Recent legislation authorized construction of a scale model of the Chesapeake Bay by the Army Corps of Engineers. This three-dimensional model of a scale of 1:2,000 is intended to provide a focus for long-range, interdisciplinary studies of the complex phenomena which influence the Chesapeake Bay area.

In focusing attention on the use of a pilot model by one agency, the Council expects other Government agencies and State and private institutions to participate in a multidisciplinary study of related problems. Information being developed by the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration will be of special value.

For generations, the Chesapeake Bay estuary has been put to a number of diverse and often conflicting uses. It is used as a source of food: estuarine fish and shellfish. The Chesapeake Bay estuary is also used for recreation-swimming, boating, and sport fishing. It receives municipal and industrial wastes. This latter use, along with the dredging of navigable channels and harbors and other engineering projects, may drastically change the marine environment. In view of the large and complex nature of the bay, the model will be useful in enhancing our ability to develop a theoretical framework for empirical measurements made in the past. Also, the model will allow us to improve and extend our understanding of the physical characteristics of the bay, the ecology of the environment, and the interactions of man's activities on marine organisms. Of particular interest will be understanding of the capacity of the Potomac estuary and subestuaries to absorb pollutants by using such a model at costs which should be relatively low compared to that of large-scale field tests.

Insights gained during these studies will be of educational value in considering comparable interacting forces which influence the waters of other bays and estuaries in the United States and the Great Lakes.

Chapter IX

MINERAL RESOURCES OF THE CONTINENTAL SHELF

Further Use of Shelf Resources

Ships, oil derricks, sand dredges, and fish-processing plants have been familiar sights to our coastal inhabitants for years, but they represent only the beginning of our mastery of the resources along the thousands of miles of our coastline. The International Convention on the Continental Shelf, which went into force in 1964, added more than 1 million square miles to the public lands of the United States as shown in Figure 14, an increase of almost one-third. (This extension refers only to adjacent seabed territory in areas where the ocean's depth is less than 200 meters. According to the convention, jurisdiction may extend to even deeper water if the seabed is subject to technological exploitation.)

Simultaneously, the promise of mineral and fishery resources on the Continental Shelf has attracted increased attention as a source of economic wealth and growth. Our understanding of the distribution, richness, and availability of oil, gas, and mineral deposits on the shelf is still limited, however, particularly with regard to deposits off the Alaskan and northwest coasts.

The role for private initiative and investment on the shelf must be considered similar to private industry's role on land. The petroleum and gas industry has on its own initiative pioneered in exploration and development of the geological resources of the Continental Shelf, and the search for oil and gas has led to the rapid development of many geophysical exploration tools and platforms. In turn, the Government's role now is similar to its earlier responsibilities in the development of the West for establishing the administrative, legal, and financial framework, in the public interest, to encourage development of public lands while protecting private investments, and helping to minimize friction between conflicting types of commercial usage. The Government already supports programs in geological research and survey and mapping activities, as well as weather and ocean prediction services along the coastlines, to assist industrial activities. These support functions articulate closely with the private activities that they serve, and must continue to develop in phase with further utilization of shelf resources.

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potential of the shelf, one of the priority recommendations of the Council calls for increased Federal efforts to locate, describe, and assess offshore solid mineral deposits.

Commercial Activities on the Shelf

Petroleum and gas exploitation has been centered primarily in the Gulf of Mexico, off the California coast, and increasingly off Alaska, while exploration is underway along the coasts of Washington and Oregon, and now off the northeast coast. The annual investment of industry in locating and developing offshore oil and gas deposits, including development and construction of mobile and fixed-platform drilling rigs, is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. During fiscal year 1966 the Federal Government received $248 million for offshore leases and royalties, with most of the sum being paid by the petroleum industry.

The Continental Shelf is a promising commercial source of sand, gravel, and seashell deposits used by the construction industry, and the underwater mining of sulphur is increasing. (See Table XII for production levels of resources of the shelf.) Almost every large mining and aerospace firm has initiated feasibility studies related to the solid mineral deposits of the Continental Shelf although only a few of them are engaged in the high-cost exploratory work. Most industrial firms are awaiting the identification of promising areas on the shelf and the development of improved sampling and recovery techniques before launching major developmental programs.

Another important resource is "underground" fresh water in streams on the Continental Shelf. A source of fresh water was discovered last year by the Lamont Geophysical Laboratory, drilling into the Blake Plateau off Florida in a federally supported program with an oil rig borrowed from an oil company; an example, incidentally, of benefits derived from Government-industry-academic cooperation.

TABLE XII.-Value of mineral production from oceans bordering the United States,