198 DASA 2019-2 AYRES: You have indicated that manganese and cobalt are both taken up preferentially in sea water, which would suggest surely that they are unduly scarce. Isn't that the implication you draw from that, that the requirements are greater than the supplies? DONALDSON: Yes. AYRES: And yet we have manganese and cobalt nodules forming somehow, which suggests a mystery. DONALDSON: Yes. WARREN: I think there's one thing you haven't touched on which ought to be put into the record. I think that you said, when you finished up at Bikini, that it was very fortunate that you had madeprior studies because the sport rate or the genetic change going on in this population was much higher than had been suspected and it might have been blamed on the radiation later if it had not been found earlier. , Is that still your concept, that normally the genetic change going on in these atolls is quite high? DONALDSON: Again it's a relative sort of thing. The change in the biota may or may not be great, I think we have to go back to the tlora, where we have definite, stationary organisma to study. I should like to refer this question to Dr. Wolfe. ecologist here, WARREN: this change. After all, he ia the botanist- Well, I thought : ails particularly were demonstrating DONALDSON: I don't know. BRUES: Lauren, you were talking about the concentration of some of these elements in particular plants and this suggests that they are trace elements that are essentially cleaned out of the ocean by living things? We see this in fresh water. If you throw little P32 into a pond, it ali disappears into living matter. In fact, that’s the major limiting factor, I suppose, in how much will grow. Does this happen in the ocean or is there plenty of ali the elements to go around? DONALDSON: I'm sure that there are plenty of elements in the ocean, but are they available? If you suddenly make many of the biologically cssential ones available, they are blotted up, of ccurse,