EFFECTIVENESS OF THE COMMITTEE ON OCEANOGRAPHY 165 



1. Recommends to Member States that they provide the Secretariat of IOC annually with full 

 information on what stations of the various types are in operation, what data are being gathered 

 from them and at what time intervals, and on plans for future developments (including technical 

 information on engineering and instrumental matters); 



2. Recommends to Member States concerned that they make fuller use of weather ships for the 

 needs of oceanography; 



3. Recommends to Unesco that steps be taken in consultation with IMCO to clarify the legal 

 status of unmanned and manned observing buoys; 



4. Requests the Bureau to establish a working group of experts from Member States, WMO and 

 other appropriate international organizations, to study the existing network of fixed stations and 

 the needs of extending it (types, number, locations, kinds of observations and their spacing in 

 time) and prepare proposals for meeting these needs. The working group should report to the 

 next session of the IOC. Expenses of the individual members, including travel, should be met by 

 the member governments and organizations having representatives on the working group, or by 

 Unesco. 



ADDENDUM TO RESOLUTION 7 

 (NS/IOC/INF.16) 



REPORT OF THE WORKING PANEL ON OBSERVING 

 STATIONS AND WEATHER SHIPS 



From the contributions at this, and other, conferences* 1 ' it is evident that the employment 

 of "fixed" stations for taking oceanographic observations is of increasing importance to modern 

 oceanography, and that the establishment of networks of such stations is of interest to many 

 Member States. Information gathered continuously, or at frequent intervals, from fixed stations 

 is obtainable at relatively small cost and is indispensable for the solution of several types of 

 oceanographic problems. Series of data from fixed points, closely spaced in time, make possible 

 the study of time variations in oceanographic parameters; some of these vary importantly with 

 frequencies of a few minutes, other with frequencies of days, months or years. A network of 

 fixed stations at suitable locations can provide sets of truly synoptic observations which can be 

 employed to monitor changes in the ocean circulation and the distribution of properties, and thus 

 can assist in the solution of problems of forecasting. Such data, taken in conjunction with observa- 

 tions by moving ships, which cannot themselves be truly synoptic, can assist in the proper inter- 

 pretation of the information from such moving ships. 



The fixed stations now in use, or in the advanced planning stage, are of four kinds. Coastal 

 and island stations, ocean station vessels (weather ships), unmanned anchored buoys, and manned 

 anchored platforms. 



Coastal and Island Stations 



A large number of stations are presently being maintained at coastal and some island loca- 

 tions for the recording of sea level (tides) and a few for long- period wave records. At most of 

 these there are taken records, at least daily, of surface temperature and salinity. During the 

 I.G.Y. , there were also taken near a number of such stations, especially at oceanic islands, 

 shallow casts for temperature and salinity, at daily and weekly intervals, for computing steric 

 sea level . 



It appears most desirable to increase the number of such stations, especially on off-shore 

 oceanic islands and at them to obtain not only sea level, temperature, and salinity observations, 

 but also to obtain meteorological data, data on chemical constituents of the ocean at various 

 depths, solar radiation and simple biological observations. 



(1) See example document: IOC/1-6, IOC/INF . 1 , IOC/INF . 1 1 , and Ocean/92(l), and NS/ 163 

 of Paris Conference of March 1960. 



