45 



About 20 years ago researchers aboard deep-diving submersibles like ALVIN 

 made a totally unexpected discovery of a broad range of living plants and marine 

 animals along these hydrothermal vents. While this has been a tremendously 

 exciting scientific discovery, it has had important economic implications as well. 



The unique, heat-resistant enzymes isolated from bacteria found in hot water 

 vents have provided products used in the multimillion dollar biotechnology 

 industry and in basic molecular biological research. 



In 1993, the ALVIN submersible found evidence of a large community of bacteria 

 that live in porous rocks well beneath the seafloor. Some researchers estimate 

 that the biomass of this sub-seafloor biosphere is comparable to the mass of all 

 living things on the earth's surface. Discoveries of deep seabed and sub- 

 seafloor life forms have opened up entire new avenues of research and 

 cpportunities for understanding the complex interactions between living 

 organisms and their environment. 



NSF Role in Collaborative Efforts 



These are only a few of the literally scores of topics included in our ocean 

 science research support, each with an equally interesting story to tell. These 

 success stories however are not the result of heroic efforts of NSF supporting 

 research in isolation. Instead, they reflect collaborative programs that involve 

 academic researchers, agency scientists, oceanographers, and resource 

 managers in other federal agencies and in international efforts. In our research 

 activities that are relevant to fisheries, NSF has worked to develop partnerships 

 betv/een the best academic researchers and their counterparts in ocean 

 resource sciences at NOAA. Our collaborative efforts with NOAA are essential 

 to the conduct of good science. Internationally, this partnership has expanded to 

 include informal research partnerships with research agencies in scores of 

 foreign countries. NSF has also been a major proponent of an international 

 program under the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. 



Research on the multiple factors that affect commercial fish populations is 

 exemplified in our Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics Program (GLOBEC) 

 which we initiated three years ago to understand the collapse of the cod and 

 haddock fisheries in the George's Bank region off the coast of New England and 

 up the coast as far as Newfoundland. Representatives of the commercial 

 fisheries industry have participated in this program. 



On the U.S. side, extensive effective partnerships have been developed among 

 NSF, NOAA, NASA, DOE, and ONR to provide both needed data and the tools 

 needed to interpret this data. The NSF and our federal partners, however, 

 cannot support all the research, ship operations, data analysis, and modeling 



