When, in 1966, the Gennan Research Society directed the attention of oceanographers in the Federal Republic of Ger many to problems of marine pollution, I was not enthusiastic. Emphasis on this problem area meant that other important research plans had to be postponed. But the lectures at the Third International Oceanographic Congress, September 1970, in Tokyo, and at the FAO Conference on Marine Pollution and its Effects on Living Resources and Fishing, December 1970, in Rome, convinced me that research on problems of marine pollution is a social obligation, and that the oceanographer has to...