71 



Tax dollars invested in naval oceanography support the public 

 through development of new technologies, research ships and 

 submersibles, important to us because the data is coming back to 

 us, and through overseas nautical charts, typhoon warnings, ice 

 forecasts, our weather and ocean databases. And we also support 

 civilian research operations and environmental studies. 



Let me just mention a few unique, very specific partnerships that 

 make the point about what I'm talking about. 



NonNavy researchers — NonNavy researchers — are getting un- 

 precedented access to the Arctic by going under the ice once a year 

 in our operational submarines. Scientists going to sea with us 

 under the idea with special configurations in the submarines to ac- 

 tually do their work in a submarine that was built for a very dif- 

 ferent purpose. 



One short demonstration project using Navy's underwater sur- 

 veillance system for tracking whales, something we could do, even 

 as we did other jobs that those systems were designed for, appar- 

 ently provided, at least I'm told this, more information on marine 

 mammal movements than all the previous data collected in the his- 

 tory of any effort at all. 



One short experiment. 



DOD, NASA— as the Doctor just said— DOD, NASA and NOAA 

 are converging the military and civilian environmental satellites — 

 I love the way we talk. We're putting them together under one 

 agency. I think that means we're converging them. 



[Laughter.] 



I didn't learn any of that at the University of Rhode Island, Mr. 

 Kennedy. I just learned to say that we're putting them together. 



[Laughter.] 



But we're putting them together into one program that will be 

 much more cost efficient and will let us share data in a very easy 

 and efficient way. 



The Oceanographer of our Navy, George, and the National Geo- 

 graphic Society take high school students to sea, and their teach- 

 ers, too, very selected people. I just had a delightful time with a 

 teacher and spent some time providing information to children in 

 something called MARCO POLO, a few weeks at sea in an area 

 where they learn about oceanography, give that information to 

 other schools, and they also learn a little bit about history and 

 their country from people who really know what they're talking 

 about. 



I'm particularly pleased with our participating in the Environ- 

 mental Task Force, and in MEDEA. These scientists are dem- 

 onstrating unique research capabilities using Navy systems and 

 Navy data sets and we're working to declassify as much environ- 

 mental information as we can. 



The Navy is committed to an active partnership with you and 

 with the rest of the national oceans community to ensure that we 

 remain a world leader in the field because we need to do that to 

 do our job. 



In closing, I want to assure you that as much public access to 

 our data and our systems as possible is our goal. But — and it's an 

 important "but" — in some areas, such as continued operation of 

 parts of the social system, those parts no longer needed for Navy 



