water column. But we have also not been able to document any discharge of sediment which might cling to the buckets or to the nodules as they are brought up to the surface.

We have not been able to measure that either in the near bottom water or in the near surface water or in the intermediate water column.

Admittedly, it was a mining test, a pilot operation, and probably not on a scale that a full scale operation would be.

Mr. DOWNING. Would mud and silt cover the surface of the ocean as a result of the mining operation?

Mr. ROELS. No, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. What does that do, sink gradually to the bottom? Mr. ROELS. Yes, if any were discharged.

Mr. DOWNING. Thank you.

Mr. Treen?

Mr. TREEN. No questions. Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, I appreciate your statement very much.

Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Lott?

Mr. LOTT. No. questions.

Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Young?

Mr. YOUNG. I have no questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. Counsel?

Mr. HEYWARD. Dr. Roels, in your statement you refer to your group. When you speak of your group, whom are you including? Mr. ROELS. Oh, I am including a group of about 15 collaborators, the principals of which I can give you the names of.

Mr. HEYWARD. I think for the record if you would supply those who participated in the studies with you it would be helpful. Mr. ROELS. Yes, I can subdivide it into disciplines.

In the physical oceanographic part of our work, the group leader was Mr. Anthony Amos.

In the chemical oceanographic part of the work, the group leader was Dr. Christopher Garside.

In the biological part of the studies we have three principal ones, one specialized in what we call the pelagic area, Prof. Tom Malone. In the benthic part of the work dealing with the fauna living on the ocean bottom and below it, the group leader was Mr. Allen Paul. They were assisted by Dr. G. Rice and several others, technicians, shipboard technicians, and so on.

Mr. HEYWARD. How was this group assembled? Are they all connected with your laboratory, or did you involve them in this project as a result of your initiative in the area?

Mr. ROELS. I involved them in this work as a result of my interest in this field.

Most of them are connected with the Lamont Geological Observatory of Columbia University, and several of them are also connected with the City University of New York, with its Institute of Oceanography.

Mr. Allen Paul is connected with the University of Florida in Tallahassee.

Mr. HEYWARD. How did you originally get involved in this project?

Mr. ROELS. I got involved in this project because of its potential beneficial byproducts.

My laboratory has had underway since 1969 what we call an artificial upwelling project in the U.S. Virgin Islands, in St. Croix, where we installed a pipeline and pump water from 3,000 feet deep in the sea into ponds on shore.

This water is used as a source of nutrients, nitrates, phosphates, and silicates, and all necessary nutrients for phytoplankton life. We inoculate this deep water which we pump into the shore ponds with phytoplankton species, which we then feed to a shellfish production line.

We have an aquaculture operation based on the deep waters. When we learned of one of the mining companies' plan to run a pilot test of bringing deep water to the surface in the mining operations, we were primarily interested in the beneficial application of this deep water to fertilize the surface of the sea.

Essentially what we were looking for was the potentiality of expanding our small pilot operation to an operation in the open sea where a true marine pasture could be created and an aquatic food chain could be built upon such a discharge.

Mr. HEYWARD. I assume, as I understand your conclusion, that you do not have enough data yet to really come to a firm conclusion, but tentatively at least, you believe that if there is an effect of bringing the bottom water up it tends to be beneficial rather than harmful to the upper water column. Is that correct? Mr. ROELS. It is correct, but I would like to qualify it a little, if I may.

We have been somewhat disappointed, as a matter of fact, in the smallness of the effect that was brought about.

When we went into, and were interested in fertilizing an area of the sea to start a marine food chain, we had hoped a significant food chain could be started.

As it is, in the one airlift pumping test which we have monitored, the discharge was so diluted by the surface water that we could not detect any significant, any measurable increase in biological productivity.

Mr. HEYWARD. What was the depth of water at the Blake Plateau?

Mr. ROELS. It is in the testimony. May I refer to it? I can maybe give you a rough guess. It was approximately 2,400 feet, if I recollect correctly.

Mr. HEYWARD. I believe I recall the figure of 800 meters.

Mr. ROELS. Eight hundred meters, yes.

Mr. HEYWARD. Is this beyond the Continental Shelf?

Mr. ROELS. This was on the Blake Plateau in the area of the Blake Plateau, which is beyond the Continental Shelf, 300 miles offshore.

Mr. HEYWARD. In your opinion, would there be a significant difference from the effects of water at lower levels than 800 meters? Is there enough difference in the constituent elements of the water at lower depths that you might get a different result?

Mr. ROELS. There is some difference, and that is why we went out.

to the manganese nodule area in the Pacific. There. we were in 16.500 feet of water. but the same general principles concerning enrichment of the major nutrients with depth applied. Our results on trace metals are not complete at this stage, so we do not know whether there would be a significant difference in trace metal concentration.

As far as major nutrients are concerned, there is no major difference.

Mr. HEYWARD. In connection with your experiments, or data collection in the Pacific during the past summer, were there any foreign groups involved in the same type of work in connection with the testing of the bucket type recovery out there?

Mr. ROELS. Yes, Captain Heyward.

Mr. HEYWARD. Are their results available, or have they been published?

Mr. ROELS. Well, the foreign groups were testing the mining operation.

Mr. HEYWARD. I meant foreign scientific groups. Were there any foreign scientists along with the mining groups to evaluate the impact?

Mr. ROELS. To my knowledge, Captain Heyward, there were no foreign groups testing the environmental impact.

Our group was the only group testing the environmental impact, to the best of my knowledge.

Mr. HEYWARD. Has any other international scientific group undertaken projects in this same field?

Mr. ROELS. Not to my knowledge.

Mr. HEYWARD. In connection with your reference to the phytoplankton spores on the bottom, are they the same type of plant life that exists on the top, but which happen to be the, I guess you would call them, the seeds, down at the bottom? Are they different forms of phytoplankton?

Mr. ROELS. Yes, Captain Heyward. They are different, to our very great surprise.

First of all, we did not expect to find them. When we did find some, we were surprised, and started to look very closely at them.

All the forms we found are coastal forms of diatoms, and particularly I am now referring to those we found in our work on the Bermuda Rise, where we were thousands of miles from the nearest coast, and where we would not expect to find any coastal forms of diatoms. They were mostly diatoms, and they were coastal forms which we found there.

This actually will form the object of a publication in itself.

Mr. HEYWARD. Would transferring those spores to the upper water environment create any problem because they are new residents, so to speak?

Mr. ROELS. None whatsoever, Captain Heyward. They are diatoms. They simply do not happen to be found in the water column, but if they would be brought to the surface fast, and brought to a bloom, their bloom would also be limited by the amount of nutrients brought up from the bottom water and sediment.

Mr. HEYWARD. We had testimony last week, Dr. Roels, from

Professor Goldie, who suggested that the bill might be improved by putting in a section requiring the filing of an environmental impact statement specificaly in this legislation prior to issuance of licenses.

Would you agree or disagree with that recommendation?

Mr. ROELS. It was my understanding that for every license issued, the Secretary of Interior would impose requirements necessary to protect the environment.

If that would be one of those conditions, then I would agree with that.

Mr. HEYWARD. So you assume it is already covered in the general terms of the bill any way. Is that correct?

Mr. ROELS. Well, I would be very hesitant on discussing the specific terms of the bill, since that is not my field.

Mr. HEYWARD. Thank you.

Mr. DOWNING. Dr. Roels, the committee wants to thank you for this wonderful contribution.

Mr. ROELS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. Our second witness is Mr. T. S. Ary, vice president, Union Carbide Exploration Corp., appearing on behalf of the American Mining Congress.

STATEMENT OF T. S. ARY, VICE PRESIDENT, UNION CARBIDE EXPLORATION CORPORATION, APPEARING ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN MINING CONGRESS

Mr. ARY. Thank you, Mr. Chariman.

Mr. Chairman, I have a prepared statement and though I will not read the entire statement but will deviate from it somewhat, I ask that at the conclusion of my remarks the full statement be inserted for the record.

Mr. DOWNING. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. ARY. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, my name is T. S. Ary; I am vice president of Union Carbide Exploration Corp.

I am here as a representative of the American Mining Congress in my capacity as chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Undersea Mineral Resources.

The American Mining Congress is a trade association, composed of U.S. companies that produce most of the Nation's metals, coal, and industrial and agricultural minerals. It also represents more than 220 companies that manufacture miinng and milling processing equipment and supplies, and commercial banks and other institutions serving the mineral industry and the financial community.

The American Mining Congress appreciates very much the opportunity to appear before the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries to present testimony on H.R. 9, referred to as the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.

We would like to emphasize that in our statement today we are addressing ourselves only to the hard minerals area of the mining industry.

The origins of H.R. 9 may be traced to a special study conducted by the International Institute for Peace and Conflict ResearchSIPRI, an international body established by the Swedish Parliament to undertake research into areas of current and future international relations.

In June 1968 SIPRI conducted a symposium in Stockholm, Sweden to study the contemporary legal problems of ocean development and to comment on the means to resolve these problems in a manner which would reduce the risk of conflict and create new opportunities for international cooperation. This symposium, attended by legal experts from Sweden, Poland, United Kingdom, United States, France, Finland, and Japan, correctly foresaw the following considerations as fundamental issues to be confronted by the ad hoc committee newly created by the U.N. General Assembly at the suggestion of the delegation from Malta:

1. Definition of coastal states jurisdiction;

2. The need for a moratorium on further extensions of coastal state jurisdiction;

3. The need for, and structure of a future international ocean resources regime.

The first eight recommendations of this study group were concerned with the need and method for establishing limits of coastal state jurisdiction, the implementation of a moratorium on coastal states' claims to marine jurisdiction, the establishment of an international ocean organization, the governmental action in anticipation of such establishment and further areas of ocean law which needed reexamination.

The final six recommendations made by this distinguished panel concerned a method which would permit economic activity to continue to expand, pending the international resolution of these problems. The panel conceived a system of registration of claims to quiet possession ad interim, an interim regime to reduce the possibility of breaches of public order, to reduce or eliminate hazards to other ocean uses, and to reduce tension caused by unpublicized activities. This concept was later elaborated in the testimony of U.S. industry before the Senate Commerce Committee's Special Study on U.N. Suboceanic Lands Policy on September 23, 1969.

On May 23, 1970, President Nixon issued a statement on U.S. Oceans Policy in which he called for international negotiations on ocean issues but stated that he did not, however, believe it necessary or desirable to try to halt exploration and exploitation of the seabeds beyond the depth of 200 meters during the negotiating process * * *

President Nixon recognized that

the negotiations of such a complex treaty may take some time. and called

on other nations to join the United States in an interim policy. Members of the American Mining Congress first thought that an interim policy would be quickly formulated and hailed the statement of the President for the promise of an interim policy and for its dedication to the negotiation of an eventual sound, broad international agreement. During the 3 years since the President's