

him such things as when he can expect the

first run of alewives, whether he is behind

or ahead of where he was the previous

year, or when in the past the harvests of

a certain species was equally low. Court-

ney is not typical in that very few, if any,

other watermen monitor the water and keep

track of their observations as he does. He

thought that other watermen might keep

records of some sort but figured they would

be reluctant to show them to anyone for

fear of getting caught by the IRS for failing

to report their true income.

Courtney and Seigel, then, represent one

end of the spectrum, where a few individ-

uals, for highly personal reasons, take the

time to formally record what they see. They

are in a distinct minority, yet they do exist

and their written records provide valuable

documentation of the Bay through time.

Most other watermen, however, are at the

other end of the spectrum. They also keep

track of their observations but not in such

a permanent form. More typical is Harry

Huseman of Town Creek on the Patuxent,

who says of his forty-year-experience on

the water: “‘I done learned a lot, but also

forgot a lot. I never write anything down.

Like areas where you work, you have

marks, but I keep them all up here [in his

head].’’> Huseman and other watermen in

a sense “‘record”’ their experiences often

by constructing oral narratives, or stories,

which is the way most of us order our pasts.

Humanities scholars such as folklorist

and linguist Dell Hymes have studied the

use of narratives to explore and convey

knowledge. He writes: ‘““We tend to de-

preciate narrative as a form of knowledge,

and personal narrative particularly, in

contrast to other forms of discourse con-

sidered scholarly, scientific, technical or

the like. This seems to me to be part of a

Interview with Harry Huseman, 1981. PRP-PKR16-

467. Tape citations in this paper refer to the folklife

collection at the Calvert Marine Museum. The des-

ignation ““PRP” indicates “‘Patuxent River Project,”

the initials following, either “PJ” or ““PK”’, refer to

the primary interviewer, Paula Johnson or Peter

Kurtze, ““R16” indicates that the tape is the 16th reel

by the interviewer, and the last number is the lo-

cation of the quotation on the tape recording and

transcript.

204 PAULA J. JOHNSON

Fig. 2. Tom Courtney fishing one of his pound nets in the Potomac River, 1982. (Calvert Marine Museum

photograph by Peter Kurtze.)

general predisposition in our culture to di-

chotomize forms and functions of lan-

guage use, and to treat one side of the

dichotomy as superior, the other side as

something to be disdained, discouraged,

diagnosed as evidence or cause of subor-

dinate status.”* I would agree that there

is a certain disregard for what can be called

‘narrative forms of evidence,” on the per-

vasive belief that mere anecdotes are not

worthy of serious attention. Yet for cer-

tain topics, such as the one at hand, nar-

ratives of watermen and other “un-

trained” observers are often the only form

in which the data—the evidence—exists.

Collecting is therefore a priority.

In 1981 the Calvert Marine Museum un-

dertook a major ethnographic research and

documentation project that involved con-

ducting tape-recorded interviews with Pa-

“Courtney Cazden and Dell Hymes, ‘Narrative

thinking and story-telling rights,” Keystone Folklore

Vol. 22 (1978): 21-35.

tuxent River watermen, packing-house

workers, boatbuilders, and lifelong resi-

dents of the region.° A wide range of in-

formation is contained in the resulting ma-

terials, including descriptions of gear and

occupational know-how, _ traditional

weather and fishing lore, beliefs and su-

*The Patuxent River Folklife & Oral History Proj-

ect was funded by the National Endowment for the

Humanities. Its goal was to collect information about

the Patuxent’s fisheries for use in developing new

exhibits, publications, and public programs at the

museum. A team of humanities scholars representing

the fields of history, folklore, and rural sociology set

about collecting the “oral record,’ or the memories

and recollections of individuals who have worked (or

who are still working) on the water or in the local

packing houses. The formal project lasted a year,

however the collecting of oral history continued for

the next three years. The resulting materials—over

100 hours of tape-recorded interviews with eighty

individuals, transcriptions of the interviews, 7000 black

and white negatives and as many color transparen-

cies, plus hundreds of pages of written notes—are

housed in the museum’s archives and have been used

in exhibits, publications, and educational programs.

NARRATIVES OF WATERMEN

perstitions, and opinions about the water

business.° But what is of interest here are

descriptive data, watermen’s observations

and descriptions of the Bay or Patuxent

at various points in the past. The inter-

views contain a fair sampling of this de-

scriptive material since the project coin-

cided with the announcement of the

Patuxent River “revitalization plan” in

1982, an issue that was at the forefront of

many people’s minds in Southern Mary-

land at the time.’ Mention of this plan

during the interviews often served as a

springboard for discussion of the river in

the past (as experienced and observed by

the waterman) compared with what that

waterman was experiencing and observing

at the moment.

For example, a story told by Preston

Lore, who was born in 1893 and lived near

Solomons until his death in 1983, reveals

the abundance of hard crabs at the turn

of the century. Lore framed his comments

about hard crabs by describing the ingre-

dients for a family picnic:

The boys and girls would go out and

gonna have supper out on the river, we

wouldn’t carry a darn thing but the bread,

vinegar, pepper and salt, probably some

beer. It was always my job to catch crabs

while somebody was getting up the wood

and building the fire. And we always

had two or three boilers, large boilers,

and we filled them up with crabs. All

you had to do was shove up and down

the shore a little bit and there they were.®

*Several fine works using this kind of information

have been produced and are, in themselves, excellent

resources. See William Warner, Beautiful Swimmers:

Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay (Boston:

Little, Brown and Co., 1976); George G. Carey, A

Faraway Time and Place (Washington and New York:

Robert B. Luce, Inc., 1971); Larry S. Chowning,

Barcat Skipper: Tales of a Tangier Island Waterman

(Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1983).

*See Draft 208 Water Quality Management Plan for

the Patuxent River Basin Maryland Department of

Health and Mental Hygiene (1982).

‘Interview with Preston Lore, 1981. PRP-PKR1.528.

205

Joseph Gross of Dowell described the

former abundance of soft crabs in the Pa-

tuxent:

It was two, three hundred head [people

soft crabbing in the 1930s]. There were

plenty crabs, they would crab around

the shore ’cause they’d catch all they

wanted. I caught as high as 400 crabs a

mornin’. Actually, it was so many, I used

to crab a place over here called Hun-

gerford’s Creek . . . A fella was buildin’

boats by the name of Kennedy Grover.

He had different prices on different

boats, you know, [and] he had one there

for $18 . . . I caught enough peelers in

two days to buy that skiff . . . peelers

then were 12 cents a dozen (meaning

that he caught 1800 peelers in just two

days).?

Bill Dixon of Town Creek spoke about

how remarkable oyster growth used to be

in the Patuxent:

I can remember when the four German

ships were tied up over here . . . four

interned German ocean liners. . . I can

remember when the winter froze up,

can’t recall the exact year but we had

an awful freeze there in the late ’30s,

we put a mast in a sixteen-foot rowboat,

put in overboard on the river, and we

rowed over there and we patent tonged

in a rowboat underneath the stern of

these German oceanliners. We sold em

and that was the most I ever got for

oysters, that was 95 cents a bushel. That

was an experience because of the heavy

ice. I was nothing but a kid, so to speak,

they (other watermen) all passedon.. .

We had three or four boats. But that

happened, them boats stayed there, there

was a lot of oysters around them and I

forget how many, it’s documented how

many thousands of bushels of oysters

they scraped off the bottom of them when

‘Interview with Joseph Gross, 1982. PRP-

PKR45.382.

206

they put ’em in drydock in Baltimore in

the early part of World War II."

Joe Scrivener, a younger man from St.

Mary’s County, described the first time he

set a gill net:

The first time I ever set a net I set a

little piece of net about 500 feet long

and the next day I had 600 pounds of

rock in it, 600 and some pounds. And

you just can’t imagine pulling a net up

and looking down and seeing fish hang-

ing out of it. And I can still remember

to this day and that was ten years ago

and I guess that’s what really got me

hooked on it because I’ve fished every

year since then and I’ve never caught

any fish like I did then. I might catch 3

or 4 hundred pounds out of 6 or 7 days.

That first year I started doing it you

know I’ve set like 4 or 5 nets and I would

catch like 2500 pounds of rock a night.

That was hard to believe. Now I can’t

go down and set 15 nets and catch 100

pounds of fish."

People at Broome’s Island tell a cycle

of stories concerning the abundance of

hardheads (croaker) in the Patuxent River

in the early 1950s. This, more than any

other event in the region, is remembered

and kept alive through oral narratives. I

first heard of the tremendous run of hard-

heads from Clarence Sewell as we talked

in his marine supply store at Broome’s Is-

land where I noticed a faded photograph

of a beached shark, hung prominently near

the door. When asked about the picture

Sewell replied: “Claude Mister caught that

shark when they were haul seining right

out the mouth of the river. Now that shark

weighed about 400 pounds and was eight

feet long. He found that thing in the haul

seine and brought it on home—towed it

all the way up the river from Solomons.”

The vessels Dixon mentions were four German

ocean liners seized by the United States in 1917 and

interned in the lower Patuxent fro 1927 to 1940. In-

terview with William Dixon, 1981. PRP-PKR19.045.

"Interview with Joe Scrivener, 1982. PRP-

PIRZO131),

PAULA J. JOHNSON

That image—of a man discovering a huge

shark in his net and rigging up a way to

tow it home so that everyone could marvel

at it and, I suspect, so that he could prove

this was no fish story—that image was the

first of many describing the “strike of

hardheads” and what that incredible run

of fish meant to the community of Broome’s

Island. |

H. C. “Duck” Elliott, another Broome’s

Islander, remembered that one load of

hardheads took a full three days—72

hours—to get out of the net. The net was

staked off in such a way that only a portion

of the catch was removed at one time. One

fisherman had to stand in the water up to

his waist, keeping an eye on the net as it

was being continually staked off and emp-

tied. Elliott remembered handing that

fisherman his meals—four of them—over-

board so that he could continue monitor-

ing the net throughout the 72-hour fishing

process.

Elliott added another perspective by re-

vealing what he personally found most ex-

citing about that type of fishing:

It was a lot of work but you enjoyed it

because you caught so many species of

fish, you never knew what you were going

to have in there when you laid it out

and brought it back ashore. It was in-

teresting. Now and then we’d catch a

shark or two and excite everybody...

Sometimes the nets would be solid full

of skates .. . We made a haul on the

Bay that time, right around a bunch of

rock and pilings. All hung up in rock

and trees and Cleve [a crew member]

and I were divin’ down to the bottom

to clear the net up ‘til we get ashore and

after we got it all cleared up and ashore,

had all these rock and a bunch of skates

in there. Cleve got stung [by the skate],

like to lost his leg. He howled so loud

it echoed all down the river. He still has

trouble with his leg today, yessir. It’s

been a long time ago, that leg still both-

ers him.”

2 Interview with H. C. “Duck” Elliott, 1982. PRP-

PKR43.040-052.

NARRATIVES OF WATERMEN 207

“ SR

Fig. 3. Captain Orem Lowery (right) with fish harvested in haul seines near Broome’s Island on the

Patuxent River, ca. 1950. (Photo courtesy of Calvert Marine Museum.)

Clarence Sewell was in the business of

hauling the fish to markets in Baltimore

and Washington. He offered an explana-

tion as to why the hardheads were so

abundant in the first place:

Then in 1950, all these fish struck in

here, that was the hardheads, or croak-

ers. And for two years there, I’m tellin

you, the river was full of ’°em. The on-

liest thing we know, the fish was prob-

ably in the Bay anyway, but it was so

many, I believe you call em “‘porpoise”’

out here in the Bay and some of the

fishermen claim that them porpoise

would run after the fish, run the fish up

in the river and almost ashore some-

times. The fish were trying to get away

from them. If a man laid his net out and

didn’t catch a hundred boxes, he hadn’t

done anything—and that was a hundrec-

pound boxes, too. I think the highest

208 PAULA J. JOHNSON

that I got in 1950, one man caught 300

and some boxes in one haul, but in 1951,

one fellow, Mr. Vivian Pitcher, caught

about a thousand boxes and his brother,

Allen, had 817 boxes. I remember what

Allen had because I bought all of his

and I only taken 200 boxes of Vivian’s

because we were just worked to death.

Elsie Elliott, another Broome’s Islander,

reported:

In ’52 they had a big load of hardheads

was landed in here and my son was on

one of the seines with Orem Lowery.

He was one of the crew and he missed

the first big lot of it [because] he took

a fishing party for my sister over there

and he only made $7 that night. The

rest of °em [on the haul seine crew] made

about $3,000. And they made all that

money. And my son was on the next lot

and he got enough to buy a car and pay

for it. He wanted a car so bad .. . he

got enough out of the fish at that time

to buy a brand new car. It was a 752

Pontiac.’

Other watermen also described the

abundance in terms of the economic im-

pact upon their lives and communities.

Watermen at Piney Point who had fished

in the Patuxent were said to have lit their

cigarettes with ten and twenty dollar bills

earned from the hauls. One man recalled,

‘And the fishermen played cards. I re-

member seeing ten, twenty thousand dol-

lars on the table at one time, yessir.’’ His

wife added, “‘And they played for days.

My uncle played cards so long, he went

blind for a few days.’’?

Leon Johnson, a former pound net fish-

erman at Flag Pond on Calvert County’s

Bay shore, talked about sturgeon, sharks,

Interview with Clarence and ‘“‘Dots” Sewell, 1982.

PRP-PJR51.104.

Interview with Elsie Elliott, 1982. PRP-PJR47.059.

STInformal interview with Francis and Connie God-

dard, 1983. Field notes, Paula Johnson, 1/3/83, Cal-

vert Marine Museum Folklife Archives.

and skates he encountered in the nets:.

My crew of four, we caught a big stur-

geon, we hung him up in top of a build-

ing higher than this and his tail dragged

the floor. And a fellow said, “If you

don’t know what to do with that, the

boss man will lose the roe.” And he

thought I didn’t know . . . I went over

there and took an ax and chopped that

far up his tail, you know, so he would

bleed to save the roe. He looked at me

and said, ‘““You know something, you’re

from the Eastern Shore.” I told him,

“That’s right,” but I wasn’t from the

Eastern Shore, you know.

We went out there one mornin’ and there

was a big fish—a shark. They sent me

back to shore to get a pistol to shoot

the shark and nobody knew how to shoot

it. OK. The next 2—3 weeks we caught

another one. And when the shark went

down and stuck his tail in the air, I

wrapped around the tail like that and

held it ’til they got a rope on it. That’s

right. They were nine or twelve foot long.

And it felt just like a sheet of sand-

paper. And I tied it, and we tied it right

around the cleat and we worked that

shark right into the boat. And they

looked at me.

Skates and stingrays. They used to call

me the skate man. . . we went out there

and caught two and three hundred skates.

They weighed 25-30 pounds. You had

to be careful throwin’ ’em in the boat

because they had little skates attached

to ’°em ... Mr. Duncan, being a reli-

gious man, we had to stop doin’ that. I

wanted to cut some up for crab bait and

they wouldn’t let me."®

These brief narratives are examples of

the kind of information that exists in the

memories of numerous individuals who

have worked on the Bay and experienced

its changes. But what really can we learn

‘Interview with Leon Johnson, 1981. PRP-

PIR (1115-141.

NARRATIVES OF WATERMEN 209

Fig. 4. Captain Al Seigel (second from left) and a fishing party, probably in the 1940s. (Photo courtesy

of Calvert Marine Museum. )

from such narratives? What are the weak-

nesses and strengths of these data? How

reliable are they? How useful are they?

How do they contribute to our knowledge

of the Bay?

It is important, of course, to recognize

the limitations of oral testimony. Verbal

accounts are known to be laden with sources

of error, such as faulty memories and the

creative process of oral tradition itself,

which often includes embellishment or se-

lective editing of details.'’ A related prob-

lem with collecting oral testimony has to

do with informants tailoring their remarks

to suit what they think the interviewer wants

to hear or, worse yet, deliberately lying to

"See David Hufford’s The Terror That Comes in

the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Super-

natural Assault Traditions (Philadelphia: University

of Pennsylvania Press, 1982). Hufford discusses the

use of personal-experience narratives and the role of

observation in his study of supernatural belief, ac-

knowledging the difficulties of this approach. See

also William Lynwood Montell’s Saga of Coe Ridge

(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1970)

for discussion of the use of oral narratives in histor-

ical research.

dupe the researcher. Although there is no

formula for preventing this sort of thing,

there are ways to minimize the chances of

it happening. Quite simply, one ought to

know who he or she is talking to. Ap-

proaching a stranger and asking him about

his harvest that day is not likely to yield

more than a polite response which may or

may not address the question. Instead,

finding out who would be a good, reliable

source can be accomplished by asking peo-

ple one already knows—a seafood buyer,

a marina owner, a boatbuilder, the Mary-

land Watermen’s Association—for rec-

ommendations. Field techniques vary with

personalities of researchers, but I have

found it advantageous to have several in-

formal conversations with an individual

before requesting a tape-recorded inter-

view. In that way, I will know.a bit about

who I am talking to and, vice versa, he or

she will know something about me and

why I want to know what I want to know.

Cultivating this sort of relationship be-

forehand clears the way and frames the

interview as something that is serious and

important and is not being taken lightly

210 PAULA J. JOHNSON

Fig. 5. Harry Shorter fishing his pound net in the Patuxent River, 1982. (Calvert Marine Museum

photograph by Terry Eiler.)

by the interviewer. It is also important that

people understand what will happen with

the information and here I think it is a

distinct advantage being a researcher from

the local museum as opposed to being a

biologist from the Department of Natural

Resources or even a journalist. Southern

Maryland watermen tend to look favora-

bly upon the museum; many have donated

artifacts and volunteered time for certain

projects. Such individuals were willing to

help the museum further by consenting to

an interview. The fact that their memories

were recorded, i.e., put in a permanent

form, lessened the likelihood of deliberate

duping as well. On the other hand, of

course, the aspect of making testimony

permanent may have discouraged some-

NARRATIVES OF WATERMEN 211

Fig. 6. Waterman Claude Mister shaft tonging for oysters in Patuxent River, 1982. (Calvert Marine

Museum photograph by Terry Eiler.)

one from telling certain things that could

have been potentially damaging or em-

barrassing. Here again, I found that con-

tinuing the relationship by returning for

further conversations often elicited more

information.

Interviewing techniques influence the

type of information as well, and research-

ers should acknowledge that some things

will not be forthcoming. Asking for exact

dates is not a good strategy for they are

not easily remembered or readily offered,

unless the event is catastrophic or unusual.

For example, years of hurricanes, bad

freezes, devastation of the resources by

disease, or major changes in fisheries reg-

ulations are generally recalled. Also re-

called are years in which fishing activity

began, a new boat acquired, a species of

fish was particularly abundant or absent,

or a new type of gear was first employed.

Likewise, asking for statistical informa-

tion about harvests is often unproductive,

except with certain mathematically-minded

people like Clarence Sewell, who recalled

minute details about harvests thirty years

ago. By and large, statistical data are not

readily offered to anyone, outsiders or in-

siders. A researcher discovers quickly that

watermen often employ the rhetorical (and

occupational) strategy of understatement

when asked a direct question concerning

the size of their harvest, exactly where the

catch was made, or other specific, quan-

tifiable data. A waterman isn’t likely to

reveal how many bushels of oysters he

tonged up to other watermen either, for

obvious reasons of wishing to keep any

source of oysters to himself. Hence the

title of this paper, ‘““The Worst Oyster Sea-

son I’ve Ever Seen,” since this is a phrase

one is likely to hear if one asks about the

oyster season, regardless of what year it

is.

The one type of statistical information

that is usually remembered has to do not

so much with nature but with commerce.

Aside from individuals like Tom Court-

212 PAULA J. JOHNSON

ney, the watermen’s view of nature is gen-

erally not as comprehensive as that of the

biologist, for the waterman’s study of the

natural world is directed toward human

service, i.e., observing the behavior of crabs

and fish for purposes of capture, and ul-

timately, for monetary gain.'® Watermen

remember how much they were paid for

oysters or soft crabs twenty and thirty years

ago as well as they remember what they

were paid yesterday. Money paid out for

repair of equipment or for gas to run a rig

is another type of information that is read-

ily included in oral testimony and that has

been found to be fairly reliable when com-

pared with available documentary evi-

dence.”

Another limitation of oral testimony is

that its time depth is relatively short. In-

terviews with contemporary watermen will

yield a fairly good record of the local com-

mercial fisheries, as well as personal ex-

perience narratives covering the period

from after World War II to the present.

Older people, such as Clarence and Gertie

Biscoe of Drayden, who are both in their

nineties and can still describe sailing on

pungy boats to Baltimore, reveal a greater

time depth. Yet the Biscoes’ seventy-year

'SHenry Glassie’s discussion of how people in the

Irish community of Ballymenone view nature guided

my thinking here. See Henry Glassie, Passing the

Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Uls-

ter Community (Philadelphia: University of Penn-

sylvania Press, 1982) 575-578. Other discussions of

how specific cultural or occupational groups view

nature can be found in Jonathan Berger and John

W. Sinton, Water, Earth, and Fire: Land Use and

Environmental Planning in the New Jersey Pine Bar-

rens (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1985), p. 31; Mike Brown, The

Great Lobster Chase (Camden, ME: International

Marine Publishing, 1985); and Bryce and Margaret

Muir, “A Tale of Ice and Wild Dogs of the Sea,”

Whole Earth Review (July 1985): 4-12.

Sources for corroboration include local newspa-

pers and magazines; license and harvest records kept

by the Department of Natural Resources; the annual

reports of the Maryland Conservation Commission

or Board of Natural Resources (the agency’s name

was changed several times); and, since the 1970s, the

Waterman’s Gazette, the official newsletter of the

Maryland Watermen’s Association.

memory of the Bay is still shallow com-

pared to that uncovered by the written

historical record.”

Despite these limitations, oral testi-

mony is an important source to be consid-

ered in any quest for knowledge about the

Chesapeake. Within narratives like those

mentioned above, we can get a good sense

of the abundance in the past, various cycles

of seafood resources, plus information

about specific species harvested and han-

dled. And we can see in very broad terms

the kinds of changes that have taken place

within the lifetimes of contemporary

watermen. From just these brief stories,

we can glean the following information:

in the 1930s the number of peeler crabs

found around the shores near Solomons

was tremendous and hundreds of people

harvested thousands of crabs in a very short

period of time; a gill netter in the lower

Potomac has to set many more nets to

catch far less fish now than he did ten years

ago; apparently the waters of the lower

Patuxent were so conducive to oyster

growth between 1930 and 1940, thousands

of bushels of oysters grew on the hulls of

anchored ships; haul seine crews hauled

tons of hardheads out of the Patuxent in

the early 1950s, an unusual occurrence that

coincided with porpoises in the Bay; fish-

ermen saw a wider variety of species, in-

cluding sturgeon, in the Chesapeake off

Flag Pond before the 1950s. While it is

beyond the scope of this paper to present

a full listing of such changes noted by

watermen during all of our interviews, I

believe a concerted effort to do so would

yield rich results. And a serious effort to

collect such information from watermen

throughout the Bay region would also pro-

vide a fuller record of the Bay.

Yet while informing us about the Bay,

these narratives convey something else.

It should be noted that folklore, or traditional

narratives, which are passed along over time and

space, have a much greater time-depth (several gen-

erations) than the personal-experience narratives

discussed in this paper.

NARRATIVES OF WATERMEN 213

They tell us much about the tellers, the

individual watermen who have had a very

direct relationship to (and effect upon) the

Bay. In a very real sense, when we talk

to watermen we are talking to the most

sophisticated predator in the ecosystem.

Narratives, more than any other form of

evidence, reveal the human response to

specific environmental conditions at var-

ious times in the past. Folklorists Lyn-

wood Montell and Barbara Allen point

out that “written records speak to the point

of what happened, while oral sources al-

most invariably provide insights into how

people felt about what happened.’”' For

example, in Joe Scrivener’s story cited

above, we learn that he caught six hundred

pounds of rockfish the first time he set

his gill net. Yet in telling this, he also de-

scribes the impact that experience had on

him, “you just can’t imagine pulling a net

up and looking down and seeing fish hang-

ing out of it. And I can still remember to

this day and that was ten years ago and I

guess that’s what really got me hooked on

it because I’ve fished every year since then

and I’ve never caught any fish like I did

then.”’””

Likewise with the Broome’s Island cycle

of hardhead tales. The abundance ex-

tolled by the storytellers can be confirmed

with statistics from the Chesapeake Bio-

logical Laboratory in Solomons which in-

dicate that in 1952, 93,703 pounds of

croaker were harvested with haul seines

in the Patuxent River. But Clarence and

Dots Sewell, Duck Elliott, Claude Mister,

Elsie Elliott, and others from Broome’s

‘Barbara Allen and William Lynwood Montell,

From Memory to History: Using Oral Sources in Lo-

cal Historical Research. (Nashville: The American

Association for State and Local History, 1981), pp.

20-21.

“Interview with Joe Scrivener.

PJR20.131.

1982. PRP-

Island tell us what those 93,000 pounds of

hardheads meant to them and to their

community. Of course, the harvests had

an economic impact, evidenced by the

purchase of a ’52 Pontiac after one haul

of fish, but there was another dimension

to the experience. This era in the recent

history of the community is what Broome’s

Islanders invariably choose to talk about

when conversation turns to the river or

their community. It is collectively remem-

bered as a time when everyone worked

together, sharing the labor and the ben-

efits of labor. And that is how they prefer

to identify themselves—as participants,

neighbors, people connected. It is true that

the stories tell us about a natural phenom-

enon that can be verified with fishery sta-

tistics, but they also tell us a great deal

about the attitudes, values, and perspec-

tives of the people who occupied (and con-

tinue to do so) a certain niche in the web

of Bay life.

Watermen’s__narratives—and their

written records—comprise a unique body

of knowledge that is still largely scattered

and ephemeral, but which warrants system-

atic collection and interpretation. By de-

scribing how their own circumstances have

changed through the years, what they no-

ticed about environmental cycles and trends

and how they responded, watermen pro-

vide clues about larger changes in the Bay.

Certainly our understanding of the Bay’s

history is enhanced by the experiences of

those who are not only watchdogs of the

Bay, but active, dynamic participants in

the Chesapeake ecosystem.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences.

Volume 76, Number 3, Pages 214-217, September 1986

Looking Backward to the Future

Abel Wolman

Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering

The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218

This seminar closes the last of seven

symposia on estuaries sponsored by the

NOAA Estuarine Programs Office during

1985. To top it off, a few weeks ago, I

refused an invitation from mainland China

to join a group of “experts” to review ex-

traordinary problems with massive estu-

aries in their tens of millions of land-water

acres.

The recent upsurge of interest in estu-

aries would warrant a separate sympos-

ium. I resist philosophizing thereon, al-

though its relevance to my assignment will

appear in my comments.

The program for the seminar reported

in this book was apparently designed as a

kind of “wrap-up” of the previous six con-

ferences. This is the task I have been as-

signed and hence my paper should be read

with reference to the papers printed else-

where in this volume. Detailed summaries

of these contributions are not included here

because of their large number. The papers

supplement each other and present an im-

pressive and fascinating picture of past

complex behavior. The time span of mil-

lions of years will provide consternation

to many officials who encounter this doc-

ument and who seek simple verities.

The historical review discloses the nat-

ural consequences of geological, climatic,

and meteorologic phenomena—and, in

more recent thousands of years, the im-

pact of man and his culture upon the bays

of the United States.

214

Concommitantly, similar long-term ex-

plorations have been carried out in other

parts of the world. They give further evi-

dence of global interest in the long past,

perhaps to supply some clues as to how to

meet the problems of the present.

Among these are the discovery of the

totally unexpected behavior of ecosystems

of deep-ocean vents. Archaeological sites

in the Vasco-Contabrian Region of Spain

have yielded detailed records of changes

in the human condition from about 125,000

years ago until the adoption less than 6,000

years ago of food production.

An equally timely example is in the find-

ing of geophysicists analyzing old survey-

ing records in the eastern United States.

They may be able to pinpoint sites of pos-

sible future earthquakes in this region. The

U.S. Geological Survey discovered evi-

dence that during the last 100 years stress

has been concentrating in the upper earth

crust north of New York City. Western

Long Island seemed to be accumulating

stress several times faster than in most parts

of the dangerous San Andreas fault in Cal-

ifornia.

This rehearsal emphasizes the common-

ality of purpose pervading the activities of

geologists, archaeologists, anthropolo-

gists, and engineers. The search of the past

to disclose appropriate action for the fu-

ture is not only exciting but promises to

be rewarding.

What does the evidence appear to dis-

LOOKING BACKWARD TO THE FUTURE 215

close? Primarily. it makes abundantly clear

that estuarial behaviors must be sharply

distinguished between those due to natu-

ral forces and those introduced by man.

Nature's dynamic reactions are demonstra-

bly powerful in contrast with man’s more

complex identification and control of im-

The records indicate contradictions to

some of the principles and practices of to-

day. already embedded m the views of dis-

tinguished practitioners.

The phenomenon oi anoxia is an inter-

esting case in point. Many environmen-

talists are convinced that this event ensues

largely because of excessive input of phos-

phorus and nitrogen and consequent eu-

trophication. Other investigators warm that

anoxia is most frequently the result. sea-

sonally, of dynamic physical events. such

as winds, wave actions, and temperature.

and only secondarily by familar nutnent

overloads. These nutrients currently hold

the stage as major culprits—as well as ma-

jor dollars for elimination. Experienced

investigators insist that legislative prohi-

bition on the use of phosphate detergents

is the key to estuary, lake and impound-

ment salvation, while nitrogen may take

Over in more saline waters.

The letter mviting me to present my

comments had an attachment. It listed six-

teen questions headed “Explain function

of focusing on history to guide future.”

The designer of the program had well in

mind the current demand on “histonans”

to provide such guidance—pressing them

to join the futurologist’s cult!

I need no hint, however, to press the

speakers ultimately to answer, in the par-

lance of the street. “so what?” The sixteen

questions should find a prominent place

im the final documentation of this sym-

posium. They rehearse the burning ques-

tions of today, as history has revealed or

failed to reveal helpful answers.

The bald question generates the mmpor-

tant issue: what do we want of the Ches-

apeake Bay? A source of oysters, crabs.

rock fish, clams, fish, or grasses, forests,

sports, esthetic environs, or all of these?

Some say the historical record rests upon

too limited sampling frequency and geo-

graphical coverage to warrant total ac-

ceptance of its findings.

A more critical and unavoidable defi-

ciency is that little or nothing is discernible

as to political commitment, scientific un-

certainty, or community behavior. These

constraints, coupled with a major defi-

ciency of skilled manpower, determine what

we do or may do in the foreseeable future.

The recapture of the estuaries is designed

to reduce, at least, the mevitable rate of

degradation—easy to state, difficult to im-

plement.

The existence of people is recognizably

a nuisance. Their presence and multiph-

cation are probable for a long time ahead.

Their activities may be destructive, illog-

ical, perverse, and selfish. One must as-

sume, however, these behaviors are sus-

ceptible to change. provided we have

learned how to translate scientific-tech-

nologic findings of the past and of the

thousands of recent data emanating from

the Chesapeake, Narragansett, San Fran-

cisco, and lesser estuaries throughout the

United States.

We still lack an agreed scientific mono-

sraph that integrates discrete research data

into a total picture, from which the public.

officialdom, and scientist may design ac-

ceptable action programs. In its absence.

we have the travail wherein the scientist

takes refuge in requesting a larger budget

for research. We do not understand the

behavior of the Bay and continuing basic

research must go forward—even though

too often downgraded by budget makers.

Once in a while, but rarely, does some-

one whisper that significant recapture of

productivity will occur only with a fun-

damental and courageous change in public

policy, more than in scientific disclosures.

The time may be mpe and the symposium

summary may well recognize that, in ad-

dition to all that history teaches, the public

will and desire may disclose the key. The

public has yet to demonstrate its wishes to

change fundamental policy as to the man-

agement of the Bay. None of the papers

216 ABEL WOLMAN

emphasize that no farm would survive the

interesting and peculiar mode of opera-

tion that the State of Maryland has per-

mitted in this underwater farm for more

than a century. Concealed throughout the

discussions, only the lament of Paula

Johnson is a reminder of our delinquency!

I cannot close without noting a few

salient approaches to maintaining the

“health” of this remarkable underwater

farm. Undoubtedly, reduction of sedi-

ment discharge into the Bay is an agreed

“must.” It is one of the few prescriptions

apparently acceptable to all diagnosti-

cians.

Sedimentation unfortunately harbors

nutrient generation. Sediment resuspen-

sion further releases organics and changes

metal patterns. The particles settled in the

bottom keep their surface load of phos-

phorus in the sink. In some instances nearly

60 per cent of the phosphorus absorbed to

these particles remains mobile and thus

represent a potential source for internal

phosphorus loading.

Phosphorus and nitrogen do not have

unanimity of acceptance as enviromental

problems, either singly or jointly. Their

elimination or reduction require different

measures of action. It would be the part

of wisdom to recognize the difference and

press rapidly toward scientific clarification

of impact. Both nutrients are probable

culprits—as well as minimum necessities

for ecologic survival.

Designers of waste water treatment

should look more often to N/P ratios to

determine when each is the limiting pa-

rameter to growth of organisms. Recog-

nition is belated of the use of aquatic plants

in bio-systems to ameliorate waste waters.

In some instances most of the N and P

accumulates in the harvestable portion of

the plants. This method was used in the

field some 10 years ago in Hungary. As

always, the choice must be site specific and

management must be of high order.

Parenthetically, the use of macro-

phytes, as effective and cheaper for pu-

rifying waters, is being pursued in de-

veloping countries, where conventional

orthodox methods are too expensive to be

used.

Control of periodic excessive algae

growth remains less than satisfactory.

Regulators may have learned by now not

to over-promise elimination. Too many

sources of such growths remain in the Bay

to warrant guarantees of ultimate total

prevention.

A similar warning pertains to the desire

and hope of eliminating metals. The list

is long and many people aim to remove

them at source. The dilemma in this case

is that more than a few have positive val-

ues in the protection of human health and

of the ecosystem itself. Examples are

chromium, zinc, copper, molybdenum,

phosphorus, and boron. As a matter of

fact, the periodic table contains a series of

elements appearing in our streams that are

toxic in high concentrations but essential

to life in low ones. Selenium is a striking

example of this dichotomy. Standards for

this element in water have been virtually

close to zero, because cattle died from

consuming grasses high in selenium. A

dramatic example of soil geochemistry im-

pact has come out of China in the past few

years. A number of unusual diseases were

epidemic around Keshan in North East

China, and in a wide belt into South West

China. Occurrences were manifest in live

stock and humans. In the latter the dis-

eases became known as Keshan disease,

linked to the unusually low selenium levels

in the local soil. The urban population ob- ,

tained sufficient selenium from foodstuffs |

transported in. Rural peasants ate locally-

grown crops low in selenium and suffered

high mortality. Provision weekly of die-

tary supplement of selenium has resulted

in the disappearance of the disease.

One more disturbing caution, familiar

to our hosts, needs to be registered—the

threat of the ‘‘Greenhouse Effect.” Roger

Revelle, in San Diego on November 12,

predicted that, within the next two or three

decades, precipitation and runoff would

materially decline, ocean levels would rise,

ground water salinities would increase, and

temperatures would rise.

LOOKING BACKWARD TO THE FUTURE 217

His positive views are not yet generally

supported. The International Advisory

Committee on Tides and Mean Sea Level

comments on its recent Report* that:

“On the surface. . . the lines of thought

seem speculative but straight forward.

A closer examination of the attendant

physical arguments reveals a host of very

serious problems that make estimates of

sea level change and this interpretation

highly uncertain.”’

The Symposium today is exciting in its

implications. The papers are beginning to

answer a series of questions posed in a

recent flier from the University of Rhode

Island. ““What’s the connection between

Narragansett Bay and the Guayaquil Es-

tuary in Ecuador? Or between Guayaquil

and Columbo in Sri Lanka? Or between

Sri Lanka and Indonesia or Thailand? The

ocean. And the common heritage of its

riches, both on and off shore.”’

It has been estimated that 70 per cent

of the world’s population lives along the

coastline, while 30 per cent is inland. If

these ecosystems are efficiently managed,

their abundant values may be captured. If

not, the penalties may be irreversible to

man and environment. Dr. Mountford’s

opening remarks provide a fitting closure

*Changes in Relative Mean Sea Level, Transac-

tions American Geophysical Union, EOS, Novem-

ber 5, 1985.

to my so-called Summary. He points out,

with admirable brevity, the questions em-

anating from the contributions. Of even

greater importance are his deep-seated

hopes of profiting from history’s disclo-

sures.

In his closing words:

‘Can we extend our vision back through

time to gain a meaningful perspective?

Will we be able to share technology

among these several sciences enough to

have confidence in those insights? Can

we define, in some useful sense, what

Chesapeake Bay, and other troubled

habitats on this planet, really were like

in the past?”

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to all the speakers

for prompt delivery of abstracts of their

papers. They have been inspiring in con-

tent and challenging in issues. I pay par-

ticular thanks to Grace Brush who has given

me an opportunity for several valuable

discussions—due to the happy coinci-

dence that our offices are in the same

building.

DELEGATES TO THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,

REPRESENTING THE LOCAL AFFILIATED SOCIETIES

era esmcicty Of WaShitietOn .. i... ee teen eee eet een eeeeeee Barbara F. Howell

Peaared society OF Washington ....... 5.6. .cc epee ccc nee t teens ens eesens Edward J. Lehman

Se EIEN CM VVASIINISTON ee cee eee ee cio e eet eens eneens Austin B. Williams

ETITERe ISD NVASIINOCOD 26. cel. ek cee le ee wed dale ee eae ncaa Jo-Anne A. Jackson

Seeemeenereersmeiety Ol WaShINGtON. . 2... 2... ce eee ce een eee ee eee Manya B. Stoetzel

TM PUMEOSOEICLY: oo. ne alee ech ee cen ee Ode eae sence bees Gilbert Grosvenor

Pe MeO NV ASMINIO(ON . 6... 2 ee te eae ee ene cme e enews James V. O’Connor

meeeemanciciy Of inc District of Columbia ...............0cceccseeseeereceees Charles E. Townsend

EMME TIRTOGICUY 5. ace oe ye a send dln warlenaue Seapets are eee sees Paul H. Oehser

MEIC OU ASIITIOTON ... . ace evi sce sce be ve Sa eda Pe See ee eee ecb ewes wes Conrad B. Link

Pibestn@e umcimcan Foresters, Washington Section ..............2 ec ce ee wee cece te meen n ens Mark Rey

PEEP MCIC Ny OLE MPINCCTS...6. nt nee es een bee meee eebneeeeesbens George Abraham

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington Section................. George Abraham

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Washington Section.......................44- Michael Chi

Pemmmmericalsociety Of Washington ........ 2.0.2.6... cece e pee e eee eee eer eens Robert S. Isenstein

palemcam society tor Microbiology, Washington Branch.............2..062seeeseeee mt eee ewes Vacant

Society of American Military Engineers, Washington Post......................-. Charles A. Burroughs

Pamenean society of Civil Engineers, National Capital Section.................6..2-000000% Carl Gaum

Seviety 10r Experimental Biology and Medicine, DC Section ....................... Cyrus R. Creveling

Pmoneam society tor Metals, Washington Chapter .............. 6.000. c eee e eee ee eeee James R. Ward

American Association of Dental Research, Washington Section....................0 000 Eloise Ullman

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Capital Section............... Paul Keller

Pm@eticane Meteorological Society, DC Chapter .....=.. Ti. cece cece eee A. James Wagner

eee mee eieny OF WASHINGTON |... 2. ee ec eee eee cece cence eeeeeen Albert B. DeMilo

Peeousicalisecicry of America, Washington Chapter. .................2.006eec eee ees Richard K. Cook

Peecmecannucicar Society, Washington Section.................0 6.00 cee ee eee Ree ee Paul Theiss

insite of Pood Technologists, Washington Section ....................0eee eee ee Melvin R. Johnston

American Ceramic Society, Baltimore-Washington Section...................0000- Joseph H. Simmons

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mitre SLE: The Encyclopedia of Aquatic Life .............-.+..+. epee 226

Articles:

N. M. SHUST, M. A. EAGAN, and D. NISHIOKA: Increased Uptake of

Thymidine in the Activation of Sea Urchin Eggs: IV. Effects of the Nucleoside

mianaport Inhibitor, Nitrobenzylthiomosime .............--2.-0+-55--6-55

D. R. SAGER, L. C. WOODS, and J. N. KRAUETER: Survival of Morone

eer Low pl Olisohaline Waters. 4... 2... deve ween cae Dee ot

B. F. HILL, E. B. SMALL, and T. M. ILIFFE: Euplotes iliffei n.sp.: A new

species of Euplotes (Ciliophora, Hypotrichida) from the marine caves of

LEASE RUDI PSS STE eel Ae Oe eee en I a

G. L. FARRE: Mathematics as the Grammar of Natural History or The Dream

CS SULAES OPES 2 6 Ne Rae ic ee ae nn a a

D. V. HOWARD: Aging and Cognition: What Is Saved and What Is Lost?

R. K. COOK: The Scientific Achievement Awards of the Academy: 1984 and

Sen Salen al mia intial el ae mie) ete ini wile (a) iWin fate 9's) (elle; © 8 ss s/n! ie) e ie, erie i's) e) a) ia (8) 16) -ofelm a, ae) endo .e, le) wile) fe Kale

M. T. MACDONELL: Development of a Phylogenetic Taxonomy for the

Eubacteria

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Commentary

The Role of Courts

in Environmental

Decision-Making

Harold P. Green

Professor of Law, The National Law Center, The George Washington

University, Washington, DC 20052

In this paper, I shall first discuss some

basic differences between law and sci-

ence, then proceed to consideration of the

manner in which environmental decisions

are made in the first instance by admin-

istrative agencies and the courts, and fi-

nally discuss apellate review of these

decisions in the federal courts.

Law is a pervasive element in our so-

cietal and institutional structure, and it

establishes the general framework within

which all activities and endeavors, includ-

ing science are conducted. There are,

however, some important differences be-

tween the law and the science cultures,

and a failure to understand these differ-

ences often impairs communication and

collaboration between the two.

Science is concerned primarily with un-

locking the secrets of nature through the

acquisition of knowledge. Its primary ob-

jective is to seek the truth. Nothing is

accepted as valid by science for which va-

lidity has not been demonstrated; and

even where something is accepted as

valid, it is recognized that its continuing

219

validity is dependent upon its not being

demonstrated to be invalid. Science rests

upon a solid foundation of principles that

have gained universal acceptance, or at

least acceptance by overwhelming con-

sensus of scientists.

Law, on the other hand, is based on

verbal formulations, and its content varies

with the meaning given to particular

words from time to time by those who

interpret and implement the law. More-

over, the law—at least the Anglo-Amer-

ican version—is not driven by a quest for

objective truth.

Statutory law more often than not is

based on emotion, politics, and compro-

mise rather than on coherent principles

that objective experts would regard as

valid. Indeed, legislatures frequently en-

act statutes that are deliberately ambig-

uous so that the legislators can give the

impression of having accomplished some-

thing while avoiding coming to grips with

thorny issues by bucking these issues to

the agencies or the courts that will imple-

ment the legislation.’

220

The agencies and courts that interpret,

implement, and enforce the law rely on

the adversary system. Each party in the

proceeding presents evidence and argu-

ments that will support its position. The

parties, even when a party is the govern-

ment or a regulatory agency, present their

positions in the strongest possible form,

usually overstating the case. Only rarely

will the unadulterated truth, recognizable

as such by the tribunal, be presented to

it. Moreover, the tribunal will only rarely

be expert in scientific or technical aspects

of the case, but it must nevertheless de-

cide among the competing facts and con-

tentions.

Given this general approach to law-

making in the United States, it is too

much to expect that scientifically or ob-

jectively correct decisions will be reached

in environmental litigation. Indeed, it is

not the function of the law in a democratic

society such as ours to make correct de-

cisions. Its function is to resolve conflict

in the optimum manner, and optimum

resolution of a dispute may require that

something be stated to be the truth that

is not in fact the truth. We all know, for

example, that one who is convicted of

murder may not in fact have murdered,

and that acquittal does not mean that the

defendant did not in fact do the foul deed.

Whether objectively correct or not, the

court’s judgment presumably represents

the best decision that can be fairly ren-

dered in that case.

Lawyers accept the legal system as

pragmatic, albeit imperfect. We aspire to

improve the system so that it will produce

laws and decisions that are objectively

more correct. At the same time, we rec-

ognize that toleration of erroneous results

lends considerable flexibility to the legal

system and facilitates the kinds of accom-

modation that are necessary to ensure

public acceptance of public-policy deci-

sions in a pluralistic democratic society.

A quest for truth and correct decisions in

the decision-making process, if pursued

to the limit, would produce the orthodoxy

HAROLD P. GREEN

of a “‘big brother” who would define and

effectuate TRUTH. We also recognize

that in our form of government, the proc-

ess of reaching decisions is more impor-

tant that the correctness of the decisions

reached. It is for this reason that we rely

upon the adversary process which has the

conspicuous virtue of giving every inter-

ested party the opportunity to present the

strongest possible case for his/her posi-

tion to a tribunal that knows sufficiently

little about the subject matter that it will

presumably render an impartial and fair

decision.

I turn now to the specific subject of

environmental decision-making. Courts

become involved in this process in one of

several ways that I shall attempt to de-

scribe briefly, confining my description,

for purposes of simplicity, to the federal

courts. The easiest case to describe is that

of litigation in which a plaintiff brings suit

against a defendant and asks the court to

restrain the defendant’s conduct on the

ground that it involves a serious environ-

mental insult, and/or seeks to recover

money damages for injuries resulting

from the insult. This is the easiest case

because there is really little to be said that

was not said in my earlier description of

the legal culture. Suffice it to say at this

point, the issues of whether there was in

fact an environmental insult and if so the

resulting quantum of injury are decided

by a judge or jury who almost certainly

have no particular knowledge of the rel-

evant science. The question whether the

law, i.e., common or statutory, provides

a remedy is decided by the judge, who

also instructs the jury as to the legal

framework for its consideration of the evi-

dence. Obviously, this role provides the

judge with considerable latitude to shape

the ultimate outcome of the suit.

In some such litigation the Government

or an agency of the Government may be

either the plaintiff or the defendant. If the

former, the typical case involves the effort

of the Government or agency to enforce

a particular statute where the defendant

COMMENTARY 221

is alleged to be in violation of it. On the

other hand, if the Government or agency

is the defendant, the typical case involves

the complaint that a particular action that

has been taken or is proposed to be taken

would be injurious to the environment.

A good example of this is Allen v. United

States.*

Allen was a suit by 1,192 plaintiffs who

alleged serious loss due to cancer or leu-

kemia induced by fallout from nuclear

weapons testing in Nevada from 1951 to

1963. The trial took 13 weeks, and there

were 98 witnesses, some of whom, to

quote the judge, were “prestigious,

gifted, and historic figures—and, I might

add, highly opinionated.’” In addition to

7000 pages of testimony, there were al-

most 1700 documentary exhibits, some

newly declassified, amounting to more

than 54,000 printed pages.* The case in-

volved, among other questions, “the

method and quantum of proof of the

cause in fact of claimed biological inju-

fies.”

Writing after his decision in the case,

Judge Jenkins offered these instructive

observations:

No matter how complex the factual

footing might be, the judicial deter-

mination of facts in a complex case is

indistinguishable from fact-finding in

other cases. Thus the fallout opinion

speaks in terms of common concepts—

of natural and probable consequences,

of substantial factors, and of things

more likely to occur than not.°®

We are not required. . . to find beyond

a reasonable doubt. Rather, it is the

judicial resolution of disputes with

which we are concerned. In the prag-

matic world of “‘fact,’’ the court passes

judgment on the probable. Dispute res-

olution demands rational decision-

making, not perfect knowledge. Perfect

knowledge does not require judgment,

only description.’

KK KOK KK

. . In complex litigation involving elu-

sive and perhaps contested phenomena

of nature, the advocate and the judge

must transcend the traditional jargon of

the law and become conversant in the

language of risk assessment. . . . [and]

make greater use of the information

base available, whether through re-

search in the library or through the help

of experts.°

Scientific evidence must be examined

with the same skepticism as any other

evidence. The court must. . . bring to

dispute resolution the critical eye and

the element of objectivity so often ab-

sent from competing scientific view-

points.’

KOK OK OK KK

... . Inthe courtroom, risk is far more

than a question of physical process or

mathematical probability. One must

add people and values and social con-

sequences to the equation. Moreover,

the court is concerned not only with the

specific persons seeking help, but also

with the harm to society and to social

values in general... ."°

Let me issue a word of caution about

being spoon-fed by experts; this can be

a risky business. . One of the

shocks of growing up . . . is to discover

how human scientists can be; they can

be opinionated and downright quarrel-

some, and can cling tenaciously to ideas

in which they have a vested interest.

Let me add quickly that not all scien-

tists fit this description."

I have quoted at length from Judge Jen-

kins’ thoughtful comments because they

reflect my earlier discussion on the legal

culture. Although Judge Jenkins does not

explicitly address this point, he tells us

implicitly that scientific quantifications of

risk, and presumably of benefit, are not

controlling in the courts.

222 HAROLD P. GREEN

In this connection, it is important to

recognize that our legal culture has always

had an interest in risk-benefit assessment.

In the law of torts, for example, we ask

whether a defendant’s conduct consti-

tuted an “unreasonable risk’? measured

by whether the “‘magnitude of the risk

outweighs the value which the law at-

taches to the conduct which involves it.’’!”

In determining the magnitude of the risk,

we consider the probability, magnitude,

and extent of harm that may result; and

in determining the utility (i.e., benefits)

of the conduct, we consider whether com-

parable social interests can be adequately

advanced by alternative, less dangerous

conduct.'* Moreover, when we look at the

judicial decisions applying these princi-

ples, we see no attempt at quantification

of the various parameters. Instead, the

courts perform the balancing operation

qualitatively on the basis of an amorphous

“community standard” derived from the

wisdom, experience, and the common-

sense of the judges and juries.’ In other

words, to use the words of Judge Jenkins,

‘people and values and social conse-

quences” are factored into whatever

quantitative evidence may be available.’®

As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the

District of Columbia Circuit put it in In-

dustrial Union Dept., AFL-CIO v. Hodg-

son, “‘when insufficient data is presently

available to make a fully informed fac-

tual determination . . . . decision making

must. . . depend to a greater extent upon

policy judgments and less upon purely

factual analysis.’’'’ In the same vein, the

court indicated that the relative weighting

of probability and magnitude of harm is

a matter for judgment by the decision-

maker and does not turn on purely factual

analysis.'®

In short, the judicial process is not one

in which science and scientists are con-

trolling, and many scientists will under-

standably be bewildered and unhappy

about the manner in which the courts

seemingly defy science and its analyses as

decisions are made in individual cases. An

example of this discomfort is found in a

1973 address by Dr. Philip Handler, then

President of the National Academy of Sci-

ences, in which he commented on the

EPA’s DDT decision, Dr. Handler’s con-

cerns would be equally applicable to a

judicial trial involving a similar issue:

I have undergone the masochistic ex-

ercise of reading a considerable part of

those hundreds of pages of testimony

which were taken by the hearing ex-

aminer [who would now be called an

“administrative law judge’’] who “ex-

amined DDT” and then made his rec-

ommendations to the administrator of

the Environmental Protection Agency.

I say “‘masochistic” quite deliberately.

Two-thirds of the so-called “scientific

evidence” that I read could not have

found acceptance by the editorial board

of a reputable scientific journal.

The situation was summed up, I

thought, in the remarkable words of the

administrator of EPA in the decision

statement in which DDT was effec-

tively banned for most purposes. As

close as I can recall it, he said ‘““DDT

constitutes an unquantifiable hazard of

uncertain nature.” . . . . I am not dis-

agreeing with the decision itself. It is

the basis for decision making, the in-

adequacy of the data, which I found so

very troublesome, I still do... .””

It is clear that Dr. Handler was unable to

accept the legal culture.

Let me turn now to the appellate role

of the courts, which in federal environ-

mental cases, means primarily the United

States Courts of Appeal and the Supreme

Court. In order not to prolong my dis-

cussion unduly, I shall confine my re-

marks to judicial review of decisions of

federal regulatory agencies such as the

Environmental Protection Agency and

the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

These regulatory actions may be in the

form of an order promulgating rules and

regulations of general applicability, or in

the form of an administrative decision in-

COMMENTARY 223

volving specific parties. In either case, the

proceeding before the administrative

agency would be subject to the provisions

of the Administrative Procedure Act.” In

rule-making proceedings, any interested

person may participate, most frequently

through the opportunity to submit written

comments, but sometimes as a party in

an administrative hearing where a hearing

is required by statute or where the agency

decides to have one. Such hearings are

generally more informal, without many of

the trappings of an adversary proceeding,

than litigation in the courts. Where, how-

ever, a Statute requires an adjudicatory

hearing, it resembles a judicial trial. De-

cisions by regulatory agencies are gener-

ally subject to review by a United States

Court of Appeals, and to further review

by the Supreme Court.

Each of the regulatory agencies is a

creature of the Congress and must con-

duct its activities in conformance with the

particular statutory provisions to which it

is subject in the case before it. Each of

the statutes contains in greater or lesser

detail specific findings that must be made

as a predicate for rules to be promulgated

or decisions to be made by the regulatory

body. There are also in each statute spec-

ified procedures that must be followed by

the agency in adopting rules or making

decisions. No two statutes have identical,

or for the most part even similar, criteria

or procedures. Even within a single

agency such as EPA, which administers a

number of statutes such as those regulat-

ing air quality, water quality, fungicides,

insecticides, rodenticides, automobile

emissions, toxic substances, hazardous

wastes, etc., there are wide variations in

the criteria and procedures. These are at-

tributable not only to the perceived dif-

ferences in the subject matter to be

regulated, but also to the particular time

at which the legislation was considered,

the prevailing political climate at the time,

the particular vested interests that would

be affected, and the political clout of

those interests. Sometimes, the statutory

criteria are highly ambiguous, frequently,

because the particular matter was politi-

cally difficult for the Congress to resolve,

so that in effect the issue was handed to

the agency and the courts for resolution.”!

Thus, the legal significance of the evi-

dence developed in the agency proceed-

ing is determined in the first instance by

the agency’s interpretation of the statute.

In some cases, the statutory criteria re-

flect the Congress’ own risk-benefit as-

sessment and produces a result that many

scientists would regard as “‘bad science.”

The Delaney amendment to the Chemical

Food Additives Act of 1958,” which pro-

hibits the use in food of any chemical

known to produce cancer in animals is a

good example of this.

Let me turn now to the question of ju-

dicial review by the courts of environ-

mental decisions made by regulatory

agencies. At the outset, it must be em-

phasized that it is not a proper function

of the court to review the evidence de

novo to determine whether the decisions

made by the regulatory agency were cor-

rect. Rather, the functions of the court

are limited to ensuring that the decisions

under review have been made in accord-

ance with applicable statutes, that they

are not arbitrary or capricious, and that

they are supported by “substantial evi-

dence.” In considering conformity with

the applicable statutes, the court is con-

cerned with both substantive and proce-

dural issues. On the substantive side, the

court looks into the question whether the

agency’s action was based on the statutory

criteria for the action and whether the

requisite findings were made. With re-

spect to procedure, the question is

whether the agency reached its decision

and action in accordance with applicable

statutory requirements. Parenthetically,

it should also be noted that the court may

also inquire into whether the agency com-

piled with the substantive criteria and

procedural requirements set forth in its

own rules and regulations.

Compliance with procedural require-

ments is particularly important from the

standpoint of appellate review of agency

224 HAROLD P. GREEN

actions. These requirements are set forth

in the basic regulatory statute such as the

Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Act,

or the Atomic Energy Act; in the Ad-

ministrative Procedure Act; and of great

importance in recent years, the National

Environmental Policy Act. In addition,

however, the courts, particularly the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the District of Co-

lumbia, have attempted to fashion pro-

cedural requirements of their own. For

example, in a series of decisions that court

has insisted upon “principled decision-

making”’ by the regulatory agencies. This

requires ‘‘administrative officers to artic-

ulate the standards and principles that

govern their discretionary decisions in as

much detail as possible.”

The judicial decisions that invalidate

agency actions on procedural grounds

may reflect an implicit disagreement with

the substantive position reached by the

agency. Indeed, Judge Wilkey of the D.C.

Circuit openly accused his colleagues of

using the National Environmental Policy

Act “‘to delay the development of impor-

tant energy sources.’

In terms of explicit review of the sub-

stance of the agency’s action, the courts

are required to sustain the agency’s action

if there is ‘Substantial evidence” sup-

porting it. ‘Substantial evidence” does

not mean the weight or preponderance of

the evidence, but only that there was

enough reasonable evidence to support

the agency’s findings. Thus, the court can-

not invalidate the action merely because

it disagrees with it or believes it was in-

correct. It is not necessary that the evi-

dence before the agency be certain. As

the D.C. Circuit stated in one case in

which it upheld a decision by the EPA

Administrator in which there was a “great

mass of often inconsistent evidence,”’ the

“evidence is substantial enough to sup-

port the conclusions of the administrator,

although it possibly might support the

contrary conclusions as well.’’»

I return to somewhere in the vicinity of

where I began in my discussion of the

legal culture. The judicial system relevant

to environmental decision-making simply

is not equipped to, and is not expected

to, produce objectively correct decisions.

It is, however, expected to guard against

decisions that are arbitrary, capricious,

or, indeed, “far out.” A useful way to

look at the process is as part of the po-

litical system. The decision-making power

of regulatory agencies is constrained in

three ways. The members of Congress

who were instrumental in enacting the en-

vironmental legislation in the first place

usually have a paternalistic interest in

having the legislation implemented in the

general manner they intended. A “far

out”’ action by the agency is likely to pro-

- duce some kind of a formal legislative ac-

tion such as a corrective amendment to

the statute or informal action such as

strong public rebukes, hostile hearings,

appropriation cuts, or the like.

A second constraint, also political in

nature, is the fact that the agency is sub-

ject to the influence of the President in a

number of respects. Even where the

agency is an “independent regulatory

agency” which Congress established with

safeguards to insulate it from control by

the President, he may nevertheless be

able to exercise some control through the

budgetary process and his/her power to

nominate, and in some cases remove, the

agency heads. The agency heads cannot,

therefore, stray too far from the Presi-

dent’s political desires lest they jeopard-

ize prospects for their reappointment and

advancement in the government service.

The third constraint is the likelihood of

judicial action overturning the regulatory

decision.

Reviewing courts are subject to similar

constraints: the possibility of corrective

legislation and of reversal by the Supreme

Court. Although they are much less po-

litically vulnerable than regulatory agen-

cies, they too must reach their decisions

with one eye focused on political reality.

Thus it is concluded that the courts’ role

in environmental decision-making is quite

COMMENTARY 225

limited and tends to center more upon

procedural than substantive issues. Be-

cause the courts have no scientific com-

petence, contestants in environmental

decision-making who come before the

courts are compelled to do so in the vo-

cabulary of ordinary discourse; to try to

reduce scientific information to language

that can be comprehended by laymen

(even though the courts and laymen may

often in fact erroneously comprehend).

It must be remembered that in environ-

mental litigation, the basic issues involve

benefits and risks to the public, the

assignment and allocation of which is es-

sentially a political function. Even though

such issues are decided in the first in-

stance in the legislative process, the role

of the courts is essentially to assist in the

resolution of disputes that arise over the

application of statutes in particular situ-

ations. In this sense, therefore, the role

of the courts is adjunctive to and suppor-

tive of the democraic political process. We

cannot, therefore, expect that the envi-

ronmental decisions of the courts will be

regarded as scientifically acceptable, let

alone scientifically correct.

Some will find this conclusion uncom-

fortably pessimistic. Although everyone

will, at least on a moment’s reflection,

agree that the legislative process is essen-

tially political, and that it frequently pro-

duces strange or seemingly irrational

results, we seem to expect better results

from our courts, and by and large I think

we get them. But why should we expect

a more objectively correct decision on a

scientific issue from a court that is inter-

preting and applying an environmental

statute that was enacted by Congress

through the essence of the political proc-

ess with little attempt to ensure that the

statutory standards reflect good or objec-

tively correct science?

References Cited

1. See the dissenting opinion of Justice Rehnquist

in American Textile Manufacturers, Inc. v. Don-

ovan, 452 U.S. 490, 543-48 (1981).

. 583 F. Supp. 247 (D. Utah, 1984).

. These comments, and those quoted below, were

made by Judge Bruce S. Jenkins, before whom

the case was tried, in a talk at the Fourteenth

Annual Conference on the Environment spon-

sored by the ABA’s Standing Committee on

Environmental Law on May 17-18, 1985. See

American Bar Association Standing Committee

on Environmental Law, Dealing With Risk: The

Courts, the Agencies, and Congress 1 (1985).

4. Ibid.

5. Allen v. United States, supra at 257—-S8.

6. Jenkins, op. cit. supra n.3, at 2.

io)

ids, ae 2-3:

. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Id., at 4.

i dat 3.

12. Restatement of the Law of Torts, 2d, §291.

135 Id.3§293;

14. Id., §292.

15. See, for example, Osborn v. Montgomery, 203

Wisc. 233, 234 N.W. 372 (1934); United States

v. Carroll Towing Co., 159 F.2d 169 (2nd Cir.

1947).

16. Jenkins, op cit. supra n.3., at 4.

17. 499 F. 2d 467, 474; see also Ethyl Corp v. Costle,

541 F.2d. 1, 26-29. (1976).

18. Ibid.

19. National Academy of Sciences, How Safe is

Safe? The Design of Policy on Drugs and Food

Additives, 1, 2-3 (1974). Dr. Handler’s com-

ments were made in his remarks opening the

forum.

20: S°WSICAY $551) -et'seq:

21. See n. 1, supra, and accompanying text.

22. 21 U.S.C.A. §348(c)(3)(A).

23. Environmental Defense Fund v. Ruckelshaus,

439 F. 2d 584, 598 (1971).

24. Dissenting opinion in People Against Nuclear

Energy v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 678

F. 2d 222, 237-238 (1982).

25. Environmental Defense Fund v. EPA, 489 F. 2d

1247, 1252 (1972).

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 226-227, December 1986

BOOK REVIEW

Philip Sze

Department of Biology, Georgetown University,

Washington, DC 20057

The Encyclopedia of Aquatic Life. Edited

by K. Banister and A. Campbell. Facts —

On File Publications, New York. XXXIII

+ 349 pp. Price $35.00.

My major criticism of this book is its

title, which implies a broader coverage of

aquatic organisms than is delivered. This

is a book about only certain groups of

freshwater and marine animals. In the

preface, the editors explain that amphib-

ians are not included because they only

“return to the water to breed”’ and pin-

nipeds are omitted because they “leave

the sea to breed on land.”’ Plants and bac-

teria also are not covered. I will have

more to say about this later.

The book is intended for a general au-

dience. It is divided into three parts. In

each part, the discussions are organized

around broad taxonomic groupings. The

first part covers freshwater and marine

fishes. The second part surveys inverte-

brates, excluding insects and spiders but,

for some reason, including many parasitic

forms. The third part of the book de-

scribes whales, dolphins and sea cows. At

the start of each chapter, information on

the taxonomy, geographic distributions

and size ranges of each group is summa-

rized concisely in boxes. There is a short

glossary and index at the end.

226

Twenty-eight scientists are listed as

contributors to the book. The editors

have done a good job of maintaining a

consistent style throughout. The text is

relatively free of errors and does not over-

generalize. On the whole, I thought the

parts on fishes and marine mammals were

more successful. I particularly enjoyed in

the first part the anecdotes, such as Julius

Caesar’s interest in moray eels (p. 27)

or how some cyprinds become drunk

by gorging themselves on fermented fruit

(p. 79).

A strong point of the book is its illus-

trations. Most of the photographs and

drawings are in color. They complement

well the text. I often found myself flipping

through the pages simply to look at the

pictures, many of which are stunning.

Without photosynthetic production by

plants, none of the animals in this book

could exist. Plants are an essential part of

freshwater and marine systems, and I

wonder why the editors did not include

them in a book claiming to be an ency-

clopedia of aquatic life. There is only one

short paragraph on marine phytoplankton

in the section on zooplankton (p. 154),

and seaweeds and aquatic angiosperms

are only mentioned incidentally as food

and habitats for various animals. They are

not even given listings in the index. I also

BOOK REVIEW 227

find it inconceivable that seals are not dis-

cussed. A section on pinnipeds should ac-

company the chapters on other marine

mammals.

Because this book does not live up to

its title, I can give it only a qualified rec-

ommendation. Serious amateurs and stu-

dents will find much useful information

on the animal groups that are covered.

The text is very readable and the illustra-

tions outstanding.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 228-236, December 1986

Increased Uptake of Thymidine in

the Activation of Sea Urchin

Eggs: IV. Effects of the

Nucleoside Transport Inhibitor,

Nitrobenzylthiomosine

Nestor M. Shust, Margaret A. Eagan, and David Nishioka*

Department of Biology, Georgetown University,

Washington, D.C. 20057

ABSTRACT

Uptake of thymidine in Strongylocentrotus purpuratus eggs increases greater than 50-

“fold shortly after fertilization. This uptake is inhibitable by nitrobenzylthioinosine

(NBMPR). Binding of NBMPR to surface sites on fertilized eggs is not Na*-dependent.

Binding to parthenogenetically activated eggs in Ca’*-free sea water (OCa’*-SW), how-

ever, reveals a Ca**-dependent component. Measurements of thymidine uptake in OCa’*

-SW also reveal a Ca**-dependent component. Along with its inhibitory effects on thy-

midine uptake, NBMPR exerts inhibitory effects on cleavage and early embryonic de-

velopment.

Introduction

It has long been thought that the overall

activation of the sea urchin egg into de-

velopment starts with structural and func-

tional changes at the cell surface. This

idea follows naturally from observing the

first events of fertilization and led the ear-

liest investigators to advance the “‘perme-

ability theory’’! or to describe fertilization

as a “‘cytolysis of the cell surface.’ Al-

* Author to whom requests for reprints should be

addressed

228

though these descriptions lacked modern

detail, they projected the direction of the

numerous investigations conducted since

then. It is now confirmed that there is a

generalized increase in permeability and

there is a massive reorganization of the

egg surface after fertilization (reviewed

by Giudice’ and Epel*).

Reports from this laboratory °~7 and

numerous other laboratories have con-

firmed that sea urchin eggs exhibit a mas-

sive increase in nucleoside uptake shortly

after fertilization (reviewed by Nishioka

et al.*). This increase provides an exam-

INCREASED UPTAKE OF THYMIDINE 229

ple, among many others, of a functional

change at the egg surface following fer-

tilization (reviewed by Nishioka’). The

physiological role of increased nucleoside

uptake is not readily obvious, since fer-

tilized sea urchin eggs are able to develop

in seawater devoid of nucleosides. Never-

theless, it has long been known that sea

urchin embryos readily utilize exoge-

nously supplied nucleosides in nucleic

acid synthesis.!° The increase may be a

reanimation of a cellular process that was

important during oogenesis when stores

of metabolic precursors need to be ac-

cumulated. Additionally, Pardee et al.",

among others,’~' have noted that in-

creased nucleoside uptake is observed in

virtually all proliferating animal cells, sug-

gesting that it may represent a general

response of mitogenically stimulated

cells.

The rate of nucleoside uptake increases

greater than 50-fold shortly after fer-

tilization? and is concentration depend-

ent,’ temperature dependent,'° Na*-de-

pendent,> and inhibitable by 2,4-

dinitrophenol.'*'’ All of the deoxyribo-

ucleosides and ribonucleosides normally

present in DNA and RNA compete with

the DNA-specific deoxyribonucleoside,

thymidine, for transport sites. The free

pyrimidine and purine bases, the deoxy-

ribose and ribose sugars, the deoxyribo-

nucleotides, and amino acids do not

compete, showing that the specificity of

this uptake lies at the nucleoside level.®

Uptake of thymidine may be turned on

in unfertilized eggs by treatment with low

concentrations of ammonia which by-

passes the Ca’*-requiring egg cortical re-

action and experimentally raises the

intracellular pH. However, when com-

pared with uptake in fertilized eggs,

uptake in ammonia-treated eggs is

stimulated later and to a lower rate. Both

of these deficiencies may be reversed by

a subsequent induction of the cortical re-

action by fertilization or by experimental

treatments with either butyric acid or the

Ca**-ionophore A23187.°* These results

suggest that both the Ca**-requiring cor-

tical reaction and increased intracellular

pH are involved in the turn on of nucleo-

side uptake in fertilized eggs.

In heretofore unrelated studies, nitro-

benzylthioinosine (NBMPR) and various

similar compounds have been shown to

act as potent and specific inhibitors of nu-

cleoside uptake in human erythrocytes'®

and various other mammalian cell-

types.*°-73 In HeLa cells, for example, the

transport mediated component of aden-

Osine uptake was eliminated in the pres-

ence of 5 tM NBMPR, revealing a non-

saturable component of uptake which

might represent simple diffusion.*” HeLa

cells possess sites to which NBMPR binds

reversibly, but with high affinity (K,

about 0.1 nM), and NBMPR occupancy

of these sites results in the inhibition of

uptake of various nucleosides.”

The present study was undertaken to

determine the effects of NBMPR on the

uptake of thymidine in fertilized sea ur-

chin eggs and to determine if NBMPR

exerts any negative effects on the early

development of embryos.

Materials and Methods

Experimental Sea Waters. Artificial sea

water (ASW) was prepared according to

the Woods Hole formula of Harvey:*

0.423 M NaCl; 0.009 M KCl; 0.00927 M

CaCl,; 0.02294 M MgCl; 0.0255 M

MgSO,; 0.00215 M NaHCO;; pH 8.0.

Na*-free sea water (ONa*-SW) was pre-

pared according to the same formula, sub-

stituting choline chloride for NaCl and

KHCO, for NaHCQ;. Ca’*-free sea water

(0Ca**-SW) was prepared according to

the same formula, substituting NaCl for

CaCl, to give a final NaCl concentration

of 0.4323 M.

Procurement of Gametes. Sea urchins,

Strongylocentrotus purpuratus were pur-

chased from Pacific Biomarine Labora-

tories, Inc. (Venice, California) and

maintained at 15°C in Instant Ocean

aquaria containing Instant Ocean syn-

230 NESTOR M. SHUST, MARGARET A. EAGAN, AND DAVID NISHIOKA

thetic sea water. Shedding of gametes was

induced by intracoelomic injection of 0.55

M KCl. Semen was shed directly into Syr-

acuse dishes and maintained ice cold and

undiluted until use. Eggs were shed di-

rectly into ASW, dejellied by agitation,

and allowed to settle through three

changes of ASW at 15°C.

Fertilization and Parthenogenetic Treat-

ment. Fertilization was achieved by add-

ing 0.01 vol of stock sperm suspension (1

drop undiluted semen in 5 ml ASW) to

1% (v/v) egg suspensions in ASW. For

parthenogenesis, a 5.0 mM stock solution

of Ca’**-ionophore A23187 (Calbiochem-

Behring) was prepared in dimethyl sulf-

oxide and added to 1% egg suspensions

to a final concentration of 20 wM. These

procedures resulted in greater than 98%

fertilization and parthenogenetic activa-

tion, as determined microscopically by

the appearance of elevated fertilization

coats.

Measurements of Uptake and Binding.

Uptake of [*H-methyl]-thymidine (ICN,

60 Ci/mmole) and binding of [°H]-

NBMPR (Moravek Biochemicals, 35-37

Ci/mmole) were measured in this study.

Crystalline NBMPR (Aldrich) was used

in inhibition experiments. For measure-

ments of [*H]-thymidine uptake, standard

1% (v/v) egg suspensions were prepared

in the various experimental sea waters

containing 1.0 wCi/ml [*H]-thymidine

and cultured at 15°C with swirling every

5 min. At timed intervals after fertiliza-

tion or parthenogenetic activation, 5.0 ml

samples were removed from the cultures,

placed in 15 ml conical centrifuge tubes,

and centrifuged at 300 x g for 1 min.

After two 5 ml washings with the appro-

priate ice cold sea water, the egg pellets

were suspended in 0.5 ml NCS tissue sol-

ubilizer (Amersham) : H,O (9:1) and

incubated at 50°C for 2 hr. The dissolved

samples were transferred to scintillation

vials with two 5 ml washings of scintilla-

tion fluid (5.0 g PPO, 0.1 g POPOP per

liter toluene). Radioactivity in each sam-

ple was measured with a Beckman LS

7500 liquid scintillation counter. For

measurements of [7H]NBMPR binding,

1% egg suspensions containing 20 nM

[7H]-NBMPR were cultured at 15°C and

stirred continuously at 60 rpm with motor-

driven teflon paddles. At timed intervals

after exposure to [7H]-NBMPR, 2.5 ml

samples were removed from the cultures

and processed as described for uptake of

[*H]-thymidine, except that the sample

pellets received only one wash with the

appropriate ice-cold sea water.

Na*-Free and Ca’*-Free Experiments.

In experiments involving Na*-free or

Ca**-free conditions, the eggs were

washed three times with at least 50 vol

ONa*-SW or 0Ca?*-SW by centrifugation

and aspiration of supernates. In experi-

ments comparing binding under Na*-free

and Na*-containing conditions, two cul-

tures were set up under Na*-free condi-

tions and NaCl was added to one of the

cultures to a final concentration of 50

mM. In experiments comparing binding

or uptake under Ca’*-free and Ca?*-con-

taining conditions, two cultures were set

up under Ca’*-free conditions and CaCl,

was added to one of the cultures to a final

concentration of 10 mM.

Results

Uptake of [*H]-Thymidine

Figure 1 shows the cumulative uptake

of [°H]-thymidine in unfertilized and fer-

tilized sea urchin eggs. Unfertilized eggs

show a low, constant rate of uptake, while

fertilized eggs exhibit a sharp increase 10

min after insemination which begins to

plateau at 80—90 min. The plateau reflects

the exhaustion of thymidine from the me-

dium and demonstrates the extreme ef-

ficiency of this transport system. The

difference in the amounts of uptake

through the first 90 min between unfer-

tilized and fertilized eggs represents a

greater than 50-fold increase in the rate

of thymidine uptake following fertiliza-

tion. These results further confirm earlier

reports from this laboratory.°~*

INCREASED UPTAKE OF THYMIDINE 231

CPM x 10°°

30 60

MINUTES

Fig. 1. Cumulative uptake of [*H]-thymidine (1.0

wCi/ml, 60 Ci/mmole) in unfertilized [LJ] and

fertilized [O] sea urchin eggs. Insemination is at

time 0.

Effects of NBMPR on [?H]-Thymidine

Uptake

To determine the effects of NBMPR on

thymidine uptake in fertilized eggs, the

cumulative uptake of [*H]-thymidine was

measured at 60 min post-insemination in

the presence of increasing concentrations

of NBMPR. Figure 2 shows the reduc-

tions in uptake, and corresponding %

inhibitions, as the concentration of

NBMPR is raised from 0 to 400 pM. Up-

CPM x 10>

NOILIGIHNI %

INEMPA Gm)

Fig. 2. Inhibition of [*H]-thymidine uptake by ni-

trobenzylthioinosine (NBMPR). Cumulative uptake

in fertilized sea urchin eggs exposed to increasing

concentrations of NBMPR was measured at 60 min

post-insemination. Error bars indicate standard de-

viations from the means for three samples measured

at each NBMPR concentration.

take is reduced rapidly to 60% inhibition

between 0 and 100 wM and continues to

fall, although much less rapidly, to 80%

inhibition between 100 and 400 uM.

Binding of |?H|-NBMPR in 0Na*-SW

Since a strict requirement for external

Na* has been reported for thymidine

transport’ and since our results indicate

that NBMPR is an effective inhibitor of

this transport, the binding of [H]-

NBMPR to fertilized eggs was compared

under Na*-containing and Na*-free con-

ditions. For this comparison, eggs were

fertilized in ASW, washed three times

with ONa*-SW, divided into two equal

suspensions, and cultured at 15°C with

constant stirring. At time 0, [7H]-NBMPR

(q.s. 20 nM) was added to one of the

cultures and [7H]-NBMPR (q.s. 20 nM)

+ NaCl (q.s. 50 mM) were added to the

second culture. Figure 3 shows that there

is no significant difference in NBMPR

binding through a 45 min comparison.

Apparently, binding of NBMPR to sur-

face sites on fertilized sea urchin eggs is

not Na*-dependent.

Binding of |?H|-NBMPR in 0Ca’*-SW

When a similar comparison was made

between Ca**-containing and Ca’*-free

ote

cpm x 10%

bg MINUTES

Fig. 3. [7H]-NBMPR binding to fertilized sea ur-

chin eggs suspended in 0Na*-SW [L]] and 0ONa*-SW

containing 50 mM NaCl [O]. Error bars indicate

standard deviations from the means for three sam-

ples measured at each timepoint.

232 NESTOR M. SHUST, MARGARET A. EAGAN, AND DAVID NISHIOKA

conditions, a significant reduction in the

amount of [7H]-NBMPR binding was de-

tected in 0Ca?*-SW. For this comparison,

unfertilized eggs were washed three times

in 0Ca**-SW, divided into two equal sus-

pensions and cultured at 15°C with con-

stant stirring. At time 0, [*7H]-NBMPR

(q.s. 20 nM) + ionophore A23187 (q.s.

20 1M) were added to one of the cultures

and [7H]-NBMPR (q.s. 20 nM) + ion-

ophore A23187 (q.s. 20 uM) + CaCl,

(q.s. 10 mM) were added to the second

culture. Elevation of fertilization coats

was greater than 98% in both cultures.

Figure 4 shows a 50% reduction in [*H]-

NBMPR binding under Ca’*-free condi-

tions through a 45 min comparison. These

results reveal for the first time the exist-

ence of a Ca**-dependent component of

NBMPR binding.

Parthenogenetic activation by A23187

was chosen for these experiments because

the sperm acrosome reaction and fertil-

ization are inhibited in 0Ca**-SW. Ad-

ditionally, fertilization coats fail to harden

in 0Ca?*-SW, making excessive clumping

during transfer of fertilized eggs to 0Ca’*

-SW an operational difficulty.

-4

CPM x 10

5 45

MINUTES

Fig. 4. [7H]-NBMPR binding to ionophore

A23187-activated sea urchin eggs suspended in

0Ca**-SW [HB] and 0Ca’*-SW containing 10 mM

CaCl, [e]. Error bars indicate standard deviations

from the means for three samples measured at each

timepoint.

[°H]-Thymidine Uptake in 0Ca’?*-SW

Since the binding of NBMPR was

shown to be Ca**-dependent, the deter-

mination of whether thymidine uptake is

also Ca**-dependent was made. Unfer-

tilized eggs were washed three times in

0Ca**-SW and divided into four equal

suspensions containing 1.0 wCi/ml [?H]-

thymidine and cultured at 15°C. At time

0, ionophore A23187 (q.s. 20 wM) was

added to one of the cultures and iono-

phore A23187 (q.s. 20 wM) + CaCl, (q-s.

10 mM) were added to a second culture.

The third and fourth cultures were used

as unactivated controls with and without

Ca’**. Figure 5 shows that the stimulation

of thymidine uptake in A23187-treated

eggs under Ca’*-containing conditions is

similar to the stimulation observed in fer-

tilized eggs suspended in ASW (compare

with Fig. 1). Uptake in 0Ca**-SW, how-

ever, is nearly 20% reduced through the

45 min course of the experiment. These

results reveal a Ca?*-dependent compo-

CPM x 10°

MINUTES

Fig. 5. Cumulative uptake of [°H]-thymidine in

sea urchin eggs: unfertilized eggs suspended in

0Ca?*-SW [L]]; unfertilized eggs suspended in 0Ca**

-SW containing 10 mM CaCl, [O]; ionophore

A23187-activated eggs suspended in 0Ca**-SW [Hl];

and ionophore A23187-activated eggs suspended in

0Ca?*-SW containing 10 mM CaCl, [@]. A23187 ac-

tivation is at time 0. Error bars indicate standard

deviations from the means for three samples meas-

ured at each timepoint.

INCREASED UPTAKE OF THYMIDINE 233

nent of thymidine uptake in activated

eggs.

Effects of NBMPR on Early

Embryonic Development

Figure 6a shows a sea urchin embryo

cultured in ASW 6 hr after fertilization.

Development to the sixteen-cell stage and

appearance of a quartet of micromeres

has proceeded normally. Figures 6b and

6c show embryos cultured for 6 hr in ASW

containing 50 wM and 400 ~M NBMPR,

respectively. In the presence of 50 wM

NBMPR, cell division proceeds but the

normal cleavage planes are disrupted and

a definitive quartet of micromeres fails to

appear at the scheduled time. In 400 pM

NBMPR, cleavage is totally inhibited.

These results show that along with its in-

hibitory effects on thymidine uptake,

NBMPR exerts inhibitory effects on

cleavage and early embryonic develop-

ment.

Discussion

In the present study, a drug known to

inhibit nucleoside uptake in many types

of vertebrate cells has been tested on fer-

tilized sea urchin eggs. Nitrobenzylthioi-

nosine (NBMPR) has been shown to bind

to high affinity binding sites on the plasma

membranes of human erythrocytes.*°?’

These sites are present at 1.0-1.5 x 10*/

cell, bind NBMPR with an apparent K,

of 1 nM, and, since inhibition of uridihe

uptake is proportional to the number of

sites occupied by NBMPR, are presumed

to play an important role in the nucleoside

uptake mechanism.’ Although nucleo-

sides can compete with NBMPR for bind-

Fig. 6. Phase-Contrast micrographs of fertilized

sea urchin eggs 6 hr post-insemination in ASW [a],

ASW containing 50 »M NBMPR [b], and ASW con-

taining 400 1M NBMPR [c]. fe = fertilization coat,

m = micromeres, bars = 20 pm.

234 NESTOR M. SHUST, MARGARET A. EAGAN, AND DAVID NISHIOKA

ing sites, Cass and Paterson have

provided a cogent study which suggests

that NBMPR binding sites are different

from nucleoside uptake sites.”

Human erythrocytes are highly differ-

entiated, anucleate cells and, as such,

have lost their abilities to replicate DNA

and synthesize RNA. The ability to me-

tabolize transported nucleosides to the

mono-, di-, and triphosphorylated nu-

cleotides is also lost. On the other hand,

all nucleated, dividing cells, including hu-

man cancer (HeLa) cells” and fertilized

sea urchin eggs,°°~° rapidly metabolize

transported nucleosides. In HeLa cells, it

has been shown that NBMPR is a potent

inhibitor of nucleoside uptake,*” but

that thymidine and uridine kinase activi-

ties in cell extracts are unaffected by

NBMPR concentrations well in excess of

those which block nucleoside transport.”

Apparently, NBMPR does not inhibit nu-

cleoside transport in HeLa cells by inhib-

iting a metabolic coupling of transport

with nucleoside phosphorylation. Rather,

transport is blocked specifically.

Our results show that NBMPR also in-

hibits nucleoside uptake in fertilized sea

urchin eggs, but to a lesser extent than

that shown in other vertebrate cells. For

example, while 5 »M NBMPR is suffi-

cient to completely inhibit nucleoside up-

take in HeLa cells, 400 »M NBMPR is

required to achieve an 80% inhibition of

thymidine uptake in fertilized sea urchin

eggs. Additionally, the inhibition curve

shown in Figure 2 indicates that a signif-

icant portion (ca., 20%) of thymidine up-

take remains insensitive to NBMPR. This

type of inhibition is apparently not limited

to the early cleavage stages of develop-

ment reported here, because virtually

identical inhibition curves have been gen-

erated for 48 hr (late gastrula) embryos

(Eagan and Nishioka, unpublished re-

sults).

Our measurements indicate that [°H]-

NBMPR binds to the fertilized egg sur-

face, but that this binding is not Na*-de-

pendent. Since thymidine uptake has

been shown to be very strictly Na*-de-

pendent, our results can be interpreted as

further evidence in support of the idea

that NBMPR binding sites are different

from nucleoside uptake sites. Both [?H]-

NBMPR binding and [*H]-thymidine up-

take, on the other hand, are shown to be

partially Ca**-dependent in parthenoge-

netically activated eggs. Binding is re-

duced 50% and uptake is reduced 20% in

0Ca’*-SW. This difference can also be in-

terpreted as evidence for separate

NBMPR binding sites and nucleoside up-

take sites. More importantly, Ca’* is

known to be involved in many receptor-

mediated cellular processes and our re-

sults indicate that both NBMPR binding

and thymidine uptake in activated sea ur-

chin eggs may now be added to this list.

The most equivocal aspects of this study

are (1) the extremely high concentrations

of NBMPR required to inhibit thymidine

uptake and (2) the adverse effects it exerts

on early development. The first aspect

questions the specificity of NBMPR in in-

hibiting nucleoside uptake. At the high

concentrations used, does NBMPR in-

hibit all uptake? We have measured the

effects of 100 14M NBMPR on the uptake

of the amino acids leucine, glycine, and

lysine and have observed 20%, 30%, and

35% inhibitions, respectively (unpub-

lished results), so there is in fact some

nonspecific inhibition of uptake, but not

enough to conclude that NBMPR is a

completely nonspecific inhibitor. The sec-

ond aspect questions whether NBMPR in-

hibition of thymidine uptake is a cause or

an effect of the inhibition of cleavage.

What is needed to settle this question are

determinations of the effects of NBMPR

on other post-fertilization metabolic proc-

esses. One such process for which the nec-

essary techniques have just become

available and which should also provide

valuable information about the mecha-

nism of nucleoside uptake, is the phos-

phorylation of transported nucleosides.”

It could be that in fertilized sea urchin

eggs, unlike HeLa cells, nucleoside up-

take is dependent on metabolic coupling

with phosphorylation. Experiments are

INCREASED UPTAKE OF THYMIDINE 235

planned to determine the effects of

NBMPR on the in vivo phosphorylation

of transported nucleosides and the in vitro

activities of the nucleoside kinases in sea

urchin egg extracts.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants

from the National Institutes of Health

(No. HD-19054) and the National Science

Foundation (No. DMB 85-1545) to D. N.

References Cited

1. Lillie, R. S. (1909). The general biological sig-

nificance of changes in the permeability of the

surface layer or plasma membrane of living

cells. Biol. Bull., 17:188—208.

2. Loeb, J. (1913). Artificial Parthenogenesis and

Fertilization. University of Chicago Press, Chi-

cago.

3. Giudice, G. (1973). Developmental Biology of

the Sea Urchin Embryo. Academic Press, New

York.

4. Epel, D. (1978). Mechanisms of activation of

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 237—243, December 1986

SURVIVAL OF MORONE

SAXATILIS IN LOW pH

OLIGOHALINE WATERS

David R. Sager*, L. Curry Woods III, and John N. Kraueter

Crane Aquaculture Facility, P.O. Box 1475, Baltimore, MD 21203

ABSTRACT

The hypothesis that declines in striped bass (Morene saxatilis) stocks are related to acid

deposition in freshwater areas of the Chesapeake Bay estuary has become widespread.

Attention has focused above the freshwater/saltwater interface due to the belief that low

salinity would buffer waters from pH fluctuations.

Continuous water quality monitoring of Seneca Creek waters in the Upper Chesapeake

Bay revealed sustained low pH during 1985, a dry year. Low pH levels were recorded

despite increasing salinity. In April, salinities of <3 ppt were found with pH >7, but by

May pH was <6 while salinities increased to 4 ppt. Low pH (<6) persisted until late

August despite salinity increasing to 6 ppt. Water quality surveys of surrounding embay-

ments revealed isolated pockets of low pH (<6) in Seneca Creek, Middle River and

Gunpowder River. These findings demonstrate that acidic conditions are possible at low

salinities and may be a common occurrence in poorly buffered oligohaline estuaries.

Low pH did not affect the survival of striped bass cultured in the Crane Aquaculture

Facility during 1985. No difference was seen in survival between larvae held in buffered

(pH = 6.2) or ambient (pH as low as 5.3) water. Larvae were exposed to pH <6 at an

age of 19 days with no apparent increase in mortality.

Eight facilities, from five states, contributed striped bass to the Chesapeake Bay Striped

Bass Binary Coded Wire Tagging Project; a cooperative program of the U.S.F.W.S. and

Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The Crane Aquaculture Facility contributed

21.8% of the numbers and 49.8% of the biomass, demonstrating successful production

during 1985. This indicates acid deposition alone is not the major factor in striped bass

declines in oligohaline areas of the Chesapeake Bay.

Introduction

In recent years the concern over the

degradation of biological communities in

estuaries via acid deposition has received

*Present address: University of Maryland, Horn

Point Laboratories, P.O. Box 775, Cambridge, MD

21613

237

attention in both scientific and popular

literature. Attention has focused on pos-

sible pH shifts occurring near the fresh-

water/saltwater interface. Investigators

appear to have assumed the buffering ca-

pacity of oligohaline water would not per-

mit sustained low pH and thus few pH

studies have been conducted below the

238 DAVID R. SAGER, L. CURRY WOODS Ill, AND JOHN N. KRALETER

interface. Data from organically rich

blackwater rivers of the Southeastern

Coastal Plain suggest this assumption is

not valid for all estuaries’.

The toxic effects of acid deposition in

estuaries are thought to be caused by low

pH pulses. These pulses are hypothesized

to have been uncommon and organisms

are thus susceptible to these events. Low

pH has been suggested as one possible

cause for declines of striped bass (Morone

saxatilis) stocks in the Chesapeake Bay.

Larval and juvenile fish are particularly

susceptible to the pulses*°. Reports in

scientific? and popular‘ literature sug-

gested toxic effects of acidification and

aluminum on striped bass and other es-

tuarine organisms. Most studies of pH ef-

fects on striped bass have been conducted

in freshwater? since most culture facil-

ities are situated in freshwater environs.

It has been reported that larval striped

bass survival increases with low salinity’®.

However, studies have not been con-

ducted to determine effects of increased

salinity on the toxicity of low pH.

The Crane Aquaculture Facility uses

ambient oligohaline waters to culture

striped bass. During 1985 sustained low

pH occurred in the nearshore waters sur-

rounding the Crane Facility. The objec-

tive of this publication is to describe this

occurrence and its impact on striped bass

cultured at the facility during 1985.

Methods

The Crane Aquaculture Facility is lo-

cated on Seneca Creek in the Upper

Chesapeake Bay (Fig. 1). This facility has

been operating since the spring of 1983

and utilizes a once-through system to de-

liver a minimum of 1250 gpm of either

ambient water from Seneca Creek or

warmed discharge water from a power

plant for intensive culture of striped bass.

Intake water is continuously monitored

for temperature, conductivity, pH and

dissolved oxygen. During 1985, ambient

Fig. 1. Location of the Crane Aquaculture Facility

at the Crane Power Plant on Seneca Creek and the

stations sampled on water quality surveys.

water was used for the period covered by

this report after discharge canal pumps

were turned off on 29 April.

Continuous water quality monitoring

was conducted using Rexnord Model 3750/

51 pH transmitters with Model 375 sen-

sors, Leeds and Northrup Model 7073-17

Industrial conductivity monitors and Rex-

nord Model 3060 dissolved oxygen me-

ters. Daily pH, dissolved oxygen, tem-

perature and salinity samples were also

taken. Water quality surveys were con-

ducted on nearby embayments of the

Chesapeake Bay after low pH was ob-

served. The daily and survey water quality

readings were taken using glass or plastic

sampling devices, a YSI Model 51B Ox-

ygen meter, a AO hand refractometer, and

a Fisher Model 800 Accumet pH meter.

Selected holding tanks for larvae were

buffered to maintain pH levels above am-

bient waters. Reservoirs of bicarbonate

SURVIVAL OF MORONE SAXATILIS 239

solution were used to maintain a con-

trolled drip of buffer, via pumps, to mix

with incoming ambient waters in the hold-

ing tanks. Other holding tanks received

unbuffered ambient waters for compari-

son of larval survival.

Results

The pH of ambient waters flowing

through Crane Aquaculture Facility de-

creased while salinities increased (Fig. 2).

From April to May pH levels were =7

while salinities were <3 ppt. By the end

of May the pH had dropped below 6 while

salinity increased to 4 ppt. The pH re-

mained consistently below 6 while salinity

increased to 6 ppt by late August, after

which pH levels started to rise.

To document the occurrence of low pH

in the embayments near the Crane Facil-

ity water quality surveys were conducted

at selected stations (Fig. 1). The first sur-

vey, 14 August, found pH levels below 6

Te 28

S ‘ee 6

WE fo2 3 4 Sok 2 304 1 2304S 1 2) 3 4.125558

monm May June July, Aug. Sep

Fig. 2. Weekly averages and ranges for pH, sal-

inity and temperature of intake waters of the Crane

Aquaculture Facility for April-September 1985.

Table 1.—Results of water quality samples taken

in a survey on 14 August 1985. Station locations are

shown on Fig. 1.

Depth Temp Salinity

Station (ft) pH (°C) (%)

3 0 Bie. Be) 6.0

2 ee 28.3 6.0

~ 0 6.8 29.4 6.0

2 6.8 28.1 6.0

3 0 6.7 P42 SP 6.0

2 6.7 28.0 6.0

6 0 6.8 Piss | 6.0

2 6.7 28.8 6.0

a 0 6.0 290A 6.0

2 5.9 28.0 6.0

8 0 Dey, 29.1 6.0

Zz 5.6 28.9 6.0

9 0 79 29.0 6.0

2 59 28.8 6.0

10 0 7.8 28.9 7.0

Ze 7.8 28.0 7.0

11 0 5.8 29.0 6.0

z 7 28.8 6.0

Table 2.—Results of water quality samples taken

in a survey on 19 August 1985. Station locations are

shown on Fig. 1.

Depth Temp. Salinity

Station (ft) pH (€) (%)

1 0 6.8 Zr 4.5

6 6.8 25.0 4.5

2 0 6.8 26.7 5.0

6 9 25.0 5.0

3 0 5.6 26.0 6.0

6 6.5 25.0 6.0

4 0 7.4 26.0 7.0

6 7.4 24.8 TAU

5 0 be 25h 7.0

6 (ss 2S 7.0

6 0 6.7 pS | 7.0

6 7.0 25,2 BS

7 0 6.2 25ik 6.0

6 6.5 24.7 6.5

8 0 6.6 25.0 6.5

6 6.7 25.0 6.5

9 0 6.5 pases. 7.0

6 6.5 24.9 7.0

10 0 RS 26.0 7.0

6 cS 25.8 8.0

11 0 33 pee 6.0

6 5.5 2k 7.0

240 DAVID R. SAGER, L. CURRY WOODS III, AND JOHN N. KRAUETER

on the Gunpowder River, Seneca Creek

and Middle River while a pH of 7.8 was

found in Chesaspeake Bay waters (Table

1). On 19 August pH levels below 6 were

found in the Gunpowder River and Mid-

dle River while bay waters had a pH of

7.3 (Table 2). On 16 September only the

Gunpowder River had a pH below 6 (Ta-

ble 3). A 16 October survey found pH

patterns similar to the 16 September sur-

vey (Table 4). Stations 2 and 3 in Gun-

powder River and 11 in Middle River were

where low pH was most commonly found.

Three separate groups of larval striped

bass were raised in the Crane Aquacul-

ture Facility during 1985. Two groups ar-

rived as one day old larvae on 19 April

and 29 April. The last group arrived as 5 -

day old larvae on 15 May. Some larvae

were held in tanks buffered with sodium

bicarbonate to a pH above 6.2 while am-

bient water pH dropped to 5.3. Larvae of

groups | and 2 were moved from the buff-

Table 3.—Results of water quality samples taken

in a survey on 16 September 1985. Station locations

are shown on Fig. 1.

Temp Salinity

Station Depth pH (°C) (%)

1 Surf. 6.4 20.0 5.0

Bott. 6.3 19.0 6.0

2 Surf. 6.5 20.3 6.0

Bott. aS 19.0 1S

3 Surf. 6.3 20.5 7.0

Bott. G32) 19.3 75

~ Surf. eS ZVSS 8.0

Bott. 7.3 19% 8.0

5 Surf. FO 21.0 8.0

Bott. 7.0 1997 8.0

6 Surf. 6.4 20.0 8.0

Bott. 6.9 195 8.0

ad. Surf. 6.5 20.0 8.5

Bott. 6.5 19% 9.0

8 Surf. 7.0 19.8 8.0

Bott. 6.7 1933 9.0

9 Surf. 6.9 20.0 8.2

Bott. 6.9 1985 9.0

10 Surf. TS 22.0 8.0

Bott. US) PALA 10.0

11 Surf. 6.1 20.4 9.0

Bott. 6.2 19.8 9.0

12 Surf. 76 21.0 8.5

Bott. 6.8 20.0 8.5

Table 4.—Results of water quality samples taken

in a survey on 16 October 1985. Station locations

are shown on Fig. 1.

Temp. Salinity

Station Depth pH (°C) (%)

it Surf. 1S) 18.3 4.0

Bott. 6:5 18.3 5.0

2 Surf. 6.1 18.0 6.0

Bott. Se 18.0 6.0

3 Surf. 7.0 18.0 7.0

Bott. me 18.3 7.0

4 Surf. 7.4 19.0 7.3

Bott. 7.4 18.8 8.0

5 Surf. Toh 18-7 nes

Bott. Ted 18.7 Lo

6 Surf. RA 19.0 8.0

Bott. Fel 18.7 eS

y) Surf. 7.3 1933 8.0

Bott. 15 193 8.5

8 Surf. ie? 19.0 8.0

Bott. To 19.0 8.0

9 Surf. h2 19.0 8.0

Bott. LEB 18.7 9.0

10 Surf. ES 19.0 8.0

Bott. hs 19.0 9.0

11 Surf. 6.1 19.0 8.5

Bott. 6.4 19.0 8.5

12 Surf. 6.7 18.7 8.0

Bott. 6.5 18.7 8.0

ered tanks before ambient pH fell below

6.1 (buffered tanks =6.5). Group 3 larvae

were the eldest held in buffered tanks

(buffered tanks =6.2, ambient tanks =5.3),

until the age of 25 days. Approximately

40% of the striped bass of groups 1 and

2 were held in buffered tanks until 13 May.

Approximately 67% of group 3 were held

in buffered tanks until 4 June. No appar-

ent difference in survival of larvae was

seen between tanks receiving buffered or

Table 5.—Striped bass age at initial exposures to

low pH levels.

Age (Days) at Initial Exposure

pH Group I Group II Group III

Sil) i! 1 8

7.0-6.5 2 3 =)

6.5—6.0 24 15 26

6.0—5.5 28 19 28

5.5-5.0 46 a7 45

<5.0 102 93 78

SURVIVAL OF MORONE SAXATILIS 241

Table 6.—Contributions to the Binary Coded Wire Tagging Project during 1985.

Number of

Facility Fish

Manning (MD) 4723

Crane Aqua. (MD) 40672

Horn Point (MD) 6405

Harrison Lake (VA) 61840

McKinney Lake (NC) 7404

Edenton (NC) 56851

Orangeburg (SC) 3939

Frankfort (KY) 5092

Total 186926

Weight of

Percent Fish (Ib) Percent

25 189* A)

21.8 6977 49.8

3.4 pe as 7,

351 BOS Sips |

4.0 370+ 2.6

30.4 2842+ 20.3

We | 197+ 1.4

a | 1137 0.8

100.0 14017 100.0

*Estimates, personal communication, J. Stringer, MDDNR

**Estimates, personal communication, R. Harrell, Univ. MD.

yEstimates, personal communication, C. Wooley, USFWS

ambient waters. Striped bass were ex-

posed to pH levels below 6.5 at ages of

15, 24 and 26 days, below 6 at ages of 19

(group 1) and 28 days (groups 2 and 3),

and below 5.5 at ages of 37, 45 and 46

days (Table 5). Survival during 1985 was

the best observed for the history of the

facility.

The U.S. and Wildlife Service and the

Maryland Department of Natural Re-

sources established a binary coded wire

tagging project for striped bass stocked

into the Chesapeake Bay. During 1985

eight facilities located in Maryland, Vir-

ginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and

Kentucky produced 186,926 fish for the

tagging Program (Table 6). The Crane

Aquaculture Facility contributed 21.8%

of the number and 49.8% of the biomass

of striped bass tagged (Table 6), indica-

tive of good production during 1985.

Discussion

Occurrence of low pH

The belief that low salinity concentra-

tions sufficiently buffered estuarine waters

to prevent sustained pH shifts has been

proven unjustified by this study. It has

been stated that a salinity of 2-10 ppt

would buffer sufficiently to negate pH

fluctuations’. The ambient waters from

Seneca Creek were found to drop in pH

from above 7 to below 5.5 from April to

June 1985 (Fig. 2). The pH level remained

consistently below 6 from the last week

in May until the third week in August.

As the pH dropped the salinity in-

creased from 2 ppt (April) to 5 ppt (May-

Fig. 2) and some pH sample levels re-

mained below 6 in September even though

salinity increased to 8 ppt. These data show

that low pH levels occur in oligohaline

waters and can exist for extended time

periods.

The cause of the low pH during 1985 is

not known. Four possible mechanisms can

be proposed: 1) freshwater inflow from

the Susquehanna River; 2) acid deposi-

tion from rain; 3) decaying material caus-

ing increased hydrogen sulfide; and 4)

ground water infiltration.

The discharge of the Susquehanna River

at the Conowingo Dam ranged from ap-

proximately 200 to 940 m?/min from April

to August 1985, a dry year, as compared

to 500 to 2760 m?/min for the same period

of 1984, a wet year. This inverse rela-

tionship between river flow and pH elim-

inated major drainage inputs as possible

causes of the observed decline.

Local acid rain can be eliminated by

noting the results of the water quality sur-

veys conducted during 1985 (Fig. 1 and

Tables 1-4). Isolated pockets of embay-

242 DAVID R. SAGER, L. CURRY WOODS III, AND JOHN N. KRAULETER

ments gave pH levels below 6. Stations in

the bay and often upstream of the isolated

pockets gave much higher pH levels (=6.5)

indicating a local, isolated source for the

low pH waters. The relative constancy of

the low pH over long periods also suggests

other mechanisms for its development and

maintenance.

Decomposition of organic material from

local aquatic weed beds and nutrient en-

riched waters could lead to a pH decline

by causing anaerobic conditions and the

release of hydrogen sulfide. We did not

observe low dissolved oxygen in the fa-

cility, but did not measure this parameter

on our surveys. It seems unlikely this

mechanism can explain the low pH.

Groundwater in the region can be -

acidic”’"!. It is possible ground water is

entering at this area, but we did not ob-

serve any decline in salinity of the bottom

waters near areas of low pH. No definitive

answer is available on the cause of the pH

decline. Studies are continuing to gain in-

formation on possible sources of the acidic

conditions.

The low pH during 1985 was not an

isolated occurrence for the area. A study

during 1980, another dry year, reported

low pH in September when pH levels be-

low 6 were found at salinities of 6-7 ppt

in the same areas as the present study”.

The findings of these studies raises ques-

tions about the source and occurrence of

low pH waters in oligohaline reaches of

Chesapeake Bay. Low pH may be more

common than previously thought in poorly

buffered estuarine waters.

Striped bass survival

Despite low pH in the source waters of

the Crane Aquaculture Facility, 1985 was

one of the best years for survival of striped

bass larvae cultured in the facility. The

levels of pH described as toxic in the lit-

erature indicated larvae should not have

survived’. Studies have established that

survival of striped bass larvae is enhanced

by low salinity*’”*°. Low salinity may re-

duce toxic effects associated with low pH

levels.

Larval fish cultured to juvenile stages

in the Crane facility during 1985 arrived

in three groups. Two groups arrived as

one day old post-hatch while the last group

arrived as five day old post-hatch. Ap-

proximately 40% of groups 1 and 2 and

approximately 67% of group 3 were held

in buffered waters. Larvae survived pH

below 6 from ages of 19 (group 1) and 28

days (groups 2 and 3). This is below the

tolerance range cited in the literature*.

The final group of fish were held in water

buffered to pH levels above 6.2 while am-

bient intake waters were as low as 5.3.

No difference was observed between the

larvae cultured in buffered or ambient

waters indicating little, if any, toxic effects

due to low pH.

The fact that 1985 was a good year for

producing striped bass at the Crane

Aquaculture Facility is supported by the

percent contribution the facility made to

stocking efforts through the Binary Coded

Wire Tagging Project (Table 6). Most of

the facilities involved contributed the ma-

jority or all of their production to the tag-

ging project. The Crane Facility’s contri-

bution was 40,672 fish for 21.8% of the

numbers tagged and 49.8% of the biomass

(Table 6). The large biomass (highest of

all facilities) in comparison to the number

(third largest) of fish indicates the excel-

lent condition of the fish produced at the

Crane Facility under low pH conditions

in oligohaline waters.

The pH toxicity studies for striped bass

have been conducted in freshwater be-

cause most spawning occurs in freshwater

reaches of rivers and most hatcheries uti-

lize freshwater sources. Doroshev* found

sudden pH shifts of 0.8 to 1.0 units were

toxic to striped bass larvae in freshwater.

Setzler et al."* listed the pH tolerance range

of larval striped bass (<20 mm) as 6-9 and

a tolerance range for young fish of 6-10.

Hall et al.° speculated that aluminum con-

centrations at a pH of about 6.3 caused

mortalities for larval striped bass in the

Nanticoke River, Maryland. However, the

experimental controls of this study were

maintained at salinities of 1-3 ppt while

the treatments were at 0-0.9 ppt. Since

SURVIVAL OF MORONE SAXATILIS

low salinities enhance survival the results

of Hall et al. may be partially explained

by salinity differences rather than toxic

effects of pH and aluminum. Palawski et

al.'° found low salinity (1 and 5 ppt) de-

creased the toxic effects of several organic

or inorganic contaminants.

It is possible low salinty levels would

alleviate the effects of lowered pH (via

acid deposition or other sources) near

striped bass spawning areas. Striped bass

spawn mainly in the first 25 miles of fresh-

water with good flows’. Eggs and larvae

drift with currents (until larvae are about

5 days old) and many reach oligohaline

areas of the estuary. The saltier areas may

counteract the impacts of acid deposition

that has been hypothesized as the cause

of striped bass stock decreases in scientific?

and popular’ literature. If oligohaline

waters offer refuge for striped bass from

the toxic effects of acid deposition, it is

unlikely that the drastic declines in stocks

could be caused by acid deposition.

More research must be conducted on

the interaction of acid inputs in oligoha-

line waters, especially poorly buffered es-

tuaries, and related toxic effects. The be-

lief that small salinity concentrations will

buffer waters from pH fluctuations is no

longer viable. However, the low salinity

waters may not exhibit the toxic effects

for low pH and contaminants seen in

freshwaters. Research needs to be con-

ducted on the interaction of salinity with

toxicants to answer questions on possible

impacts in oligohaline waters.

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by Baltimore Gas

and Electric Company through its Crane

Aquaculture Facility. We would like to

acknowledge the technical assistance of

Mr. Steve Farkas and Ms. Margie Mc-

Carthy with this project.

References Cited

1. Beck, K.C., J.H. Reuter and E.W. Perdue. 1974.

Organic and inorganic geochemistry of some

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. Doroshey, S.I. 1970. Biological features of the

eggs. larvae and young of the striped bass (Roc-

cus saxatilis) (Walbaum) in connection with

problems of its acclimatization in the USSR. J.

Ichthyol. 10: 235-248.

. Hall, L.W., Jr., A.E. Pinkney, L.O. Horseman

and S. E. Finger. 1985.Mortality of striped bass

larvae in relation to contaminants and water

quality in a Chesapeake Bay tributary. Tran.

Am. Fish. Soc. 114(6): 861-868.

. Boyle, R. 1984. A rain of death on the stripers?

Sports Illustrated 60(17): 40-54.

. Bonn, E., W. Bailey, J. Bayless, K. Erickson

and R. Stevens (eds.). 1976. Guidelines for

Striped Bass Culture. Am. Fish. Soc. Bethesda,

MD.

. Parker, N.C. 1984. Culture requirements for

striped bass. pp. 29-44 In: McCraren, J.P. (ed.)

The Aquaculture of Striped Bass: A Proceed-

ings. Maryland Sea Grant Publ. College Park,

MD.

. Rogers, B.A., D.T. Westin and S.B. Saila. 1982.

Development of Techniques and Methodology

for the Laboratory Culture of Striped Bass, Mo-

rone saxatilis. USEPA. NITS No. PB82-217795.

264 p.

. Freeze, M. 1984. Life history and biology of the

striped bass and striped bass hybrids. pp. 17-28

In: McCraren, J.P. (ed.) The Aquaculture of

Striped Bass: A Proceedings. Maryland Sea

Grant Publ. College Park, MD.

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1964. Water Resources of the Baltimore Area,

Maryland. Water Resources of Industrial Areas.

Geological Survey Water—Supply Paper 1499-

F. U.S. Govt. Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

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Water Aquifers and Mineral Commodities of

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Palawski, D., J.B. Hunn and F.J. Dwyer. 1985.

Sensitivity of young striped bass to organic and

inorganic contaminants in fresh and saline waters.

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Setzler, E.M., W.R., Boynton, K.V. Wood, H.H.

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 244-249, December 1986

Euplotes iliffei n.sp.: A new

species of Euplotes (Ciliophora,

Hypotrichida) from the marine

caves of Bermuda.

Bruce F. Hill

Department of Biology, Georgetown University,

Washington, D.C. 20057

Eugene B. Small

Department of Zoology, University of Maryland,

College Park, MD 20742

Thomas M. Iliffe

Bermuda Biological Station for Research,

Ferry Reach 1-15, Bermuda

ABSTRACT

Euplotes iliffei n.sp., a new anchialine species of Euplotes from the marine caves of

Bermuda is described. E. iliffei has a dorsal interkinetal argentophilic reticulum of the

multiple to complex type with a tendency toward 4 interkinetal polygonal areas. Like

other members of the group of Euplotes that have a frontoventral cirri in pattern I the

VI/2 cirrus is missing. E. iliffei also has a very pronounced notch in the upper border of

the dorsal surface.

Introduction

The limestone platform that makes up

the Bermuda Islands is composed of Pleis-

tocene and recent, marine and eolian

limestones which overlay a mid-ocean

volcanic sea mount. Most of Bermuda’s

caves were formed when sea level lowered

during periods of glaciation as a result of

dissolution by slightly acidic percolating

ground waters. The caves were subse-

quently flooded by marine waters when

EUPLOTES ILIFFEI 245

sea level rose during postglacial periods

(1,2). Extensive horizontal cave passages,

some being more than 2.0 km in length,

have been explored and mapped utilizing

sophisticated cave diving techniques

(3,4).

Recent studies on marine animals in-

habiting these subterranean anchialine

habitats has revealed the presence of di-

verse endemic macro-invertebrate faunas

(5,6,7). However, during these earlier

cited comprehensive cave faunal surveys,

samples containing possible cave proto-

zoa were not collected. Newer studies are

currently examining these same caves for

protozoa, and a rich and diverse anchia-

line ciliated protozoa fauna has been es-

tablished (8). Included among the new

ciliated protozoa are several species of

Euplotes, one of which is described here.

In the literature over 80 species and

varieties of Euplotes have been described

in the last 200 years, many of which are

now considered junior synonyms as re-

viewed by Hill, 1980 (9). Curds (10) in

his 1975 guide to the genus listed 51 dif-

ferent species of Euplotes. In the last few

years several new species have been de-

scribed. Jones and Owen (11) described

E. nana and Ten Hagen (12) character-

ized E. palustris. E. terricola originally

described by Penard (13) is no longer con-

sidered a member of the genus Euplotes

because of the spatial arrangement of the

frontoventral and transverse cirri and the

presence of many left marginal cirri.

Thus, we now consider there to be 52

valid species in the genus Euplotes. This

paper describes the first anchialine spe-

cies of Euplotes (Euplotes iliffei n.sp.)

from the marine caves of Bermuda.

Materials and Methods

Euplotes iliffei n.sp. was collected along

with many other protozoa in Wonderland

Cave. This cave, located in the Hamilton

Parish, Bermuda, was previously known

as Whitby Cave. The cave was open to

the public until the 1940’s when it was

closed as a commercial tourist cave. A

small entrance building gives access to a

steep set of stairs which lead to the first

room of the cave. This large room con-

tains a sea level lake which is about 60 m

long by 12 m wide. A 50 m long under-

water passage connects this room to a sec-

ond smaller air chamber. No known

human-sized passageways connect the

Wonderland Cave system with Castle

Harbour, the nearest body of water which

is 420 m from the inland entrance of the

cave (14).

Ciliated protozoa were collected in the

surface waters of the entrance room of

Wonderland Cave using small protozoan

traps baited with tuna fish (15). At the

time of collection the water temperature

ranged from 20.2°—21.2°C and the surface

salinity was 12%o. E. iliffei was maintained

in Millipore filtered sea water (20%c) with

wheat grains at 20°C after initial isolation

on tuna fish and associated decay bacteria

from the protozoan traps.

For light microscope observations of

cortical ciliary structures and their mor-

phogenesis during cell division, the cells

were Stained by a modification (16) of the

protargol method of Jerka-Dziadosz and

Frankel (17). To demonstrate specific

cortical structures of the argyrome, prep-

arations were made using Corliss’ (18)

modification of the Chatton-Lwoff tech-

nique of silver impregnation. Borror’s ni-

grosin-HgCl,-formalin stain and fixative

(19) was used to observe cortical sculp-

turing. For determining nuclear shape,

the cells were fixed in 2.0% glutaralde-

hyde, washed in distilled water and afixed

to cover slips with Mayer’s albumin and

feulgen stained following the procedures

of DiStephano (20). Drawings were pre-

pared with a Nikon drawing instrument

and the terminology of the ventral ciliary

structures were based upon the topo-

graphical and developmental character-

istics as previously outlined for other

Euplotes species (9,21,22).

246 BRUCE F. HILL, EUGENE B. SMALL, AND THOMAS N. ILIFFE

Results

Measurements. Total body length 90-

115 pm (average 101 wm); body width

70-100 wm (average 85 ym); buccal cav-

ity length 68—88 pm (average 72 pm).

(n = 25).

Body Shape (Figs. 1-5). E. iliffei is a

medium size marine Euplotes with an el-

lipsoidal body shape. The right margin is

more convex than the left with the widest

point being slightly posterior to the equa-

tor of the cell. There is a prominent notch

in the upper border of the aboral surface.

The posterior end is rounded. The buccal

cavity is narrow, extending about % of

the length of the body with the right buc-

cal overture extending from the left most

frontoventral cirrus ventro-laterally in a

convex curve ending at the anterior most

left marginal cirrus. From a mid-point

along the right buccal overture, the buccal

cavity cuts a medial recess that extends

posteriorly to the cytosome. The aboral

zone of membranelle (AZM) extends

along *%3 of the ieft side of the ventral

surface in a prominent convex curve turn-

ing more dextrally near the cytosome.

The AZM archs over the anterior end of

the cell with a thin browlike extension

bordering the AZM antero-dorsally. On

the dorsal surface are 5 prominent single-

edged ridges with the left most sixth ridge

being double-edged. Each of the ridges

are associated with a single kinety. Also

a single kinety is associated with a very

prominent double-edged ridge that sep-

arates the right lateral surface and the

ventral surface. On the ventral surface is

a wide prominent ridge that extends along

Figs. 1-7. Line diagrams of Euplotes iliffei n.sp.

Key: frontoventral cirri ITI/2, I1I/3, 1V/2, 1V/3, TV/

3, V/2, V/3, VI/3, VII/2; PC, paroral cirrus or

cirrus II/1; transverse cirri III/1, 1V/1, V/1, VI/1,

VII/1; right caudal cirri C1, C2; left marginal cirri

LM1, LM2; EC, endoral cilia; AZM, adoral zone

of membranelles; K1—K8, kinetical rows 1 thru 8.

RBO, right buccal overture; LBO, left buccal

overture; PP, peristomial plate; CVP, contractile

vacuole pore; CS, cytostome; Ma, macronucleus;

Mi, micronucleus.

the right side and four small ridges that

extend anteriorly from between the trans-

verse cirri with the most prominent ridge

being between cirri, 1/III and 1/IV. The

contractile vacuole pore is ventral, pos-

terior of transverse cirrus 1/VII.

Surface organelles. (Figs. 1-3). There

are nine frontoventral, five transverse,

two left marginal and two caudal cirri.

The number of frontoventral and trans-

verse Cirri was constant in over 100 spec-

imens and less than 4% variation in the

number of left marginal (1 left marginal

cirrus) and caudal (3 caudal cirri) cirri.

There is a longitudinal group of endoral

cilia in a rectangular field along the pos-

terior part of the buccal cavity. The AZM

possesses 28 to 36 membranelles (average

= 33). The kinetosomes of the dorsal ki-

nety are variable in number and located

in eight kinetal rows (16% of the orga-

nisms have 9 kinetal rows). Kinetal row

number 1 (found on the left ventrolateral

]

Fig. 1. Ink line diagram of the ventral aspect based

on a protargol stained specimen.

EUPLOTES ILIFFEI 247

CASS Ma

Fig. 4. Optical longitudinal-section at t

midpoint of the cell.

surface just to the left of the AZM) is the

shortest row having from 4—10 kinetids of

paired kinetosomes (average 7.3). The re-

maiming kinetal rows are numbered con-

secutively to the cell's nght with an m-

crease modal number of kinetids (row

2, 17-24 (average 18.4): row 3, 18—23

(average 20.6); row 4, 17-24 (average

20.8): row 5, 18—23 (average 20.1): row

6, 16—22 (average 19.1); row 7, 16—21

(average 18.0); row 8, 11—17 (average

13.8))-

Silverline system. In wet-silver Chatton-

Lwoii preparations, the dorsal interki-

netal argentophilic reticulum is of the

multiple to complex type consisting of an

assemblage of polygenes which have a

tendency toward 4 regular rows between

the kinetis. The argentophilic meshwork

on the ventral surface consists of an 1-

regular assemblage of polygones.

Nuclear configuration. (Fig. 6). The in-

terphase macronucleus is usually C

shaped with the posterior end being flat-

tened and more mregular posterior of the

AZM. The micronucleus ts small, nearly

sphencal and located in the upper nght

half of the cell adjacent to the flattened

back of the macronucleus.

Morphogenesis. (Fig. 7). The buccal

and frontal ciliature, with the exception

of the AXM, develop from an orderly se-

nes of cliary streaks labeled with Roman

numerals from the ciliate’s left to nght-.

The endoral cilia develop from streak I

while the paroral cirrus (II/1) from streak

If. The other frontoventral and transverse

cir develop from streaks II-VI. Ajiter

distinct fields of cari have formed for both

the proter and opisthe from the five ong-

inal ciliary streaks each field consisis of

five tramsverse cami (III/1—VIL/1) and

nine frontoventral cm (11/1 (paroral cr-

rus), H/2, 1/3, IV/2, I'vi/3, V/2, V/3.

VI/3 and VII/2). As the new ciliary struc-

tures of the developmg daughter cells mi-

grate to their final position and parental

cum are dedifferentiated and resorbed, an

equatorial cleavage furrow forms that will

result m the cytokinesis.

BRUCE F. HILL. EUGENE B. SMALL. AND THOMAS N. ILIFFE

Di .

There are 22 descnbed species of Ex-

plotes which have a 9 frontoventral ar-

rotype. Fifteen of these species belong to

the type one frontoventral carrotype pat-

tern where cirrus VI/2 1s absent from the

frontoventral arrangement (9.21.23). The

9 marme, 2 euryhaline and 4 freshwater

species that belong to this group all have

a double to complex dorsal argyrome.

Several members of this group have 8 or

fewer frontoventral cm. E. parkei, when

grown in 2 marine environment, is missing

cirrus [V/2 which ts present when grown

in fresh water (24). _E. poljanskyi has eight

frontoventral ami with a cirrus missing

from row V or VI (25). E. raikovi, which

has 7 or 8 cam, is always missing cami Iil/

2 and IV/2:; however m some popula-

tions, cirrus VI/2 is present (25) and m

others, it is only an argentophilic plaque

(21). E. strelkovi has eight frontoventral

cir and six transverse cam which are m

the same cirral pattern as E_ raikovi ex-

cept that an additional crral primordia

streak develops between streaks IV and

V. thus giving rise to the additional fron-

toventral and transverse carn (26). E_ par-

kei and E. elegans are both curyhaline

species while E. affimis, E. gracilis, E.

muscicola and FE. muscorum are all from

fresh water. Both E. parkei and E. affimus

have a double dorsal argyrome silver sys-

tem whereas E. elegans, E. gracilis, E.

muscicola and E. muscorum have a com-

plex dorsal argyrome system where there

are from four to many polygonal areas

within each interkinetal area. E. apsher-

onicus, E. bisuleatus, E. dogieli, E. latus,

E. nana and E. zenkewitchi are all marie

species that have a double argyrome sil-

ver-line system. E. elegans however 1s

smaller both in length (80 pm) and width

(55 um) and has more oral membranelles

(AZM) im it, 40-45. Also in E. elegans

the central kinetics have more dikinetids

(40-45) and the dorsal argyrome has

many more polygonal areas m each m-

terkinetal zone.

EUPLOTES ILIFFEI 249

Seven species of Euplotes have been

described that have the second type of

frontoventral cirrotype pattern where cir-

rus VI/3 is missing. All these species are

from freshwater and have double dorsal

argyrome system. The silver-line systems

have not been described in six undefined

but recognizable species; E. novemcari-

nata, E. rotunda, E. terricola, E. aber-

rans, E. roscoffensis and E. thononensis.

The first three of these species have only

been found in freshwater. E. roscoffensis

has 10 frontoventral cirri while E. aber-

rans has only eight. E. thononensis, a ma-

rine species, is about the same size as E.

iliffei and has 9 frontoventral cirri. How-

ever FE. thononensis has a very pro-

nounced peristomial collar and does not

have a prominent notch in the upper bor-

der of the aboral surface as is seen in E.

iliffei.

E. identatus (28) described from an in-

tertidal pool in Nassau, Bahamas resem-

bles E. iliffei in that it has an anterior

notch in the upper border of the dorsal

surface. However, EF. identatus is smaller

than E. iliffei, has 10 frontoventral cirri

and has a 3 polygonal dorsal interkinetal

silver-line pattern.

Acknowledgments

T. M. Iliffe, who collected the sample,

and described the habitat and for whom

the new species was named, was sup-

ported by National Science Foundation

Grant BSR-8215672. M. van Soeren, R.

Power and D. Gibbons assisted with the

cave collection. B. F. Hill and E. B. Small

identified the protozoa and are the sole

authors of the new species of Euplotes.

The type material has been deposited in

the U.S. National Museum. This inves-

tigation was supported in part by a Na-

tional Science Foundation Grant BSR-

8400616 to J. O. Corliss and E. B. Small.

This paper is Contribution No. 1097 of

the Bermuda Biological Station for Re-

search.

References Cited

1. Bretz, J. H. Bull. Geol. Soc. Am. 71:1729

(1960).

2. Land, L. S., Mackenzie, F. T. and Gould, S. J.

Bull. Geol. Soc. Am. 78:993 (1967).

3. Iliffe, T. M. Underwater Speleology 7(4):46

(1980).

4. Iliffe, T. M. In “Proceedings of the Eighth In-

ternational Congress of Speleology, Bowling

Green, Kentucky, USA. pp. 161-163 (1981).

5. Sket, B. and Iliffe, T. M. Internationale Revue

der gesamten Hydrobiologie 65(6):871 (1980).

6. Iliffe, T. M., Hart, C. W., Jr. and Manning, R.

B. Nature 302:141 (1983).

7. Maddocks, R. F. and Iliffe, T. M. Stygologia

2(1/2):26 (1986).

8. Small, E. B. and Iliffe, T. M. The International

Symposium on the Biology of Marine Caves,

Bermuda Biological Station for Research, Oct.

1-7(1984).

9. Hill, B. F. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of

New Hampshire (1980).

10. Curds, C. R. Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.) Zool.

28:1 (1975).

11. Jones, E. E. and Owen, G. J. Mar. Sci. Ala-

bama 2:41 (1974).

12. Ten Hagen, R. Arch. Protistenk. 123:79 (1980).

13. Penard, E. Etudes sur les Infusories d’eau

Douce. Georg & Cie, Geneva 331 pp. (1922).

14. Bowman, T. E. and Iliffe, T. M. Proc. Biol.

Soc. Wash. 96(2):291 (1983).

15. Small, E. B., Heisler, J., Sniezek, J. and Iliffe,

T. M. Stygolgia. 2(1/2):167 (1986).

16. Hill, B. F. J. Protozool. 28:215 (1981).

17. Jerka-Dziadosz, M. and Frankel, J. J. Proto-

zool. 16:612 (1969).

18. Corliss, J. O. Stain Technol. 28:96 (1953).

19. Borror, A. C. Stain Technol. 43:293 (1968).

20. DiStephano, H. S. Stain Technol. 27:171

(1952).

21. Washburn, E. S. and Borror, A. C. J. Proto-

zool. 19:604 (1972).

22. Ruffolo, J. J., Jr. J. Morph. 148:489 (1976).

23. Gates, M. A. Protistologica 14:125 (1978).

24. Curds, C. R. Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.)

Zool., 27:113 (1974).

25. Agamaliev, F. G. Acta Protozool., 4:169 (1966).

26. Agamaliev, F. G. Cahiers de Biol. Mar., 8:359

(1967).

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12:1 (1960).

28. Carter, H. P. Trans. Amer. Micros. Soc., 91:466

(1972).

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 250-257, December 1986

Mathematics as the Grammar of

Natural History or The Dream

of Pythagoras

G. L. Farre

Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University,

Washington, D.C. 20057

I should like to advance the view that

recent discussions in the philosophy of the

natural sciences have been incomplete, if

not vitiated, by a lack of awareness on the

part of many scholars of what is perhaps

the single most important feature of nat-

ural history, namely its underlying math-

ematical grammar.

I do not intend here to go into any of

the many circumstances to which this sit-

uation may be traced. Still, I should like

to suggest that too exclusive a concern for

the logical side of scientific discourse may

have obscured what is most characteristic

in any descriptive language, what marks

it off from any other having a similar log-

ical structure, namely its own “deep”

grammar. However this may be, the fact

remains that the logical approach, by it-

self, is too narrow to reveal the full scope

of the role played by mathematical gram-

mars in scientific discourse, just as it has

shown itself inadequate in pointing out

some of the significant features of the re-

troductive process as found in scientific

discovery, or in bringing out some of the

factors that play a role in the choice of

particular kinds of explanations, of the

250

sort that Duhem, Hanson or Kuhn,

among others, have brought to light.

Because of the relative lack of famil-

larity with the thesis proposed here, I

have thought it best to have a statement

of it preceded by a brief exposition of the

way in which it actually developed in the

context of mechanics during a period of

approximately four hundred years, with-

out any claim to either completeness or

Originality. The main features of the

grammar will then be easier to appre-

hend, and its import for problems of cur-

rent interest more readily perceived.

Consequently, the paper will be divided

into two main parts, the first of which

presented here, is mostly of a historical

nature, while the second will be exclu-

sively thematic and mostly philosophical.

The first part is given to an account of

the introduction of mathematics as an es-

sential element in the description of na-

ture, from the beginning of the process to

its realization in the context of classical

natural history, that is roughly from the

early fourteenth century to the end of the

eighteenth. The point of it is to see how

certain notions that are important to the

THE DREAM OF PYTHAGORAS 251

thesis of this paper came to be manifested

as inherent in the nature of description.

No pretense is made to either originality

or completeness of historical details, my

purpose being simply to outline in the

briefest fashion the evolution of the role

of this aspect of the language of natural

history.

Part I: The Historical Background

The introduction of mathematics in the

description of nature presents a major

problem, namely that of the quantifica-

tion of what are perceived to be essen-

tially qualitative features. Historically,

this has involved two major moves, one

the quantification of qualities proper, the

other the development of a suitable math-

ematical language for their representa-

tion.

(1) The Quantification of Qualities

The quantification of the qualitative

features of nature was realized in several

Stages:

(a) First came the selection of those as-

pects of nature that were in fact meas-

urable, since these were ipso facto

quantifiable. As a result, these meas-

urable features became fundamental

to the description of nature, and

everything else was to be reduced to,

or analyzed in terms of them. For ex-

ample distances, which could be

measured directly, gave point to the

belief that length is an integral con-

stituent of the intelligibility of nature.

However, color could not be meas-

ured directly, and so could not play

a similar role in the architecture of

nature; at best it would be analyzable

in terms of some fundamental quali-

ties or, this failing, would be ranked

an occult feature of the perceived

world and remain outside the domain

of science”.

Considering further that such magnitudes

were separately measurable, a set of in-

dependent entities was thereby defined,

providing the basic dimensions for the de-

scription of nature.

(b) Another important move had to do

with the representation of each of

these fundamental dimensions, since

the ultimate objective is not simply

to measure individual observables,

but to describe the observed behavior

of nature in terms of its underlying

mathematical structure.

As it turned out, this demanded a con-

ceptual revolution relative to the cultural

context in which the enterprise germi-

nated, leading to such historically impor-

tant distinctions as that between primary

and secondary qualities. It also led to the

abandonment of the view that all quali-

tative changes were essential ones, on the

grounds that otherwise two different de-

grees of a given quality, such as warmth

or whiteness, could not be compared by

means of a common measure, a view

clearly contrary to facts.

Further, the representation of qualita-

tive measurements required a clear un-

derstanding of the way in which discrete

ensembles such as those provided by the

results of measurements, could be embed-

ded in a continuum. This key move was

made by the Franciscan nominalists of the

fourteenth century, more especially by

Mayronnes, who proposed that all de-

grees of quality should be represented in

the classical Greek manner, namely as ra-

tios of two magnitudes having an identical

nature, without need of further specifi-

cation. The positing of this “Principle of

Homogeneity’, needed to compare dif-

ferent magnitudes thus neatly by-passed

all the issues raised by the conflicting

claims of the metaphysicians of the pe-

riod, and thereby provided the first ef-

fective criterion of demarcation”.

That numbers can be represented by

ratios of lines, whether commensurable or

not, had been known long before Aris-

252 G. L. FARRE

totle, going back to the days of the early

Pythagoreans™. It is however the author-

ity of Aristotle that was invoked, if for no

better reason that more reliable ancient

authorities were not generally available to

schoolmen working on these problems.

In any case, the principle of the linear

representation of degrees of magnitude

became established, and was later consid-

erably generalized by N. Oresme, who is

regarded by some as the originator of the

notion of coordinate systems. This claim

is not without its weak points, despite the

impressive array of authorities behind it,

although it must be said that there are

distinguished dissenters as well. One

can argue that Oresme did not have a true

coordinate system in the sense that this

expression has taken in analytical geom-

etry, the only one that matters here. What

Oresme has developed is the principle of

the diagram, or chart, of the sort used to

compare various states of affairs at dif-

ferent times or places, such as steel pro-

duction in different parts of the world, or

shares of a market taken by competing

companies, etc. There are two reasons for

this view. In the first place, the abscissa

(latitude as Oresme calls it) does not func-

tion analytically, nor even as a variable

axis in which the ordinate (or longitude)

does. Secondly, the curve linking the var-

iable altitudes of the ordinates does not

represent a functional dependence of the

two coordinated axes, but is simply a sym-

bolic representation of a qualitative pro-

file, not unlike that of a cameo used in

the manner of the eighteenth century

‘“‘physionomistes”’ to represent the kinds

of features thought to be symptomatic of

different human types (e.g. the musician,

mathematician, criminal, etc). In such

diagrams, the profile of the ordinates is

used as an instrument of identification

rather than as an expression of an internal

structure which would characterise the

phenomenon. The difference is crucial,

and it would take nearly another two

hundred years before the notion of a func-

tion appeared with Viete in the context

of algebraic theory. It would take even

longer before Descartes could introduce

true coordinates, needed both for the an-

alytical reduction of geometrical curves

and for the application of mathematical

functions to the observable features of or-

dinary experience®.

(2) The Development of

Algebraic Geometry

The next important step has to do with

the actual development of mathematics

beyond the level of achievement attained

by the ancient Greeks and by the Arabs,

the knowledge of which was transmitted

to medieval Europe through translations

systematically undertaken in Sicily and in

northern Spain under various aegises™).

This too would amount to a conceptual

revolution. The reason being that the

Greeks had a synthetic type of geometry,

meaning a geometry without algebraic

substructures, so that the geometrical fig-

ures had to be operated on directly rather

than through the mediation of analytical

instruments“, Another aspect of this

revolution is traceable to the fact that the

algebra of the Arabs was, at best, nu-

merical or directly representative of geo-

metrical magnitudes, with the consequent

emphasis on the special case under study,

rather than on the more general consid-

erations we associate today with the no-

tion of an algebra“.

The revolutionary developments that

were to follow during the Renaissance,

up to and including the seventeenth cen-

tury, took place in three logically distin-

guishable stages. First came _ the

development of analysis by Viete, then

the development of analytical geometry,

more difficult to attribute to any one

writer, and last the application of the

methods of algebraic analysis to the study

of geometry analytically articulated in

terms of coordinates. This last step can

be fairly attributed to both Fermat and

Descartes, who worked independently on

this, although Descartes is rightly consid-

ered the more important of the two in this

particular respect, and usually given the

THE DREAM OF PYTHAGORAS 253

official paternity of the new geometry.

In as much as the decisive steps that trans-

formed the synthetic geometry of the

Greeks into the analytical geometry of

Descartes are difficult to imagine without

the prior availability of the notion of func-

tion), and since, in point of historical

fact, it followed its appearance by nearly

half a century, it is best to begin with the

work of F. Viete (1540-1603).

(a) The Development of Analysis

Viete began innocently enough by sys-

tematically replacing all the magnitudes

ordinarily found in the numerical algebras

inherited from the Arabs by letters, re-

serving vowels for the unknowns“). This

simple move, systematically carried out,

had momentous consequences. It re-

vealed for the first time, in a conspicuous

if not always in a perspicuous way, the

existence of algebraic sentences as math-

ematical objects of a new kind, heretofore

hidden from view by the particular mag-

nitudes that were in evidence in the tra-

ditional notations. By taking away the

magnitudes of the ancient geometers and

algebraists, Viete came to the realization

that ‘numerical algebra’ was no longer the

right name for what he was doing and

changed it, first to ‘algebra speciosa’, and

later to the more aptly descriptive expres-

sion of ‘analysis’, a name that has been

retained to this day”.

Viete’s move had two major conse-

quences. In the first place, it gave prom-

inence to the notion of a variable as a sign

made to represent any one of a number

of individuals of a certain kind, by em-

phasizing the roles they play in the sen-

tence. The sentence resulting from the

substitution of letters for magnitudes is

itself a variable, namely a sentential form

that may be shared by countless algebraic

expressions, a matrix of possible struc-

tures®, Secondly, Viete’s move made ov-

ert for the first time the existence of a

fundamental difference between the two

kinds of variables: those whose values are

determined directly by reference to a

range of individuals, and those whose val-

ues result from the determination of the

former. In the first case, we have inde-

pendent variables, and in the second, de-

pendent ones.

For instance, the algebraic expression

‘f(xy): ax + by + c’ isa complex expres-

sion made up of simple elements, the

letters (the individual vowels and

consonants), and the syncategorematic

signs which symbolize the sort of relation

that the letters bear to one another. In

this manner, the distinction between the

sentential form proper, which is depend-

ent on the nature and arrangement of its

' parts, and its elements is immediately ap-

parent: it represents clearly the relation

between the function (the dependent var-

iable) and its arguments (the independent

variables). In this sense, the algebraic

expression may be said to be “‘perspi-

cuous”’: it shows what it says”).

Two things are implicit in the depend-

ence of the function on its arguments:

first, a value being determined in the do-

main of each individual variable, a well

formed sentence results having the same

form (grammatical structure) as that of

the dependent variable. Second, all in-

dependent variables save one being fixed

in some manner, the resulting sentential

form may be used to “pick out” the value

of the remaining variable, thereby exhib-

iting the fundamental relation that exists

between the dependent variable, which

has sense, and its independent elements

which refer to elements of the domain of

interpretation”®.

(b) The Development of Analytical Geometry

Analytical geometry may be defined as

the study of geometrical figures consid-

ered as loci of points bearing some char-

acteristic relation to other loci or axes.

Defined in this manner, analytical ge-

ometry originated with the Greeks, and

more particularly with Apollonius of

Perga, although some have traced it much

earlier, to Aristaeos”).

The original impetus for this sort of ap-

254 G. L. FARRE

proach may well have been the produc-

tion of curves by mechanical means, that

is to say by moving points constrained in

some characteristic manner. Yet it does

not appear that the Greeks extended this

analytical approach to the whole of ge-

ometry, although it was applied to a num-

ber of important problems, such as those

of the so-called ‘solid loci’ (the conics),

and somewhat systematized, witness Pap-

pus of Alexandria’s ‘“Treasury of Analy-

sis’),

It is only with the greater dissemination

of Pappus’ work following the invention

of printing, that the analytical method

begins to be used in earnest by the geo-

meters of the sixteenth century, and ap-

plied to problems that had, up to then,

fairly resited solution, as well as to new

problems of increasing complexity”.

Once it was clearly perceived that geo-

metric figures were loci defined in relation

to axes (straights) or to foci (points), the

implication of the work done by Viete in

algebraic analysis could not for long es-

cape the more perceptive of the new geo-

meters, beginning with Viete himself).

From that time on, the development of

analytic geometry becomes inseparable

from that of algebraic geometry until,

with the work of Fermat and Descartes,

the two cease to be distinguishable. It is

best therefore to pass now to the consid-

eration of analytical geometry in its al-

gebraic form.

The expression ‘algebraic geometry’ is

meant to apply specifically to the appli-

cation of the new methods of Viete’s anal-

ysis to geometrical problems considered

in the analytical manner mentioned

above, and originally found in the works

of Pappus of Alexandria®).

Despite some early work in this area

by Viete, and further extensive investi-

gations by Fermat, it is only with the pub-

lication of Descartes’ “‘Geometrie”’ in

1637 that algebraic geometry comes into

its own). There are several reasons for

this.

The first one is a consequence of the

systematic introduction of coordinates to

refer to any point in space. For example,

in 3-space, a point P will be identified

by means of a triad of numbers (x;, x,

x3) in an expression such as P(x,, x2, x3).

This move resulted in the effective arith-

metization of space, and although Des-

cartes made use of it mostly to analyze

curves in two dimensions, the principle

was acquired that geometric space pro-

vides the algebraist with a natural domain

of interpretation for coordinated sets of

numbers.

The second reason, the result of various

steps, including the abandonment of the

principle of homogéneity first introduced

by F. de Mayronnes, later modified by

Viete and used in that form by Fermat®,

is that Descartes took seriously functions

which up to then had been considered to

be indeterminate, and therefore of no

geometrical significance®?. To be more

specific, Descartes looked upon functions

in two unknowns, of the form F(x, y) =

0, as algebraic expressions of loci of points

whose coordinates, represented by x and

y, were constrained in their independent

variations by the relation symbolized by

the function F(x, y). This enabled Des-

cartes to give an algebraic treatment of

the solid loci, i.e. of the conics of Pappus,

which, it will turn out, are the only paths

allowed by the inverse square law of cen-

tral force operative in the cases studied

by Kepler and by Galileo, and later re-

duced by the gravitational hypothesis of

Newton.

These two reasons, more than any

other factor, opened up an entirely new

field of inquiry, namely rational mechan-

ics, and for the first time provided the

natural philosopher with the grammatical

means to develop a science along the lines

first laid down by the Pythagoreans, and

imperfectly exemplified in the works of

the ancient masters, Euclid, Archimedes

and Ptolemaos, in which physical nature

was described in terms of its assumed un-

derlying mathematical structure.

The subsequent development of ana-

lytical geometry proper lie outside the

THE DREAM OF PYTHAGORAS 255

area of our immediate concern since it

had little impact on the language of phys-

ics, at least in the period of the so-called

“scientific revolution’°”. Of greater in-

terest is the development of more pow-

erful methods of analysis by Newton and

Leibniz. Their importance for the study

of geometric curves can be traced to the

considerable expansion and refinement of

the means of effecting the transformation

of functional expressions into new forms

by applying rules of great simplicity.

These analytical means resulted in very

sensitive instruments for the determina-

tion of the properties of curves, including

their curvatures, torsions, discontinuities,

their behavior in the neighbourhood of

points of singularity, etc. These are of in-

terest to physical scientists concerned

with the paths of particles, with the equi-

potential surfaces and the gradients of

force fields, with the properties of fluids

at rest and in motion, as well as with the

fitting of experimentally determined

points onto a suitable curve). They also

provided tools for the study of bodies,

both rigid and deformable, that was to

revolutionize celestial mechanics no less

than the physics of matter. It is sufficient

to evoke the great names of Euler, the

Bernouillis, Maupertuis, Lagrange, Ham-

ilton, Carnot, Clausius, Gauss, Maxwell,

Fourier, among so many others, to realize

the extreme fecundity of the new analyt-

ical methods, and the scope of their ap-

plications.

There is yet another feature of the new

analysis that ought to be mentioned be-

cause of the importance it had for the

realization of an old ideal of the ancient

Pythagoreans and of their spiritual heirs

who made the scientific revolution, that

of describing nature in terms of its as-

sumed underlying mathematical struc-

ture.

Mention has been made of the fact that

the new analysis is distinctive, compared

to the older mathematics, by the means

it provides for the transformation of

mathematical sentences while preserving

their truth conditions. Such transforma-

tional properties make it possible for one

to explore and describe in a more explicit

and perspicuous manner those properties

of the functions under study that are of

particular interest in a given context. La-

grange would use these transformational

properties to weave a continuous web of

syntactical relations as the fundamental

grammar of a new language for the de-

scription of the behavior of particles, a

rational mechanics and, by way of exten-

sion, a language for the physics of motion.

He was quite aware of the importance of

the resulting interconnectedness of the

different sentences of the language and

was moved to claim, with some satisfac-

tion, that one would not find a single geo-

metrical diagram in his whole mechanics,

but only the equation of the new analy-

sis@). In his ‘““Mechanique Analytique’’,

Lagrange strove to make apparent the de-

rivational nature of the language, and by

its means, the axiomatic and deductive

character of the science of mechanics in

a way that neither Archimedes nor New-

ton could. He did this by reducing the

multiplicity of laws to a very few mathe-

matical principles, the most important of

which was the so-called “‘principle of vir-

tual forces’. As a result, for the first time,

the sentential form of the laws was made

to depend explicitly on that of the as-

sumptions, giving these the status of an-

cestral relations in the new genetic

process of sentence formation®”.

This represents a significant develop-

ment in the evolution of the language of

science, the ‘““Mechanique” being the first

modern and rigorous treatment of this

fundamental discipline. Indeed, there is a

greater discontinuity in this respect be-

tween the works of Lagrange and those

of Newton than that which exists between

the latter and Archimedes’ works, while

contemporary treatments hardly differ

from Lagrange’s on that score. And thus

the full scope and import of the mathe-

matization of the descriptive language of

science is revealed. It is that mathematics

provides the fundamental web of relations

in terms of which physical reality is

charted, and its essential properties made

apparent. In this manner, mathematics

256

G. L. FARRE

appears, for the first time at the end of

the eighteenth century, not simply as a

tool for the quantification of observables,

nor as a kind of short hand to help classify

natural phenomena, though it does all

those things. But also, and more impor-

tantly, as constitutive of the very structure

of these phenomena. By way of conse-

quence, it also appears as the grammar

descriptive of the structure of the reality

it is said to mirror. This notion will be

attended to in the second part.

. F. de Mayronnes:

References Cited

A. C. Crombie: “Quantification in Medieval

Science’, Isis 52 (1961), 145-146.

E. Sylla: “Medieval Quantifications of Qual-

ities: the ““Merton School” Archives for the His-

tory of the Experimental Sciences 8 (1971),

9-39.

Cf also, on Newton’s failure to come up with

an observationally acceptable theory of color

composition, J. Losee: “A Historical Introduc-

tion to the Philosophy of Science” (Oxford,

1972), 87.

. P. Duhem: “Le Systeme du Monde” (Paris,

Hermann, 1913-1859), 6, 451 ff.

“In primum Sententiarum

Scriptum Conflatus Nominatum’’, Dist. xviii,

quaest. ii, art.i. Quoted in Duhem: Op. Cit., 7,

512-513.

ia 8 oti er “Paugmentation [d’une qualite]

se fait necessairement a l’aide des choses en

lesquelles, necessairement se resout ce qui a ete

augmente; or ceci se resout en parties homo-

genes, c’est ce que montre la division de la ligne,

qui est une resolution; il faut donc que, de meme

facon, l’accroissement d’intensite se fasse par le

moyen de degres”’ (emphasis added).

M. Clagett: ‘“‘Nicole Oresme and the Medi-

eval Geometry of Qualities and Motions” (Uni-

versity of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 165-167.

A. C. Crombie: “Augustine to Galileo: the

History of Science, AD 400-1650” (Harvard

University Press, 1953), 259. In the latter edi-

tion of this work: “‘Medieval and Early Modern

Science” (Harvard U.P., 1963), Vol. 2, 86.

D. J. Struick (ed): ““A Source Book in Math-

ematics, 1200-1800”, 76-77

D’Alembert was to make a similar point, but

in the context of a fully developed notion of

analytical function of two variables, where it is

no longer objectionable. Cf. d’Alembert:

“Traite de Dynamique” (Paris, 1743), vij—viij;

16n (in the 1796 ed). Similarly, J. L. Lagrange

in his ‘““Traite des Fonctions Analytiques” (Paris

1813), 316-317.

4. T. Heath: ““A History of Greek Mathematics”,

13.

. E. Grant:

oe me Fe Coolidge:

Vol. I, 84-91. The discovery of irrational num-

bers, in connection with that of the incommen-

surability of the diagonal of the square in

relation to any of its sides is generally attributed

to the school of Pythagoras.

. M. Clagett: ““The Science of Mechanics in the

Middle-Ages” (University of Wisconsin Press,

1961), 333.

M. Schramm: “Aristotelianism: Basis and

Obstacle to scientific Progress in the Middle-

Ages: some Remarks on A. C. Crombie’s “Au-

gustine to Galileo”, History of Science 2 (1963),

91-113.

. F. Cajori: “‘History of Mathematics” (New

York, 1938), 127.

M. Clagett: ““The Science of Mechanics. . .”,

333 ff.

J. L. Coolidge: “A History of Geometrical

Methods” (Oxford, 1940), 118.

P. Duhem: Op. Cit., 7, 463-583. Cf espe-

cially 534 ff.

. A. Maier: “Zwei Grundprobleme der Scholas-

tischen Naturphilosophie” (Roma, 1958), 97 ff;

102 ff

-o-: “An der Grenze von Scholatik und Na-

turwissenschaft” (2nd edition, Roma, 1952),

289-384

-o-: ““‘La doctrine de N. Oresme sur les Con-

figurationes intensionum” Revue des Sciences

Philosophiques et Theologiques, 32 (1949),

52-57

A. C. Crombie: “Augustine to Galileo, . . .”,

260 ff.

. A. Maier: “Zwei Grundprobleme. ... . 104.

A. Royston: “A note on the history of the

graphical representation of data” Biometrika,

43 (1956), 241-247. Reprinted in Studies in the

History of Statistics and Probabilities” (E. S.

Pearson and M. G. Kendall, eds) (Hafner,

1970), 173-181.

“Physical Science in the Middle-

Ages” (New York, J. Wiley, 19 ), 13-17

A. C. Crombie: “From Augustine to Gali-

lear) 3<°":/28=30-.

“A History of Geometrical

Methods”, viij, 127.

. J. L. Coolidge: Op. Cit. 32

. M. S. Mahoney: “The Mathematical Career of

Pierre de Fermat”’ (Princeton University Press,

1973), 72 ff.

J. L. Coolidge: Op. Cit. 126-128.

Some scholars, such as Coolidge (Op. Cit.,

119), would make analytical geometry in this

sense go back to Menaechmus. However one

may view this, it does not materially affect the

picture proposed here, which is a simple sketch

of the moves that were de facto influential in

the process of mathematization of physical sci-

ence at the time of the scientific revolution.

These two sides of the history of mathematics

are different, and should not be conflated.

14.

15:

16.

18.

19.

20.

Zi.

222s

AGING AND COGNITION 257

I say ‘“‘systematically replaced”’ since the spotty

and sporadic introduction of letters for some

special purpose antedates Viete by nearly a mil-

lenium, if not more. The importance of Viete

lies in the fact that he did it systematically. Cf.

F. Cajori: “History of Mathematics’’, 139.

D.J. Struik: ‘““A Source Book in Mathematics,

1200-1800”, 75.

L. Wittgenstein: ““Tractatus Logico-Philosophi-

cus” (London, Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1922),

roa

G. Frege: “What is a Function?” in: “Trans-

lations from the philosophical writings of G.

Frege” (Oxford, Blackwell, 1952), 107-116.

The existence of referents is not a foregone con-

clusion, and may have to be demonstrated. Cf.

e.g. G. Frege: “The foundations of Arithmetic”

(Oxford, Blackwell, 1953), 107-108.

T. Heath: ““A History of Greek Mathematics”’

(Oxford, 1921), Vol. I, 438; Vol. 2, 118-119.

T.Heath: Op. Cit., 2, 399 ff.

A. C.Crombie: “Augustine to Galileo... .”,

281

F. Cajori: “History of Mathematics’, 142

J. L. Coolidge: Op. Cit., 125-126

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 257-260, December 1986

24. Cf. e.g. A. D. Aleksandov, A. N. Kolmogorov,

M. A. Lavrent’ev: ‘““Mathematics” (Moska,

1956). English trans.: S. H. Gould and T. Bar-

tha: (MIT, 1963), I, 184-186.

25. F. de Mayronnes, quoted in P. Duhem: Op. Cit.,

felis

J. L. Coolidge: Op. Cit., 126.

D. J. Struick: Op. Cit., 150.

26. J. L. Coolidge, Ibid.

A. C. Crombie: “Augustine to Gali-

Co EEE 88

27. The advent of non-Euclidean geometries in the

nineteenth century was to have a major impact

on the subsequent development of field theo-

ries, and especially on that of geometrodyn-

amics, beginning with Einstein’s general theory

of relativity. Cf. e.g. J. A. Wheeler: ‘““Geome-

trodynamics’’, Italian Physical Society. Aca-

demic Press NY, 1962.

28. Cf. infra

29. J. L. Lagrange: “Mechanique Analitique”

(Paris, 1785), preface.

30. S. Bochner: “The Role of Mathematics in the

Rise of Science” (Princeton University Press,

1966), 139

Aging and Cognition: What Is

Saved and What Is Lost?

Darlene V. Howard

Georgetown University

As people grow older, they notice ap-

parent declines in their own mental func-

tioning, and there is remarkable similarity

across people in the particular changes

reported. Almost everyone notices in-

creased word- and name-finding prob-

lems, encountering more and more often

those frustrating situations in which a

258 DARLENE V. HOWARD

well-known word or person’s name is

on the tip-of-the-tongue, but not quite

speakable. Very common, too, are re-

ports of difficulties in learning the names

of new acquaintances or remembering

mundane details, such as what one meant

to buy at the grocery store. Such apparent

cognitive declines present only half of the

story, however, because there are other

abilities that appear to improve or, at

least, remain constant. For example, ag-

ing people rarely complain of losing ‘“‘old”’

memories of the distant past; memories

of one’s first love or the meaning of an

encountered word are unlikely to fade in

old age.

For the last eight years or so, my un-

dergraduate assistants and I have been

applying the theories and methods of cog-

nitive psychology (cf. Howard, 1983a) to

the study of human aging. The broad goal

has been to differentiate those aspects of

cognition that change in the course of nor-

mal aging from those that do not. Al-

though emphasis in the past has usually

been on what is lost, investigating what is

saved as well provides a more accurate

theoretical account of cognitive aging. In

addition, knowing what is saved might

make it possible to help elderly people

tap such abilities to compensate for what

is failing. Finally, knowing what is saved

in normal aging provides a baseline for

distinguishing it from pathological aging.

For example, early detection of Alz-

heimer’s Disease would be more accurate

if we could find an ability that remains

intact in normal aging, but is lost in the

early stages of the disease.

Looking up or “‘activating”’ word mean-

ing. Our first studies of aging (Howard,

Lasaga, & McAndrews, 1980; Howard,

McAndrews, & Lasaga, 1981; Howard,

1983b) were motivated by influential

processing-deficit theories which sug-

gested that the memory difficulties that

accompany normal aging are due to a de-

cline in the extent to which people look

up or “‘activate” in memory the meaning

of words they encounter, a process that

is often called semantic activation. This

seemed a reasonable hypothesis, because

itis clear that among young adults at least,

one of the best predictors of whether or

not a person will remember having en-

countered a given word in a study list is

the extent to which the person looked up

the meaning of the word in memory. For

example, people are much more likely to

recall that the word “dog”? was encoun-

tered earlier if they had to make a se-

mantic judgement about the word during

study (i.e., Is this an animal?) than if they

had made a sound-based judgment (i.e.,

Does this rhyme with fog?). Thus, proc-

essing-deficit theory proposed that el-

derly adults are less likely than young to

look up meaning spontaneously, and this

leads them to have poorer memory.

However, by using more direct meth-

ods than had heretofore been applied to

aging, we were able to show that the same

elderly people who suffer memory deficits

when compared with younger people are

not deficient in semantic activation. One

kind of evidence for this comes from our

finding that semantic priming effects are

just as large among elderly as young peo-

ple. Semantic priming refers to the fact

that processing a given word facilitates

(i.e., primes) subsequent processing of a

semantically related word. For exampie,

if people are asked to make speeded de-

cisions about whether or not a string of

letters is a word, they make an affirmative

decision to the string “dog” more rapidly

if they just saw the word “cat” than if

they just saw the word “‘sew.”’ Thus, even

though people were not asked the mean-

ing of the words, we can tell that they

have looked it up nonetheless, since the

meaning is influencing their response

times. The fact that elderly people show

semantic priming effects equal to young

people—even though these same elderly

people are much poorer than the young

at later remembering the words (e.g.,

“dog, sew’’) about which they made de-

cisions—places constraints on any form

of processing-deficit theory. In fact, sub-

sequent research (Nebes, Martin, &

Horn, 1984) at the University of Pitts-

AGING AND COGNITION 259

burgh has shown that such semantic ac-

tivation remains intact even among those

suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

The speed of mental processes. In sub-

sequent research we have found that al-

though there is age-constancy in the

likelihood that meaning will be looked up,

there is a decline with age in the speed

with which this is accomplished (Howard,

Shaw, & Heisey, 1986). This conclusion

comes from studies in which we vary the

duration between onset of a prime word

(to which the person need make no re-

sponse at all) and onset of a target word

about which a speeded lexical decision

must be made by responding “‘yes”’ if the

target is a word and “no” otherwise. We

find that young adults reveal semantic

priming at intervals between the prime

and the target as short as one-sixth of a

second, but elderly individuals require

longer durations in order for the meaning

of the prime word to influence response

time to the target. This suggests that with

normal aging there is a slowing in the

speed with which word meaning can be

activated from memory. This slower se-

mantic activation could contribute to the

difficulties some elderly people experi-

ence in both remembering and under-

standing language. For example, in

normal conversation, speech is usually

rapid and often unclear (a fact that be-

comes obvious when we listen to people

converse in a foreign language). Rapid

semantic activation helps people to deal

with this ambiguity by enabling them to

use semantic context quickly (and often

unconsciously) to determine what is likely

to occur next. Any age-related slowing in

the speed of such activation would make

it difficult for the elderly person to com-

prehend rapid speech, particularly when

coupled with the sensory deficits that ac-

company advancing age.

Explicit and implicit memory. Our most

recent work calls attention to the poten-

tial importance of the distinction between

measures of explicit versus implicit mem-

ory. Tests of explicit memory require a

conscious report of remembering, and so

tap what has been called memory-with-

awareness. In contrast, tests of implicit

memory do not require such an intro-

spective report and are said to tap mem-

ory-without-awareness. To illustrate, peo-

ple might be asked to study a list of words.

Explicit memory for the words could be

assessed via the usual recall and recog-

nition tasks; people would be asked,

‘What words occurred in the list you just

studied?” or “Did this word occur in the

list you just studied?” In contrast implicit

memory might be tapped by presenting

word fragments (e.g., STU ) and

asking people to complete them in the

first way that comes to mind. Finding that

people are more likely to complete the

above fragment with “DENT” if they

have just studied the word STUDENT

than if they have not would provide evi-

dence of implicit memory. Extensive re-

search has shown that amnesia patients

often reveal completely normal implicit

memory even when their explicit memory

is severely impaired (cf. Schacter, 1985).

Despite this evidence that implicit and ex-

plicit memory act differently, most pre-

vious research on normal aging has relied

solely upon explicit measures.

In our most recent work (Howard,

Heisey, & Shaw, 1986; Howard, in press)

we have been comparing the aging of im-

plicit and explicit memory. We are finding

tht even when explicit tests yield large age

differences favoring young adults, im-

plicit tests of memory for the same ma-

terial often reveal age equivalence.

Although we are only beginning this

work, it is clear already that more of

memory functioning is saved in normal

aging than explicit tests reveal. This pre-

sents the empirical challenge of compar-

ing implicit and explicit memory more

fully, the theoretical challenge of deter-

mining how this distinction can be built

into models of cognition and aging, and

the practical challenge of determining

whether there is any way in which people

can learn to tap these unconscious mem-

ories to help compensate for failing ex-

plicit memory.

260 DARLENE V. HOWARD

Summary. We have been working in the

relatively new field of cognitive geron-

tology, applying theories and methods of

contemporary cognitive psychology in an

attempt to differentiate those mental

processes that change in the course of nor-

mal aging from those that do not. We find

that although there is age constancy in the

tendency to look up the meaning of en-

countered stimuli, there is a decrease with

age in the speed with which this is accom-

plished—a slowing that likely affects both

remembering and comprehending lan-

guage. We also find that implicit memory

tests indicate that much more of memory

is saved than the more frequently used

explicit tests have revealed.

References Cited

Howard, D. V. (1983a). Cognitive Psychology:

Memory, Language, and Thought. New York:

Macmillan.

Howard, D. V. (1983b). The effects of aging and

degree of association on the semantic priming of

lexical decisions. Experimental Aging Research,

9, 145-151.

Howard, D. V. (In press). Aging and memory ac-

tivation: The priming of semantic and episodic

memories. In L. L. Light & D. M. Burke (Eds.),

Language, memory, and aging. Cambridge Uni-

versity Press.

Howard, D. V., Heisey, J. G., & Shaw, R. J. (1986).

Aging and the priming of newly learned associ-

ations. Developmental Psychology, 22, 78-85.

Howard, D. V., Lasaga, M. I., & McAndrews, M.

P. (1980). Semantic activation during memorv en-

coding across the adult lifespan. Journal of Ger-

ontology, 35, 884-890.

Howard, D. V., McAndrews, M. P., & Lasaga, M.

I. (1981). Semantic priming of lexical decisions in

young and old adults. Journal of Gerontology, 36,

707-714.

Howard, D. V., Shaw, R. J., & Heisey, J. G. (1986).

Aging and the time course of semantic activation.

Journal of Gerontology, 41, 195-203.

Nebes, R. D., Martin, D. C., & Horn, L. C. (1984).

Sparing of semantic memory in Alzheimer’s dis-

ease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 93, 321-

330.

Schacter, D. L. (1985). Multiple forms of memory

in humans and animals. In N. M. Weinberger, J.

L. McGaugh, & G. Lynch (Eds.), Memory sys-

tems of the brain: Animal and human cognitive

processes. New York: Guilford Publications.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Grants

R23) AG00713. and RO1 AGO02751

awarded by the National Institute on Ag-

ing. I have been fortunate to have been

assisted by a number of fine undergrad-

uate students over the years. The contri-

butions of some of these people are

reflected by the fact of their joint au-

thorship on the papers cited here. In ad-

dition, I am happy to acknowledge the

excellent work of Maria Acosta, Jeff

Amerman, Stephen Burns, Lisa Conomy,

Margie DelGreco, Martha Farmelo, As-

trid Fry, Wendy Eicholzer, Christina

Emanuel, Holly Gomes, Peter Gordon,

Marijean Hosking, Elizabeth Jones, Car-

olyn Marfizo, Michelle Millis, Mary Beth

Quig, Mitch Sommers, Cathy Stanger,

Tom Steif, Lisa Swartz, Anne Watson,

Paige Wilhite, Ed Wisniewski, and Bob

Zozus. I am also grateful to Jim Howard

for his advice on all of my research, and

to the people of all ages who have vol-

unteered to participate in our studies.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 261-262, December 1986

The Scientific Achievement

Awards of the Academy: 1984

and 1985

Richard K. Cook

Chairman of the Awards Committee, Washington Academy

of Sciences

The Awards are presented annually to

young scientists in the Washington, D.C.

area. This program was started in 1939 to

reognize young scientists for “noteworthy

discovery, accomplishment, or publica-

tion in the Biological, Physical, and En-

gineering Sciences.”” The Awards now

recognize and commend scientific work of

high merit and distinction in the following

scientific areas: Biological, Physical, En-

gineering, Mathematics and Computer,

and Behavioral Sciences. In the Teaching

of Science, the Leo Schubert Award and

Bernice G. Lamberton Award.

In the autum of each year the Academy

announces publicly its Awards program

for that year. Nominations are invited,

and are usually made by sponsors who are

familiar with the scientific work of the

candidates. The nominee scientist and

teachers of science must be resident

within 50 miles of the White House in

Washington. The Awards Committee

then evaluates the works of those nomi-

nated and recommends the successful

candidates to the Executive Committee.

Each Award consists of a Certificate of

Scientific Achievement and election to

Fellowship in the Academy.

1984 Awards for Scientific Achievement

These were presented at the Academy’s

meeting at the American University in

Washington, D.C. on April 18, 1985, to

the following five scientists and teachers.

Theodore R. Kirkpatrick of the Insti-

tute for Physical Science and Technology

and the Department of Physics and As-

tronomy at the University of Maryland.

The Physical Sciences Award for excep-

tional contributions to the statistical the-

ory of fluids.

Warner Greene of the National Cancer

Institute at the National Institutes of

Health. The Biological Sciences Award

for major contributions to immunology

and oncology.

James M. Wallace of the Department

of Mechanical Engineering at the Uni-

versity of Maryland. The Engineering Sci-

ences Award for ingenious experiments

on the structure of turbulent shear flows.

Joseph D. Hagman of the U.S. Army

Research Institute. The Behavioral Sci-

ences Award for notable contributions to

the psychology of skill acquisition.

Linda Berg of the Department of Bo-

tany at the University of Maryland. The

261

262 RICHARD K. COOK

Leo Schubert Award in the Teaching of

Science, for excellent teaching and de-

velopment of teaching methods in botany.

1985 Awards for Scientific Achievement

These were presented at the Academy’s

meeting at the Cosmos Club in Washing-

ton, D.C. on April 17, 1986, to the fol-

lowing seven scientists and teachers.

Warren E. Pickett, Condensed Matter

Physics Branch U.S. Naval Research Lab-

oratory. The Physical Sciences Award for

pioneering researches into the theory of

the basic properties of solids.

Michael MacDonell, Department of

Microbiology at the University of Mary-

land. The Biological Sciences Award for

development of a new basis for tracking

the evolution of bacterial species.

Stuart D. Jessup, David W. Taylor Na-

val Ship Research and Development Cen-

ter. The Engineering Sciences Award for

new accurate measurements of unsteady

water pressure on ship propellers.

Robert W. Jernigan, Department of

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer

Science at The American University. The

Mathematics and Computer Sciences

Award for useful statistical researches ap-

plicable to time series models of the en-

vironment.

Darlene V. Howard, Department of

Psychology at Georgetown University.

The Behavioral Sciences Award for con-

tributions to cognitive science and the

psychology of aging.

Marylin Krupsaw, University of the

District of Columbia. The Leo Schubert

Award in the Teaching of Science, for

outstanding achievements and contribu-

tions to science education.

James D. Sproull, Jr., McLean High

School in Virginia. The Berenice G. Lam-

berton Award in the Teaching of Science,

for a nationally recognized program un-

iting textbook science with direct expe-

rience.

Acknowledgments

The Awards Committee is made up of

several members and a chairman, all fel-

lows of the Academy. Each member

serves as chair of a panel which evaluates

the nominations in one of the seven sci-

entific areas of the Awards. In 1984 the

Panel Chairs were Mary H. Aldrich, Joan

R. Rosenblatt, Frank R. Yekovich, Cyrus

R. Creveling, Joseph R. Morris, and

Richard K. Cook. In 1985 the Panel

Chairs were Mary H. Aldrich, Ralph I.

Cole, Abolgassem Ghaffari, Edward J.

Finn, Donald O. Buttermore, Cyrus R.

Creveling, and Frank R. Yekovich. The

Academy owes its thanks to the Panel

chairs and their colleagues for their de-

voted efforts in arriving at the winners of

the Awards.

Richard K. Cook, Chairman

Awards Committee

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 263-266, December 1986

Development of a Phylogenetic

Taxonomy for the Eubacteria

M. T. MacDonell*

Center of Marine Biotechnology, University of Maryland,

600 E. Lombard Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

Introduction

Ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) are small

nucleic acids which, in prokaryotes, range

in size from 120 bases (5S rRNA) to

slightly more than 2900 bases (23S

rRNA). These complex with ribosomal

proteins to form the ribosome, which is

the protein synthesis apparatus of biolog-

ical cells. Since the ribosome is a funda-

mental feature of all known forms of life,

comparative analysis of it and its com-

ponents is able to provide information of

immense importance to investigators in-

volved with the determination of evolu-

tionary relationships among species. This

information is encoded in the sequence of

nucleotide bases which comprise the ri-

bosomal RNAs, which are among the

most highly conserved biological mole-

cules known. It is precisely this conser-

vancy that makes ribosomal RNA

sequences particularly interesting to ev-

olutionary biologists, since in the study of

prokaryotic evolution, comparative se-

quence analysis of ribosomal RNAs can

*Current Address:

Biotechnology Group

Idaho National Engineering Laboratory

P.O. Box 11625

Idaho Falls, Idaho 83415

263

provide a direct measure of the evolu-

tionary distances among species.

Advances in the field of molecular bi-

ology during the past decade and a half

have resulted in the development of tech-

niques for determining the nucleotide

base sequences of RNAs. The 5S rRNA

molecule is the smallest of the prokaryotic

ribosomal RNAs and is relatively easy to

sequence. As a consequence, substantial

numbers of 5S rRNA sequences have

been determined and reported in the lhit-

erature (Erdmann and Wolters, 1986).

Comparisons among these have proved

particularly relevant to the construction

of natural phylogenies of bacteria (Sogin

et al, 1972; Luehrsen and Fox, 1981; De-

kio et al, 1984; MacDonell and Colwell,

1985).

Initially, attempts were made to em-

ploy comparative sequence analysis of 5S

rRNAs to solve evolutionary relation-

ships among diverse prokaryotic groups,

such as Gram-negative and Gram-posi-

tive eubacteria, cyanobacteria, the my-

coplasmas, etc. However, the relatively

small sampling of bases in 5S rRNAs was

soon found to be inadequate for the map-

ping of distant evolutionary relationships.

It is now realized that the strength of 5S

rRNA sequences, as phylogenetic indi-

264 M. T. MACDONELL

cators, is in the inferrence of evolutionary

relationships at or within the family level

(MacDonell and Colwell, 1985). More

fundamental evolutionary relationships,

such as those between the archaebacteria

and eubacteria have been determined

through the use of a related technique

involving comparisons among 16S rRNA

oligomer catalogs (Woese et al, 1985).

From the results of these studies were

constructed evolutionary trees which

have been instrumental in gaining an un-

derstanding of the complex evolutionary

history of prokaryotic species. An over-

view of the early work in this field has

been published (Stackebrandt and

Woese, 1984).

Inferring Evolutionary Relationships

from Ribosomal RNA Sequences.

The approach we employed in the in-

ferrence of phylogenetic relationships

from 5S rRNA sequences differs from

previous approaches in several important

respects. We wished to demonstrate that

fine detail of the evolutionary relation-

ships within a family of closely related

species could be deduced from compari-

sons among 5S rRNA sequences. There-

fore, 5S rRNAs were purified from 36

species of the eubacterial family Vibrion-

aceae. The sequences of these RNAs

were determined enzymatially and a dif-

ference matrix was constructed from pair-

wise comparisons of the sequences. A

computer program KITCH (PHYLIP:

Phylogeny Inferrence Package, J. Felsen-

stein, Univ. Washington) was used to con-

struct an evolutionary tree from the

difference matrix data.

After determining approximately thirty

5S rRNA sequences, however, we be-

came aware of a flaw in the method by

which ribosomal RNA sequences were

clustered. Specifically, it had been as-

sumed that there is an equal likelihood of

mutation at every base position in ribo-

somal RNAs. Consequently, mismatches

between pairs of RNA sequences were

treated by clustering algorithms as if they

had equal significance, regardless of lo-

cation. A position-wise analysis of the

mutation frequency in Gram-negative eu-

bacterial 5S rRNA sequences, however,

indicated that there are “‘hot-spots” in 5S

rRNA sequences, characterized by mu-

tation frequencies several times greater

than in flanking regions (MacDonell et al,

1986a). In other words, the tendency for

mutations to occur at different locations

in the 5S rRNA molecule is quite une-

qual. Actually, the existence of unequal

rates of mutation had been recognized for

several years. This had given rise to the

concept of “group-specific signatures’,

referring to the most highly variable re-

gions in the sequence which could be used

to identify specific groups of closely re-

lated species with which the “signature

sequence” was associated. For several

years, however, there were too few 5S

rRNA sequences to allow for the empir-

ical determination of the extent of vari-

ability (or conservancy) at each position.

With the addition of more than fifty 5S

rRNA sequences determined in our lab-

oratory, the total collection of Gram-neg-

ative eubacterial sequences increased to

seventy two, a sufficient sampling to allow

us to determine the position-wise relative

frequency of mutation in 5S rRNAs of

that group of bacteria (MacDonell et al,

1986a).

Graphical Representation of

Evolutionary Interrelationships

Ordinarily, evolutionary relationships

among species are depicted as two di-

mensional evolutionary trees in which the

branch lengths represent relative evo-

lutionary distances. Unfortunately, the

planar representation of multivariate

data, such as evolutionary relationships,

requires a number of compromises to be

made as complexity, viz., number of spe-

cies, increases. This is due to an averaging

process characteristic of clustering algo-

rithms, and results in a loss of overall res-

PHYLOGENETIC TAXONOMY FOR THE EUBACTERIA

olution. Since the work in which we were

engaged involved the construction of a

phylogenetically-rooted taxonomy of the

eubacterial family Vibrionaceae, we re-

quired an accurate method for graphically

representing the complex interrelation-

ships among a number of closely related

species. We decided to augment the con-

ventional evolutionary tree clustering ap-

proach through the use of a modified

principal components method to graphi-

cally portray phylogenetic relationships

encoded in the 5S rRNAs of bacterial spe-

cies (MacDonell et al, 1986b). Principal

components analysis is traditionally used

to reduce the total number of dimensions

needed to view multivariate data sets

(Johnson and Wichern, 1981). Our ap-

proach strayed from the conventional

usage of principal components analysis in

that symmetric, i.e. square, distance mat-

rices were substituted for the standard

variable and observation format. The re-

sult of this modification is that the dis-

tinction is lost between row and column

eigenvectors. Virtually the same ap-

proach was described by Gower (1966) for

use with numerical taxonomies, which he

called Principal Coordinates Analysis.

A Phylogenetic Taxonomy for the

Genus Vibrio.

The approach we have taken toward

drawing inferrences on the evolutionary

relationships among a group of closely re-

lated prokaryotic species, based on 5S

rRNA data, is best illustrated using spe-

cies of the marine eubacterial genus Vi-

brio. Through comparative sequence

analysis of 5S rRNAs purified from Vibrio

species sequences, we concluded that the

genus Vibrio sensu strictu comprises at

least 16 species. The two-dimensional ev-

olutionary tree, constructed using the

computer program Kitsch, based on the

method of Fitch and Margoliash (1967),

is depicted in figure 1. This representation

is valuable in the inferrence of common

ancestries of bacterial lineages since it

265

V. vulnificus

V. cholerae

V. harveys

V. canchariae

V. proteolyticus

V. diazotnrophicus

V. alginolyticus

SET”

V. natriegens

a V. parahaemolyticus

V. §luvialis V. gazogenes

V. céncinnatiensss

V. metschnikovii

V. momceus

Fig. 1. Evolutionary tree, based on 5S rRNA se-

quence data, depicting phylogenetic relationships

among species of the genus Vibrio sensu strictu (see

text for discussion). Isolate ““LTL” is an unnamed

psychrophilic Vibrio species.

provides an estimation of branching or-

der. Nevertheless, it suffers from its lim-

itation to two dimensions. On the other

hand, a hyperspace plot in five dimen-

sions (figure 2), using a principal coor-

Huperspace plat: nib

FLOV | “t Ni |

E | D ie

OL. ‘ARA yi

i D cane

Zils VON | |) LTL i Cc"

gles a Hot ee

y SRT a pee Se ie X

~=<

REY; x =-,448 X= 34 y s-.54? Y= 9390 2-589 2 = 429

Fig. 2. Hyperspace plot in 5-dimensions depicting

relationships among species of the genus Vibrio

sensu Strictu. Data were the same as used for the

construction of the evolutionary tree in Figure 1 (see

text for discussion). Key: principal coordinate (pc)

1 = X, pe2 = Y, pe 3 = Z, pe 4 = volume, pc

5 = shading. Strains: ALGI = V. alginolyticus,

CARC = V. carchariae, CHOL = V. cholerae,

CINC = V. cincinnatiensis, DIAZ = V. diazotro-

phicus, FLUV = V. fluvialis,;GAZO = V. gazo-

genes, HARV = V. harveyi, LTL = strain LTL,

METS = V. metschinkovii, MIMI = V. mimicus,

NATR = V. natriegens, NERE = V. nereis,

PARA = V. parahaemolyticus, PROT = V. proteo-

lyticus, VULN = V. vulnificus. Principal compo-

nents were calculated and plotted using the com-

puter program PCA (available on request from the

author).

266 M. T. MACDONELL

dinates analysis approach, adds _ sub-

stantially greater detail to the interre-

lationships among Vibrio species, al-

though it lacks information on branching

and common ancestry.

Conclusions

Through the use of modern nucleic acid

purification and sequencing methods,

computer-supported comparative analy-

sis of ribosomal RNA sequences, algo-

rithms for the construction of evo-

lutionary trees, and computer-generated

graphics for the analysis of the complex

interrelationships among closely related

bacterial species, it has become possible

to construct a genuine phylogenetic tax-

onomy of the prokaryotes.

As a result of a three year study in-

volving the determination, evaluation,

and comparative analysis of the sequences

of the 5S rRNAs purified from species of

the eubacterial family Vibrionaceae, that

family has undergone substantial taxo-

nomic revision (MacDonell and Colwell,

1985; Colwell, MacDonell and DeLey,

1986). As a consequence, it has become

the first major prokaryotic group to have

a phylogenetically-defined taxonomy.

Using these and other techniques cur-

rently under development in our labora-

tory, this study is being extended to

include other eubacterial families, includ-

ing the Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudo-

monadaceae.

Acknowledgments

Support for this research was provided,

in part, by National Science Foundation

Grant BSR-82-08418, Office of Naval Re-

search Grant NOOO-14-81-K0638, Univer-

sity of Maryland Sea Grant College, and

The University of Maryland Center of

Maryland Biotechnology.

References Cited

Colwell, R. R., M. T. MacDonell, and J. DeLey.

(1986). Proposal to recognize the family Aero-

monadaceae fam. nov. Int. J. Syst. Bacteriol. 36:

473-477.

Dekio, S., R. Yamasaki, J. Jidoe, H. Hori, and S.

Osawa. (1984). Secondary structure and phylo-

geny of Staphylococcus and Micrococcus 5S

rRNAs. J. Bacteriol. 159: 233-237.

Erdmann, V. A. and J. Wolters. (1986). Collection

of published 5S, 5.8S, and 4.5S nbosomal RNA

sequences. Nucl. Acids Res. 14:r1—r60.

Fitch, W. and E. Margoliash. (1967). Construction

of phylogenetic trees. Science 155: 279-284.

Gower, J. C. (1966). Some distance properties of

latent root and vector methods used in multivar-

iate analysis. Biometrika 53: 325-338.

Johnson, R. A. and Wichern, D. (1981). Applied

Multivariate Statistics. Prentice-Hall.

Luehrsen, K. R. and G. E. Fox. (1981). The nu-

cleotide sequence of Beneckea hareyi 5S rRNA.

J. Mol. Evol. 17: 52-55.

MacDonell, M. T. and R. R. Colwell. (1985). Phy-

logeny of the Vibrionaceae and recommendations

for two new genera, Listonella and Shewanella.

Syst. Appl. Microbiol. 6: 171-182. _..

MacDonell, M. T., B. A. Ortiz-Conde, G. A. Last,

and R. R. Colwell. (1986a). Distribution of mu-

tations in Gram negative eubacterial 5S rRNAs

and significance for sequence analysis. J. Micro-

biol. Meth. 5: 295-302.

MacDonell, M. T., D. G. Swartz, B. A. Ortiz-

Conde, G. A. Last, and R. R. Colwell. (1986b).

Ribosomal RNA phylogenies for the vibrio-en-

teric group of eubacteria. Microbiological Sci-

ences 3:172-178.

Sogin, S. J., M. L. Sogin, and C. R. Woese. (1972).

Phylogenetic measurement in prokaryotes by pri-

mary structural characterization. J. Mol. Evol. 1:

173-184.

Stackebrandt, E. and C. R. Woese. (1984). The

phylogeny of prokaryotes. Microbiological Sci-

ences 1: 117-122.

Woese, C. R., W. G. Weisburg, C. M. Hahn, B.

Paster, L. B. Zablen, B. J. Lewis, T. J. Macke,

W. Ludwig, and E. Stackebrandt. (1985). The

phylogeny of purple bacteria: the gamma subdi-

vision. Syst. Appl Microbiol. 6: 25-33.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, Pages 267-269, December 1986

STATISTICAL AND

MATHEMATICAL MODELING

OF ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

Robert W. Jernigan

Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science

The American University Washington, DC 20016 and

The Statistical Policy Branch Office of Standards and Regulations

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Washington, DC 20460

The mathematical and statistical mod-

eling of ecological systems has been an

extremely active research area over the

past two decades. This period has seen a

great increase in our appreciation of the

ability of mathematical models to ab-

stract, translate, quantify, and predict the

dynamics of environmental communities.

From simple mathematical models of ex-

ponential growth to extensive computer

simulations of eons of evolution through

natural selection, mathematical models

have done much to extend our under-

standing of processes that are difficult if

not impossible for humans to even ob-

serve, much less directly control.

The development of ecosystem models

draws on many related disciplines, and

problems in one area often lead to new

researches and approaches in another. My

own work has led me from stochastic eco-

logical models, to time series analysis, to

spatial statistics, all in an effort to model

and quantify environmental concerns.

Long before the development of com-

puters, mathematical modeling of the ac-

tions and interactions of environmental

267

communities received considerable atten-

tion. Then as now one central component

in models of the dynamics of communities

was DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS.

These equations describe the rates at which

populations change size due to birth,

deaths, predation, etc. The general qual-

itative and more specific quantitative be-

havior of these equations provide useful

insights into the influences on the com-

munities. For example, a classic predator

and prey model due to Volterra predicts

that a heavy dose of a general pesticide

applied to pest insects (the prey) has an

even greater adverse effect on the bene-

fical insects who are their predators. Our

earlier use of the pesticide DDT was a

tragic example of this effect. See Rough-

garden (1979) for a discussion of this

model.

Unfortunately, real communities ex-

hibit random fluctuations that complicate

the models significantly. These fluctua-

tions could be due to environmental ran-

domness of available light, nutrients, etc.

or to the demographic randomness of birth,

death, predation rates. In a series of pa-

268 ROBERT W. JERNIGAN

pers Jernigan and Tsokos (1979, 1980a,

1980b, 1980c) and Jernigan, Turner, and

Tsokos (1980) investigated, both analyt-

ically and using computer models, the ef-

fects of these random actions on a model

for primary nutrient production in an

aquatic ecological system. The interac-

tions of three components were investi-

gated: the producers, phytoplankton; the

consumers, zooplankton; and the stand-

ing stock chemical nutrients. Differential

inequalities were used to examine the ef-

fects of demographic randomness through

rates of nutrient uptake, release, preda-

tion, and death. A DIFFERENTIAL IN-

EQUALITY describes relationships em-

bodying the simple idea that if the size of

one population starts below another, and

its rate of increase is always less than the

other, it will remain smaller for all time.

With these methods it was possible to ob-

tain bounds on and inter-relationships be-

tween the parameters that govern the rates

of change so that we can guarantee that

the ecosystem does not become extinct.

These bounds helped to provide a sound

theoretical basis for more intuitive ap-

proaches to the actions. Computer mod-

eling of this ecosystem allowed us also to

examine the effects of environmental ran-

domness. For example, parameters that

governed the grazing of the zooplankton

on the phytoplankton were seen to be

negatively correlated with the number of

zooplankton. Here we see the Volterra

principle at work again. The more the

zooplankton grazed the more their num-

bers were decreased by the limited phy-

toplankton supply.

To be even more useful it was needed

to tie the developed theory to real time

dependent chemical and biological data

collected on an aquatic ecosystem, Jer-

nigan and Turner (1980). The statistical

analysis of time dependent data known as

TIME SERIES ANALYSIS has found use

in a variety of fields. A widespread type

of time series analysis is based on the study

of a descriptively rich class of models

known as AUTOREGRESSIVE and

MOVING AVERAGE models. The au-

toregressive models attempt to explain the

present measurement as a sum of multi-

ples of previous measurements plus a ran-

dom shock. The moving average models

evaluate the present measurement by av-

eraging a neighboring sequence of ran-

dom shocks. These models are often mixed

to incorporate even more involved time

dependencies.

The problem in much of time series

analysis is the identification of these models

from observed data. These observed data,

being influenced by random, uncontrol-

lable shocks, can mask the true underly-

ing model that produced them. The iden-

tification process often lies on the border

of art and science. The development of

objective tools for such identification is a

challenging task.

The problem of identification involves

defining the right statistic to measure and

consistently specify the type of model that

generated a given set of data. Traditional

methods have constructed a taxonomy of

forms based on how neighboring mea-

surements are correlated with each other,

that is, are they usually above their mean

together or on opposite sides of their

means. These methods attempt to identify

the underlying model by matching de-

scriptions of the observed data with a cat-

alog of ARMA behaviors. These methods

work well, until we encounter mixed

models.

A new technique for the identification

of these mixed models calculates and

combines correlations in various tabular

forms, called R and S arrays, by Gray,

Kelley, and McIntire (1978). In the ab-

sence of sample variability, R and S arrays

can uniquely specify the underlying model.

Unfortunately, no indication of how sam-

ple variability effects these arrays was

given. Nguyen and Jernigan (1983) de-

veloped large sample formulas for the

variance of these identification arrays re-

sulting in a procedure to recognize even

the mixed models with greater confi-

dence.

Unfortunately, more difficulties re-

main. A new formulation of dependence

MODELING OF ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

called ASYMMETRIC TIME SERIES

by Wecker (1981) allows the random

shocks to influence the observed data in

different ways depending on the size of

the shock. For example, if the last shock

to the system was positive it might have

a totally different effect than if it was neg-

ative. What is remarkable is that one such

model with a definite purposeful con-

struction cannot be distinguished from to-

tally random noise! The development of

computational methods to resolve this

ambiguity have been developed by Welsh

and Jernigan (1983) and Marticello and

Jernigan (1984). A new statistic based on

the averages of powers of adjacent mea-

surements has proved most useful in iden-

tifying these asymmetric models. Asymp-

totic theory shows that this statistic follows

the well known normal distribution for

large samples.

The theory and basic methods of time

series analysis can be extended to cover

more general situations. The analysis of

SPATIAL DEPENDENCIES is one such

example. Such problems are of great in-

terest, for example, in the mapping of pol-

lutant flow out of toxic waste sites. The

complication here is that dependencies can

be in several directions at once, not sim-

ply only on past data, as in time series.

A spatial interpolation scheme called

KRIGING, after D. G. Krige a mining

engineer, uses the same basic techniques

for estimation and prediction spatially, that

time series analysis uses temporally. Much

of the theory and practice of kriging have

been with large data sets, and asymptotic

results are common. In Jernigan (1986)

some approaches to studying this esti-

mation scheme in small samples are con-

sidered. This approach addresses the im-

portant issue of efficient estimation of

spatial relationships when sample sizes are

restricted by resources. _

These are just a few of the problems

that have arisen through the examination

of environmental concerns. One of the

great strengths of mathematics is the di-

269

versity of its applications. For most peo-

ple, this is the primary reason for studying

mathematics. Not only have applied prob-

lems in all fields been helped by mathe-

matics, but any application serves to ex-

tend and enrich mathematics itself.

References Cited

Gray, H. L., Kelley, G. D. and McIntire, D. (1978),

““A New Approach to ARMA Modeling,” Com-

munications in Statistics, B7, 1-77.

Jernigan, R. W. (1986), A Primer on Kriging: Least

Squares Spatial Prediction, Monograph to be pub-

lished by the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency.

Jernigan, R. W. and Tsokos, C. P. (1979), ‘“‘Phy-

toplankton Modeling Involving Random Rate

Constants, Part I: Deterministic Setting,” Inter-

national Journal of Environmental Studies, Vol.

14: 97-105.

Jernigan, R. W. and Tsokos, C. P. (1980a), ‘‘Phy-

toplankton Modeling Involving Random Rate

Constants, Part II: Stochastic Formulation,” Jn-

ternational Journal of Environmental Studies, Vol.

15: 217-227.

Jernigan, R. W. and Tsokos, C. P. (1980b), “‘Sim-

ulation of a Nonlinear Stochastic Ecology Model,”

Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computa-

tion, Vol. 7: 9-25.

Jernigan, R. W. and Tsokos, C. P. (1980c), “A Lin-

ear Stochastic Model for Phytoplankton Produc-

tion in a Marine Ecosystem,” Ecological Model-

ling, Vol. 10: 1-12.

Jernigan, R. W., Turner, J. C. and Tsokos, C. P.

(1980), ““Parameter and Moment Bounds for a

Nonlinear Stochastic Ecology Model,” Journal of

Applied Mathematics and Computation, Vol. 7:

27-53.

Nguyen, H. and Jernigan, R. W. (1983), ““Asymp-

totic Variances of R and S Arrays for ARMA(1,q)

Time Series,” The Proceedings of the Business and

Economic Section of the American Statistical As-

sociation

Marticello, D. and Jernigan, R. W. (1984), “Testing

for Asymmetry in Time Series,” The Proceedings

of the Business and Economic Section of the

American Statistical Association

Roughgarden, J. (1979), The Theory of Population

Genetics and Evolutioary Ecology, Macmillian,

New York.

Wecker, W. E. (1981), ““Asymmetric Time Series,”

Journal of the American Statistical Association,

Vol. 76: 16-21.

Welsh, A. K. and Jernigan, R. W. (1983), “A Sta-

tistic to Identify Asymmetric Time Series,” The

Proceedings of the Business and Economics Sec-

tion of the American Statistical Association.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,

Volume 76, Number 4, December 1986

1986 Washington Academy of

Sciences Membership Directory

Alphabetical List of Members

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FAULKNER, JOSEPH A. (Mr) 1007

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1986 MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY

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HUGH, RUDOLPH (Dr) Microbiology

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1986 MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY

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HURTT, WOODLAND (Dr) USDA-

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1986 MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY

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1986 MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY

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DELEGATES TO THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,

REPRESENTING THE LOCAL AFFILIATED SOCIETIES

Pee ee OIGICUY OL WaSMMOTON . 2.0.0 ce eee ee cee ew elicneaeetees Barbara F. Howell

Pamnnanormorical society Of Washington .. 2.22... 26... ee ctw e eee een beeeenes Edward J. Lehman

Pees SMI ty Ol, WaASINMSTON. 2... sees ec ee oe eee ene bee een eee ey Austin B. Williams

Dre ENOMEIW OL WASHINGTON ....066. 6b eth ce ee eens eed eset oma eee eens Jo-Anne A. Jackson

Perpnerrmricasociety Of Washington... 06... 666. ee ce eee eect ene sean eeees Manya B. Stoetzel

On EAE SET CU OSSYO1S (2 8 Gilbert Grosvenor

emeeerea momer=i Ol WASHINGTON. ikke ee et eet e ented eeeweneeae James V. O’Connor

Piwmeemenccey Of tie District of Columbia ..............0. 000 cc ene e eee evens Charles E. Townsend

UME DTM SMC SOCICLY 256 Fase aie awk nee a een va ae eed SG aN ee web aa mne wha eee a Paul H. Oehser

PP MESOGICLY Ol VVASIIMEION .. ..6.. cece ceed kt dee cease bee send ewan ded wna a Conrad B. Link

ime Amencan roresters, Washington Section .............0: cc eee cee eneeeeeeanaeees Mark Rey

PETE SMCIOUIOL ETSIMECKS: 2. 562 t cee hla eb ache tenes net de adaee du tae hates George Abraham

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington Section................. George Abraham

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Washington Section...................0 secu Michael Chi

ite mamma@logical Society Of Washington ...... 0.2.66. ccc cee cee cee e eee reer eeeed Robert S. Isenstein

pumetican Society for Microbiology, Washington Branch................60 06sec eee wenn wees: Vacant

Society of American Military Engineers, Washington Post....................-.- Charles A. Burroughs

A‘iemcean) Society of Civil Engineers, National Capital Section.............../.0.......005- Carl Gaum

Soeeicty tor Experimental Biology and Medicine, DC Section ...................... Cyrus R. Creveling

Panewcan society tor Metals, Washington Chapter... ... 00.0... 5.0 coe ence ee ce eee ees James R. Ward

American Association of Dental Research, Washington Section....................0005- Eloise Ullman

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Capital Section............... Paul Keller

PaiemcanVicicorological Society, DC Chapter... 2. see... eee dees A. James Wagner

PeemscesOrichy Ol WaSHINGtOM .. 2... nc vic ee ee ee eee eee ee eee eee tees wens Albert B. DeMilo

Beousteal society Of America, Washington Chapter...........2.2...5-05-e ec ee eee Richard K. Cook

PiteiicaneNwctear Society, Washington Section.............5- 0040. cee eee nee eee een eees Paul Theiss

iste ot Hood Nechnologists, Washington Section ............6.....0-52055 .... Melvin R. Johnston

American Ceramic Society, Baltimore-Washington Section......................4. Joseph H. Simmons

ECP EVLE BINS (SCV S 0/0 ee eee a are Alayne A. Adams

Seatineimmnistony O1 Science Club. 2.5.1... 5 ches yee cee eh ceva eed bate cnderevenes Marg Rothenberg

American Association of Physics Teachers, Chesapeake Section ...................... Peggy A. Dixon

Wancasacicty of America, National Capital Section..........0..20.000005 cece nee William R. Graver

American Society of Plant Physiologists, Washington Area Section............... Walter Shropshire, Jr.

Washington Operations Research/Management Science Council ...................... Doug Samuelson

hisapnem socicty of America, Washington Section... iin, 22.2.2... ee ee kee eee ne ne ees Carl Zeller

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical

aiceecuoleum Eneineers, Washington Section.....:..2. 060205000. d eee ere eee ee Ronald Munson

MMe TC AIA AStTONOMERS 6.5).5 s. sieeve ce vw eee ee ec bene ae eee manne nae dod Robert H. McCracken

Mathematics Association of America, MD-DC-VA Section.................0 000 eee Alfred B. Willcox

cS ULE Urs: Ce (CUSTER RS sa a gen ea Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr.

ee AIO NCA NSSOCIALIOI e oicp's afvoed sp Sos sree Sa ie aes wd ale a Ea nba oatw eR ele die Settles « Bert T. King

Nyashimeton Paint Technical Group...:............-.+: Neen a tery Ee tty Che ome sah Robert F. Brady

Pimenecan Enytopathological Society, Potomac Division. ............0..06.0c00008 aes Roger H. Lawson

Society for General Systems Research, Metropolitan Washington Chapter ..... Ronald W. Manderscheid

BME AcrOrs. Society, Potomac Chapter i.e se ge eles oe ke a ce ee eee es Stanley Deutsch

Peaeicanenisherics Society, Potomac Chapter - 255 6.206 tee eee tea a nee ee ee ewe Robert J. Sousa

Peswectanon tor science, lechnology and Innovation... 22: ..0.<$060....00000 berth ween Ralph I. Cole

EMS OCLOLOSICAl SOCIOEVE a7). 02 vo Sadly He cals gas ohne st @inehae bola e aisle dand ad Ronald W. Manderscheid

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Northern Virginia Section.............. Ralph I. Cole

Association for Computing Machinery, Washington Chapter.....................45- James J. Pottmyer

Sy See LOE PAIS ELE AILSOCLOIN, Stork BUM tin ce Fs Bie duc eeses a boatc wba oxecs an uSyabetge so oa oi diagela eG hee & R. Clifton Bailey

Delegates continue in office until new selections are made by the representative societies.