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BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 



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Responses to Quesrions by the Honorable Solomon P. Ortiz 



to Robert I. Wicklund 



on the National Undersea Research Program 



1. No, considering that NURP is touted as our National program of undersea research, $16 

 million is a small amount indeed. NURP covers a wide array of research disciplines and is 

 responsible for studying thousands of miles of coastline in the U.S., Caribbean and other parts of 

 the world. In fact, all oceans, particularly those areas that have never been explored much less 

 studied, are within the purview of NURP. My personal feeling is that our National program 

 should be at $75 million or more at this point in its history. More practically, and considering 

 fiscal constraints, I would recommend the level of $23 million in FY 1994, as written in last 

 year's NURP Act language. 



2. Oiu- Center has identified several additional research priorities, if money were available. 

 Two of these are: (a) expansion of coral reef research to other regions of the Caribbean, Florida 

 and the Gulf of Mexico because coral reefs are declining worldwide at an alarming rate and we 

 are not sure of the cause or causes; (b) continuation of research initiated at CMRC in the 

 development and use of techniques to study the effects of increased ultraviolet light, particularly 

 UY(B), on primary and secondary marine organisms. 



3. The CMRC/NURP budget is as follows: 



We are a public foundation and have been able to avoid a large overhead; all charges against our 

 grant are direct costs. The science program at CMRC, including the monitoring and program 

 development listed above, amounts to $798,000. Operations funds, which are in direct support 

 of the science program, are for facilties such as submersibles, boats, laboratory space, etc. 

 Additionally, we received over $200,000 in private gifts and receipts that were used to cost-share 

 the NURP budget. 



4. No. Presently the Alvin is the only longterm deepwater submersible available to civilian 

 researchers. The Navy's SeaCliff and Turtle are available from time to time, but have not been 

 effective tools for civilian research. Except for some foreign vehicles, there is nothing available 

 to U.S. scientists that will dive deeper than about 4000 meters. 



(continued) 



