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liaison both with the Air Force and the Navy, and Captain Klein 

 and Colonel McMurrow, who are those liaisons, are here today. 



Let me say that there are enormous opportunities. There is much 

 more to be learned about air-sea interaction. There's much more to 

 be learned about building sustainable fisheries. And there's much 

 to be done before we can maximize the use of the oceans for na- 

 tional defense, for transportation, industry and recreation. 



We've established coordination mechanisms in the government 

 and we have a variety of these things. But I think one of the things 

 we have learned and one of the things that President Clinton 

 pointed out in his State of the Union address is that the govern- 

 ment can't do it all. 



We need close cooperation with all the sectors — government, pri- 

 vate industry, academic, environmental organizations. 



I think one thing we might look at is the successful activity of 

 the President's Council on Sustainable Development, which was a 

 group that was bringing together all of the stakeholders to look at 

 general issues of sustainable development. This group had govern- 

 ment representatives from Cabinet agencies, CEOs of major indus- 

 try, government/nongovernmental organizations and civil rights 

 and labor community representatives. 



I believe we could do a similar thing for oceans issues, bringing 

 together government, private industry, the academic community, 

 and the environmental organizations to have a roundtable, a for- 

 mally established roundtable with each party having a formal seat 

 to talk about how we could provide cohesion and focus to our collec- 

 tive efforts. 



We would want to focus this on theme-oriented, top-level discus- 

 sions that might help move ocean programs more quickly to soci- 

 etal benefits. And we might try to expand these roundtables even- 

 tually to include international participation. 



I'd like to make two points in particular that we are very con- 

 cerned about. 



One is that NOAA depends very strongly on extramural re- 

 search. We depend on the academic community for help. When I 

 was working in NOAA as a scientist, I helped establish two joint 

 institutes between the academic community and NOAA. And as ad- 

 ministrator, I have strongly supported extramural research. 



And I can commit to you that even as we go through budget cuts, 

 we will continue to support the academic community at the same 

 percentage that we do, or even greater as we look at the needs that 

 are there. 



The second point is that we have a very successful program of 

 partnership called the Sea Grant Program. 



Sea Grant has been a powerful program of partnership between 

 the states, the academic community, and the Federal Government. 

 It has allowed us to do research in important new areas. It has al- 

 lowed us to make the transition of research to applications. 



There are many examples of how that has worked. And I can tell 

 you once again, we are strongly committed to the Sea Grant Pro- 

 gram and we will look to continuing that very strong commitment. 



