duced S. 1091 to establish a Marine Exploration and Develop- 

 ment Commission primarily aimed at developing the resources 

 of the continental shelf. Congressman Ashley has introduced 

 H.R. 6457 "to provide for a comprehensive, long-range, and 

 coordinated National Program in Oceanography". Congress- 

 man Wilson has introduced H.R. 921 to establish a National 

 Oceanographic Agency. Other bills have been introduced 

 along similar lines in both Houses, and others are expected. 



The genesis of all of this congressional activity has been that 

 the national ocean activity is about as disorganized as it is pos- 

 sible for an important activity of the Government to be. Ocean 

 research in the executive branch of the United States Govern- 

 ment is spread among five Departments, three independent 

 Agencies, and twenty-two operating Bureaus and Offices. No- 

 body concerned with this situation is happy about it except, 

 perhaps, the Bureau of the Budget, which seems to like the 

 policy of divide and rule. 



Since 1959 there has been within the Federal Council for 

 Science and Technology an Interagency Committee on Ocean- 

 ography. This excellent organization has striven mightly to 

 bring some order to the National Oceanographic Program. As 

 a matter of fact it created that entity in name, if not in full 

 fact, from the bits and pieces of ocean research programs scat- 

 tered around through the executive branch. 



These men have done as well as they could under the con- 

 ditions existing. They labor under major handicaps, among 

 which are : 



1 ) Each is responsible to a Department head and is not 

 himself a policy-making official in his own Department. 



2) Each has a full-time job to perform in his own Depart- 

 ment and none can give much time, much less undivided 

 attention, to a national ocean program. 



3 ) As a group they can adopt a program and estimate the 

 budget requirements for funding it. This they do. This has 

 no necessary relation to what budget emerges from the indi- 

 vidual Departments to the Bureau of the Budget, or emerges 

 in the President's Budget to the Congress, or from the Congress 

 in the way of appropriations to the Executive for these pur- 

 poses. There is no such thing as a national oceanographic 

 budget, never has been, and if there were there would be no 

 committee of Congress to which it could be submitted for 

 authorization and no subcommittee of an Appropriations Com- 

 mittee to receive and act on it as one entity. While it is hardly 

 believable, the national oceanographic program when it reaches 

 the Congress is dealt with in bits and pieces bv thirty-two sub- 

 stantive and appropriations committees and subcommittees. 

 It is an overstatement to say that there is little communication 

 among these committees on ocean planning. 



Accordingly, there is nothing that can reasonably really be 

 called a National Ocean Program, or a Budget for such. 



The striving of the numerous Senators and Congressmen 

 who have introduced bills dealing with this subject in this and 

 previous sessions is aimed at reducing this chaos to some sort 

 of order. In this respect all of the bills mentioned above are 

 steps in the right direction. I personally favor S. 944 of Sen- 

 ator Magnuson (and companion bills in the House) and S. 



1091 of Senator Bartlett (and companion bills in the House). 

 Both are very sound bills and would mark solid advances in 

 the right direction. As a matter of fact, they have a good deal 

 in common, although one is aimed primarily at the continental 

 shelf and the other at the ocean. One would hope that they 

 could be combined, retaining the best features of each, and the 

 combined bill adopted by the Congress this session. 



A Suggestion 



I have no illusion, however, that the formation of a National 

 Oceanographic Council, as envisioned by Senator Magnuson 

 and his colleagues, would be a general panacea to secure an 

 effective National Ocean Program. There would still be too 

 many Departments and Agencies dabbling in ocean activities 

 on too small a scale, and too many committees of Congress 

 adding their comments. 



I think that a necessary companion action is to group several 

 of the major ocean-oriented operating offices and Bureaus to- 

 gether into a full-fledged Department of the Ocean, having 

 the same status as the Department of the Interior, the Depart- 

 ment of Commerce, etc., with a Secretary of Cabinet rank. 



I suggest that this new Department of the Ocean should 

 be composed of the following Agencies and Bureaus, amongst 

 others : 



U.S. Maritime Administration — U.S. Weather Bureau — 

 Bureau of Commercial Fisheries — U.S. Coast Guard — 

 U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey — National Oceano- 

 graphic Data Center — Coastal Engineering Research 

 Center — and the Sea-Air Interaction Laboratory. 

 The Maritime Commission is presently in the Department 

 of Commerce, which is concerned mainly with land-based in- 

 dustry problems. The Merchant Marine establishment should 

 be with other major civilian ocean activities in the Department 

 of the Ocean. The sense of this is recognized by the House of 

 Representatives which has a Committee on Merchant Marine 

 and Fisheries. Both activities also come within the purview of 

 the Senate Committee on Commerce. 



The U.S. Weather Bureau also is presently in the Depart- 

 ment of Commerce for no better reason than that there was no 

 other place into which it fitted better. The growing under- 

 standing of the controlling part the ocean plays in climate con- 

 trol makes a move of this Bureau to the Department of the 

 Ocean logical. 



The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries started out in the 

 Smithsonian Institution, then went to the Department of Com- 

 merce, and lastly was grabbed by Harold Ickes into the De- 

 partment of the Interior, of all places. An ever-increasing 

 part of its activities has been concerned with the international 

 high seas, relations with foreign governments and their fisher- 

 men, participation in international ocean science programs, 

 participation in the activities of international conservation 

 agencies covering the high seas, and work with the specialized 

 agencies of the United Nations. Its field of work is in the 

 exterior, not the interior. This will continue to be the case 

 increasingly as the ocean fisheries of the world continue their 

 rapid growth, whether we participate in that growth or not. 



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