60 ADVANCEMENT OF MARINE SCIENCES 



The laboratory at Boothbay Harbor, Maine, is very old, a former 

 State hatchery building. 



The shellfish laboratory at Gulf Breeze, Fla., occupies a former 

 Coast Guard station, but while the structure is old there is ample 

 room for the assigned research activities. This applies also to the 

 laboratory at Galveston, Tex., according to Bureau officials, where an 

 old Ai"my building is being used. 



Legislation is pending in the Congress to replace the antiquated 

 building at Milford, Conn., which houses the Bureau's shellfish 

 research station there. 



At Seattle, Wash., the Bureau's only biological laboratorj^ between 

 La JoUa, CaHf., and Auke Bay, Alaska, occupies a wooden structure 

 built in 1931 with only 21,000 feet of floor space. Even the corridors 

 are filled with desks and equipment. 



This laboratory, which 30 years ago was hardly large enough to 

 accoimiiodate the research workload then, conducts research in the 

 North Pacific for the International North Pacific Fisheries Com- 

 mission, investigates the abundance and high seas distribution of 

 salmon, collects samples from distant parts of the ocean for quali- 

 tative determinations and origins, and has as an objective studies 

 of the circukition and characteristics of water masses in the Pacific 

 Ocean and the Bering Sea adjacent to the Aleutians. 



Laboratory officials a year ago requested funds to build a 74,000 

 square foot addition, were told to reduce the request to a 30,000 

 square foot addition, did so, and got no addition at all. 



The Bureau until December 31, 1950, rented 8,000 square feet of 

 space in an unused Navy buikbng for its instrumentation laboratory, 

 which, as previously stated, has now been discontinued. 



S. 901 would authorize funds for necessary Bureau facilities. 



Section 6 would further authorize such sums as are necessary, not 

 to exceed $10 million per annum, for the operation of fisheries resource 

 studies. 



The studies would include marine population sampling, biological 

 surveys, ecological mapping, taxonomy, genetics of marine organ- 

 isms, microbiology, pond fish culture and bracldsh water fish farming, 

 estuarine studies, marine radiation biology, artificial cultivation of 

 marine organizms and selective breeding of food fishes, migrations 

 and transplantations of life in the sea, nutrient research, and closed 

 ecology systems using marine life. 



The last, on which extensive research has been conducted in one 

 or more laboratories, is viewed as a possible means of renewing food 

 supplies during extended space flights. 



Eleven million dollars would be authorized in section 6 for contin- 

 uing studies over a 10-year period of the utilization of marine products 

 and for the development of new uses. The investigation of mineral 

 resources in the seas also would be included under this authorization. 



The committee contemplates that through these studies increased 

 uses would be found for marine products in industry, for fertilizers, 

 and for organic chemicals or compounds, as well as for human con- 

 sumption and animal feeds. 



Funds for legal and economic studies of commercial fisheries would 

 also be included in this authorization, and are particularly essential 

 because of the international aspects of most of our fisheries. 



