OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES 87 



in the Bureau of the Budget and perhaps to the Appropriations Com- 

 mittee the elements that go into making up that line item. Is this line 

 item going to be greater in 1960 than it was in 1959 ? 



Mr. McKernan. No; it remains the same. 



Mr. Miller. You have had an increase in salaries since that time 

 v?>hich you have to absorb ? 



Mr. McKerxan". The increase in salary, at least part of it, is being 

 made up by a special item of appropirations by Congress. That is 

 in our regular appropriations from Congress. 



Now, the committee will remember that we operate some of our 

 research functions, and in fact the Albatross^ from the Saltonstall- 

 Kennedy funds. They are what we call permanent funds and in 

 those funds we were obliged to absorb the salary increase which did 

 reduce the Saltonstall-Kennedy funds available for research projects. 



The Albatross is being financed out of these Saltonstall-Kennedy 

 funds so that essentially what you say is correct for that particular 

 item. 



I did not quite finish my answer to your previous question, Mr. 

 Chairman, about the other factor involved in the Albatross situation. 

 That is, a boat as old as the Albatross going to sea from 140 to 150 

 days a year and costing an increasing amount of funds simply seems 

 to me, is in my experience, inefficient. As I said before, I consider 

 180 days at sea a very minimum that I would like to see a research 

 boat at sea. When you drop below that, because of the large costs 

 for operating research boats since they are expensive, it just appears 

 to me that it is not a very good expenditure of our funds. 



I might add that it would be my recommendation that, if any other 

 of our vessels become in the position where they drop consistently 

 below 180 days a year, they should be replaced so that we can go back 

 to between 200 and 220 days a year at sea. A good fishing boat will 

 operate between 250 and 300 days at sea so that the fishing fleets 

 operate many more days that this. 



Mr. JMiLLER. I can appreciate your problem in operating boats as 

 obsolete as this in this service. Without going into the report sub- 

 mitted by the Ad Hoc Committee on Research Sciences, because we 

 hope to have you before us on that later, we will just say that it 

 recommends that we increase materially this fleet, that we have vessels 

 especially designed for that purpose. 



Do you feel that your laying up this vessel might adversely affect 

 the results sought in that report ? You are familiar with the report. 



Mr. McKernan. I am very familiar with it, Mr. Chairman, and I 

 think it is a fine report. 



We considered this but, since we are limited in our budget and since 

 we have the responsibility for achieving the very maximum in results 

 with this budget, we felt that it was necessary for us to do the thing 

 that was right. It was the unanimous opinion of every expert who 

 studied this particular problem in our Bureau that the Albatross be 

 laid up at the present time. There was no disagreement in this. In 

 fact, the only disagreement had been in past years when even then a 

 majority of our people for several years felt that the Albatross 

 was an inefficient research vessel and should have been laid up. 



It was unfortunate and purely a coincidence, I assure you, that 

 it occurred at the time when this subcommittee report happened to be 



