We went to a Florida beach in darkness to see Athena II blast off into space in a spectacular display of pyrotechnics. After the orange glow of the launch we saw the booster rockets fall as the rocket began its two day trek to the moon. While awe inspiring to earthlings, as space shots go, this mission was almost routine. Compared to the more recent Mars probe, this moon shot was like a trip to galactic suburbia. It was not always so.

One of the early Link submersibles in front of a Harbor Branch research vessel recently returned from the Galapagos. ES&E photo - T. Davey.

Some 35 years earlier, the Russians startled the Americans with their orbiting satellite Sputnik, administering the coup de grace to stunned US politicians when Yuri Gagarin returned safely after completing three orbits of earth. Kruschev sneeringly pointed out that the diminutive US satellites resembled Florida grapefruits in size. A shaken JFK announced that America accepted the space challenge to be the first to put a man on the moon. Displaying both the best rockets and repartee in the space race, Krushchev responded that Russia had already hit the moon with Luna II in 1959. The Russian problem, he stressed, would be to de-moon a cosmonaut.

But the Russian gloating was short-lived. The US rapidly overtook the Russians and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon in 1969, ten years after Luna II had hit the moon. Many other US space trips followed and, being Americans, they naturally took a car along with them, the Lunar Rover ­ now easily the world's most expensive used car. Neil Armstrong went from outer space to become, of all things, an expert in leaking underground gas tanks. I met him after he gave a presentation at a seminar in Toronto some 15 years ago.

The Rover is still there as a tribute to American tenacity and ingenuity but this latest moon probe pales by comparison to earlier US successes. In the Athena II project, no human landed on the moon but the diminutive Solar Prospector satellite was launched to begin its primary task of finding ice which could be used to provide water for later human settlers. This trip is rather inexpensive by past NASA standards, a mere $63 million.

Not far from where we watched the moon probe lies the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute on the Indian River Lagoon (ES&E June 1996). Founded by Seward Johnson and Edwin Link, Harbor Branch has done pioneering oceanographic research as far away as the Galapagos islands, and more recently off the shores of Cuba with the encouragement of Fidel Castro. Institute research includes onshore aquaculture experiments as well as deep sea exploration in submersibles designed by Edwin Link who was an astonishingly versatile inventor.

The son of a player piano maker, Edwin Link developed a range of aviation trainers where pilots could train without hazard to themselves or scarce wartime planes. Winston Churchill praised Link Trainers for their vital role in training WW II RAF pilots.

After several decades, Link trainers are still used in military, civilian and space aviation training. No better use of his engineering versatility was demonstrated than when the Challenger space shuttle broke up shortly after take off from Cape Canaveral a few years ago, killing the crew. It was a Link designed submersible from Harbor Branch which was sent out to locate and retrieve wreckage from the stricken space shuttle.

There was an ironic juxtaposition to the 1998 space probe. That very same day, marine scientists in Washington, issued a report which contained a sombre warning about the alarming state of our oceans. "The sea is in real trouble, much more than we previously thought", said Elliot Norse, founder of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Redmond, Washington. Biologist Patricia Norse told a news conference that while scientists are not alarmists by nature, the fact that 1,600 experts from sixty five countries had endorsed a call for action was very significant.

They want President Clinton to hold a White House Conference this year on the rapid, unprecedented declines in fishing populations, and expressed concerns on the overall health of our oceans. Congressman Curt Weldon, speaking on the same day as the moon shot, January 6, said: "It is appalling to me that we spend more on the 'oceans of Mars' than we do on the oceans of earth".

In Canada we are painfully aware of the economic effects of oceanic mismanagement. Cod have disappeared off the Grand Banks, once the richest fishing area on our planet. On our west coast salmon are disappearing, with Alaska and British Columbia involved in hostile confrontations. Dead Beluga whales, whose habitat was the St. Lawrence River, have been found to be so contaminated they could be considered as toxic waste, a macabre lesson in bioaccumulation. Many other saltwater and freshwater aquatic habitats have been ruined by pollution. Oyster beds have been contaminated from sewage and industrial discharges and lobster and crab, once sold at premium prices in restaurants, cannot be eaten with confidence in some areas.

Many jurisdictions issue warnings to anglers. The State of Florida, for example, now issues warnings of dangerous mercury levels in fish in certain areas, and for years Ontario has issued warnings and guidelines to freshwater anglers because of various polluted waterways.

We don't have to go to the moon to get the expertise to remediate the municipal and industrial pollution which is devastating the earth's waters. Technical capabilities are already here in abundance. What is missing is a willingness to spend money on proven environmental remediation technology. But can we afford not to?

If all the economic costs of water pollution were factored into the equation, politicians would find there are great monetary savings to be gained from investing in water treatment projects. Clean water not only provides abundant and inexpensive food supplies, it can save vast sums in reducing our spiralling health costs. History shows that dirty water has killed or maimed more humans than all the wars of recorded history.

Personally, I support the idea of space travel not only for its pursuit of knowledge but for its exciting economic possibilities. But because space travel is glamorous, priorities have become distorted. The tangible evidence of our deteriorating oceans and waterways are not possibilities but grim portents of what will happen if we do not change our ways and priorities.

From the moon itself we can get the perfect word to describe a $63 million project to investigate the possibility of frozen water on a dead celestial world. The word is lunacy.