104 OCEANOGRAPHY 



the experts that the Navy has and with the physical facilities they 

 have available, this perhaps is one of the wisest of moves. 



I am of the opinion this could be done perhaps in other ways also. 

 I believe that the Department of Commerce could very well accom- 

 plish it. They also have very highly trained and highly technical 

 staffs. I suspect that the Smithsonian, by expanding and enlarging 

 their current system, might possibly do it, though I am not quite 

 so familiar in this instance. But it seems to me that the way recom- 

 mended by a number of the research agencies recently, through the 

 Hydrographic Office, j)erhaps is the one that we should give a trial. 



Mr. Chairman, I am available for any questions now. 



Mr. Bauer. Mr. McKernan, let us pay our attention first to the 

 question of survey. What do you conceive would be an oceanwide 

 survey in the sense of marine biology ? How would you go about it ? 



Mr. McKerxax. In the first place, at the present time it seems to 

 me our knowledge of the oceans is spotty. In some parts of the world 

 it is not veiy worthwhile from the standpoint of assessing the living 

 resources of the sea, or areas of productivity of the sea. What I 

 would like to see is very close cooperation, not only on a national 

 scale — ^which by the way we do not have perfectly at the present 

 time — but on an international scale, and with systematic surveys 

 draw^n up that would survey not only the physical oceanography, but 

 the biology in terms of the measures of productivity, in terms of the 

 standing crop of organisms, the pliytoplankton and the zooplankton, 

 and quantitive measures of the standing crop of other organisms 

 larger than plankton up to the mammals existing in these particular 

 areas. 



Mr. Bauer. With respect to how you go about it, let's do a little 

 more thinking on that score. 



Would you combine a biological survey with the same hull that you 

 are using in physical or geological oceanography? 



Mr. McI\j:RisrA]sr. I believe we are talking about worldwide surveys, 

 and, if I can use the term that is pretty well overworked, the basic 

 surveys to find out what the oceans are like. I believe tlie biological 

 and physical oceanographic surveys can probably be combined 

 and can be handled by a single survey ship. Now this means that 

 you are going to sacrifice something in measuring the standing- 

 crop of the larger organisms such as the fishes because this requires 

 perhaps a specialized vessel, but in our efforts in the Central Pacific 

 you will remember that we tried both ways of carrying out surveys 

 of broad areas in the Central Pacific. We found in general the 

 oceanographic surveys — and by that I mean the studying of the crop 

 of smaller organisms plus the studies of the productivity in the area — 

 could be done in one vessel, but the moment that we attempted to put 

 experimental fishing gear on the boats we then tended to sacrifice 

 considerably with respect to getting good physical and chemical 

 oceanography. We could not cover enough space in a reasonable 

 amount of time. So what we did in those instances was we attempted 

 to find out where the rich pastures of the ocean might be, and then 

 we came in later with experimental fishing boats and explored furthei- 

 these rich pasturages of the ocean to find out what kind of a crop of 

 usable living resources were available there. This Avorked very suc- 

 cessfully in the Central Pacific and I expect that it could work on a 

 broader, worldwide basis. 



