OCEANOGRAPHY 103 



U.S. effoi-ts ill the field of oceanography and that tliere will }^ a oon-. 

 siderable expansion in this particular field. 



Mr. Miller. We, too, accept this fine report by the committee of 

 the National Academy. We think tliat it is a wonderful docmnent. 

 We are very happy they have adopted this policy in (lovernment 

 now. On the other hand we have the responsibility of seeing that 

 this thing works. We cannot go beyond progress. Eveiything has 

 to stop here and be sent back. So we are going to watch with great 

 interest the operation of the Wakelin committee, the efforts it makes, 

 with tlie sincere hope that it is successful. We are not going to leave 

 all of the eggs in one basket. You will be. coming back from time to 

 time to give us suggestions how tliis research must go on for a long 

 period of time. It is going to be stabilized in Government. It is not 

 going to be depend.ent upon the thinking of successive administra- 

 tions. I am certain that you would not want to see the Fish and 

 Wildlife Service function without statutory law within the structure 

 of the Government, would you ? 



Mr. McKerxax. Xo, I would not. I concur in j'our views in that 

 regard. We certainly want to make all of our records and programs 

 available for your critical review at any time. 



Because of the setup within the Federal Council for review and 

 coordination of the o^.^eanogi-aphic effort, we believe that the objec- 

 tives of House Resolution 10-1:12 again are, so far as I am concerned, 

 right down the line with respect to what they are attempting to do. 

 We would like to see oceanographic surveys coordinated through the 

 existing setu]) that has been organized within Government. 



With respect to H.R. 12108, setting up a national oceanographic 

 data center and a national instrumentation and calibration center, 

 here we would prefer this in the Xavy's Hydrographic Office, provid- 

 ing that the organization remains essentially in civilian control. 

 We have reasons to believe the Xavy intends to coo])erate veiy closely 

 with the civilian agencies and to work through, in a sense, a "board of 

 advisoi-s of which we hope to be. a member. This national data centeiv 

 with the very expert and fine physical facilities that are available in 

 the Xa^'y at the present time, will be a wonderful way to bring to- 

 gether both physical and biological oceanogra})hic data and make it 

 more available for the scientists of our country and, in fact, the world. 



Sometimes I am appalled by the amount of data and the complexity 

 of data that is being assembled. Some of us have been giving 

 thought to how we can make this data available. It is sometimes 

 in a sense locked within agencies and not available, and there is 

 no easy way to do this. I believe this is another field where consid- 

 erable research is needed — to handle both biological and physical 

 oceanographic data and put it in a form where you can retrieve it in 

 some sort, of sensible way so that it can be analyzed by our scientists, 

 and so that it can free our scientists from sometimes overwhelming 

 problems of attempting to manually tabulate and keep track of tre- 

 mendous amount of data, which are accumulating at a tremendous 

 rate in some fields. 



So we are enthusiastic about this data center. We believe that the 

 reconnnendations that have been made to put this within the Hydro- 

 graphic Office with a group of civilian agencies advising the Hydro- 

 graphic Office to make the data essentially civilian data unclassified 

 and available to all concerned, is a good thing, and we believe with 



