Abstract
The immediate post-war period led to a massive reconstruction effort, the establishment of the United Nations and its offshoot agency UNESCO, and the Nuclear Age. The core sampling at Enewetak and Bikini as part of the nuclear testing programme finally substantiated Darwin’s subsidence theory of atoll formation. The Nuclear Age also changed scientific practice, with radioactive isotopes being made available for peaceful scientific study. Biology, once seen as the “poor relation” to physics and chemistry, also matured, basing itself firmly on ecosystem analysis. The Enewetak Marine Biological Laboratory was able to use all these advances in the work of the Odum Brothers and Tom Goreau. The longstanding issue of coral—algal nutritional and calcification interaction—was finally resolved in 1984.
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Notes
- 1.
The published findings reported for the period 1946–1955 are listed in the references in Odum and Odum (1955).
- 2.
In the early phases of investigation, the non-indigenous spelling of Eniwetok was used on US naval maps and by American scientists, including the brothers Odum, and it appears in that form in their journal article. The correct Marshallese spelling as Enewetak is documented in Devaney et al. (1987, p. xi).
- 3.
Although cited by other investigators, only one set of these papers survive in Guam, and despite intensive investigation, I was unable to find them. The Siro Kawaguti Working Group of the Japanese Coral Reef Society are in the process of translating the full set of Kawaguti’s Reports into English, but as yet this is incomplete. Consequently, I have relied on the comments by Sargent et al. (1954).
- 4.
Goreau et al. (1961), cited in Lenhoff and Loomis (1961, p. 279).
- 5.
Muscatine (1961), cited in Lenhoff and Loomis (1961, p. 255).
- 6.
Muscatine (1961), cited in Lenhoff and Loomis (1961, p. 259).
- 7.
Muscatine (1961), cited in Lenhoff and Loomis (1961, p. 264).
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Bowen, J. (2015). Ecosystem Analysis and Nuclear Technology. In: The Coral Reef Era: From Discovery to Decline. Humanity and the Sea. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07479-5_10
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