Late in the year 1970, a major turning point occurred in my scientific career: I joined the staff of a federal fisheries research center at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. One of the principal programs of that center was to examine the effects of coastal pollution on productive systems of the oceans, especially effects on fish and shellfish resources. The Sandy Hook Laboratory, one of the operating units of the center, was ideally located for such a program, positioned as it was on a sandspit within sight of the smog-dimmed skyline of New York City, at the mouth of the grossly polluted Hudson River
