O-Active Fall-Out May Eventually

Help Pacific Fisheries

ven radio-active fall-out has its uses, as is shoum hv an interest lespatch on “Operation Equapac” from the University of yrnia’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

\TION Equapac was the nt joint American-Jap ;e-French oceanographic >f Pacific tropical waters by irch vessels. It was timed v the recent United States bomb tests in the Marshall f course, already well known le of the most valuable uses of atomic energy is eduction of radio-active for medical use. Centres of in the human body can lised by injecting into the ream minute quantities of tive substances, and tracing ovements through the cir system by means of a ounter. e same way, the course of Dund streams can be traced, for this first time, ocean movements are being traced ilar means. Naturally, a eal of radio-active trace is required for a study on le, and, of course, a great such material was available aevitable by-product of the 1 Islands atom-bomb tests. ■esearch vessels took water at numerous depths. A radio-activity, temperature, mical constituents of these amples is now under way e stations, and it is ex that much new and valu ■ormation, of use to navi climatologists, and prac :eanic fishermen, will re ily will the direction, speed, bent of movement of the tive water be determined, circulation in a vertical i will be indicated. Water lay have been on the sur len sprinkled with radio ust, might later have dipped id backtracked, to well up urface again at some point ds of miles away, as part of ral vertical circulation of irrents, which not only turn or left when they meet a iss, but also turn down ic fishermen are particularly ?d in areas of up-welling, reas are generally rich in i and all kinds of marine id are therefore the best areas. ac should also provide a eal of information as to

the implications of nuclear tests at points far distant.

It will be remembered that Jap anese scientists reported in 1954 that tuna caught near New Britain and in the Coral Sea in September- October, 1954, following the March, 1954, bomb tests at Bikini-Eniwetok,

haTtoX g dZp y ed radio active and This is a subject that will be tn Christmas Island or in that gen onLrf 6 reio T 5 e P^? e J lix ’ Ellice ’ and line of he ir l 01 ocean current from that

t Mr. H. A. Allen, general manager of Nut Foods Pty., Ltd Sydney left Sydney October 13 for a business trip to New Guinea to try to en courage the growing of more pea nuts in the Territory. He returned to Sydney in November