NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC 

 ADMINISTRATION AUTHORIZATION 



TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 1993 



U.S. Senate, 

 Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 



Washington, DC. 



The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m. in room SR- 

 253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. John F. Kerry, presiding. 



Staff members assigned to this hearing: Penny D. Dalton and 

 Lila H. Helms, professional staff members; and John A. Moran, mi- 

 nority staff counsel. 



OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR KERRY 



Senator Kerry. This hearing of the National Ocean Policy Study 

 will come to order. Good morning to all. We meet today to address 

 NOAA's budget and to discuss some of the fiscal priorities for 1994. 



I am very pleased to welcome Dr. Jim Baker, the new Under Sec- 

 retary for Oceans and Atmosphere, and accompanied by Assistant 

 Secretary Doug Hall and the NOAA Comptroller Mr. Andrew 

 Moxam, we appreciate your being here. In addition, we will have 

 a second panel which is going to examine some of the issues sur- 

 rounding marine biotechnology. We welcome three witnesses for 

 that panel: Mr. Bennett Helms from South Carolina; Mr. Mark 

 Silva from Sandwich, MA; and Dr. John Burris who is the Director 

 of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA; they will 

 talk to us about some of the tangible benefits of legislation that we 

 are going to be introducing. 



I am particularly pleased to be able to welcome Dr. Burris here, 

 especially in light of the efforts that this committee has made to 

 support the research going on there, as well as the new Marine Re- 

 sources Center of which I was privileged to attend the opening last 

 June. Needless to say, the work that has been done at the labora- 

 tory over the years is exciting and important to all of us. 



I am not going to make lengthy remarks. There seems to be a 

 repetitious syndrome with respect to the NOAA budget. Each year 

 we meet to discuss the budget, and each year we seem to confront 

 exactly the same set of issues, which is basically a debate struc- 

 tured by the fact that there is too much to do in this area and too 

 few resources being allocated to do it. This is true whether the 

 issue is national efforts to research climate change or the issue to 

 provide radar coverage for weather prediction and the dangers that 

 go with our inability to do that. Whether it is the diminishing ca- 

 pacity of the NOAA fleet with its increasingly aging ships, an issue 

 that nas been lamented here in this committee on a number of dif- 



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