Purpose of the Act 



It was in this situation in 1966 that the Congress, recognizing the 

 need to strengthen the Nation's capabilities in marine science and 

 technology, with particular emphasis on ocean exploitation, passed 

 the National Sea Grant College and Program Act (Public Law 

 89-688) which was signed into law October 15, 1966. The legislation 

 amended the Marine Resources and Engineering Development Act 

 and became the first operating program provided under the basic 

 legislation. 



The purpose of this Act is threefold — to strengthen the pool of 

 trained manpower, to strengthen applied research, and to improve the 

 process of information transfer. 



Attainment of these objectives will be a long-term process, for the 

 needed manpower resources cannot be developed quickly. But the 

 Sea Grant Act is intended to begin the move toward those objectives 

 and, ultimately, to accelerate application of scientific discoveries to 

 all fields relating to the seas: defense, shipping, food, prospecting 

 and mining, pharmaceuticals, transportation, recreation, weather pre- 

 diction, and other useful areas. 



The National Science Foundation is charged by law with initiating, 

 developing, and supporting the programs authorized by the Sea Grant 

 Act. The Marine Sciences Council is required to advise the Founda- 

 tion with respect to the policies, procedures, and operations of the 

 Foundation in carrying out its functions. 



As a matter of policy, the Council and Foundation agreed that the 

 sea-grant program should be largely oriented to national purposes, 

 such as those dealing with food from the sea, ocean-related environ- 

 mental forecasting, Continental Shelf exploitation, and multiple use 

 of the seacoast (specifically addressed to pollution problems). The 

 Council also recommended that existing legislative authorization for 

 two years, ending fiscal year 1968, be extended for another finite 

 interval of at least two years. 



Features of the Program 



In some respects the Sea-Grant concept is similar to existing pro- 

 grams, but in its mode of support, the Sea-Grant concept is new. Its 

 novelty derives both from its focus on ocean engineering and, as sug- 

 gested in Figures 11 and 12, on its cross-disciplinary and information 

 transfer elements. Figure 11 is a traditional, two-dimensional view 

 of ocean training, with disciplines matched against fields. Our pur- 

 pose in representing ocean training on a three-dimensional grid, as 

 in Figure 12, is to show that the Sea-Grant concept embraces a greater 

 number of disciplines, including law, economics, and so on, and that 



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