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U.S. scientists to dive on Japanese subraersibles, and to use the U.S. Navy submersibles. 

 In other words, the total budget for NURP is biased towards shallow water. As I alleged 

 in ray testimony, deep submergence facilities in this country are underfunded and NURP 

 could address this situation by increasing its contribution to the National Deep 

 Submergence Facility at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). 



Question #2: Is the current research grant peer review and distribution process a fair 

 one? 



I believe that the National Office has made great progress in establishing an NSF- 

 style peer review process that holds the potential for raising the standards. Needless to 

 say, this process is hollow if congressional earmarking protects a NURP center's budget 

 and, thereby, ignores the peer review process. The NURP operation can only become a 

 flagship Federal research program if the National Office has the power/freedom to oversee 

 the research programs of the NURP centers through peer review. 



Question #3: Should there be a funding base level for all the centers with the National 

 Office funding research in critical areas that exceed base level support? 



This plan sounds like an entitlement to me that allows the opportunity for scientific 

 stagnation and isolation. The peer review process, by definition, keeps the competitors on 

 the intellectual Serengety lean, agile and involved. 



Question #4: Is their adequate deep submergence capability available to civilian 

 researchers? 



As I stated in my testimony, the health of deep submergence science is the U.S. is 

 not robust, largely because the National Deep Submergence Facility at WHOI is 

 underfunded. The result is that the technological capability of ALVIN is below the 

 standards set by Japanese, French and Russian counterparts, resources are not available to 

 support engineers to work on development, and, with the arrival of the new Jason-Medea 

 ROV system at the National facility, it is not clear how this system will be supported. 

 Although the U.S. has pre-eminent strength in the quality of the U.S. deep submergence 

 science community and in the knowledge of what needs to be done, the U.S. is in danger 

 of becoming second rate because our deep submergence systems are underfunded. 



Question #5: Is there a need for additional submersible platforms? If so, how great is 

 this need? Is NURP the correct venue for funding these platforms? 



It is my sense that what the U.S. deep submergence science community needs in 

 the future is a new deep diving submersible (6000 m depth capable of reaching 98% of 

 seafloor) to replace ALVIN (4000 m capability). The submersible would be designed to be 



