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.