areas should be studied both by following the naturally occurring processes and by planting suitable island crops. This would furnish both basic information concerning the stabilization of islands on an atoll and data applicable in the consideration of potential concentration of radioactive fission products by crop plants and their possible toxic effects. In the aquatic environment a very complex fauna exists. The populations, however, are almost completely confined to the particular atoll. Except for some of the tuna fish, migrate freely throughout the open seas, that the fish populations are largely local to the atoll, many of them remaining about a particular coral head for their entire life span. All the vari- ous feeding types exist in the atolls so that food chain studies are definite possibilities. Laboratory experiments in themselves cannot substitute for direct observations in the field. The total ecological situation is of such a complex nature that only comparatively minute seg- ments can be duplicated under controlled laboratory conditions. Which segments deserve priority can and should be determined from results obtained in field studies. Experiments in progress at the Applied Fisheries Laboratory concerning the uptake of isotopes by aquatic organisms have, specific in fact, been based on infor- mation obtained in previous surveys of Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls.