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many new demands on the nation's investment in these areas. 

 These changes have taken place during an era of level funding of 

 the basic oceanographic research, as we have shown on the graph. 



It has remained at a constant $525 million in FT '95 constant 

 dollars for 12 years, even as the total investment in basic research 

 in the United States has doubled. 



As a result, ocean sciences now represent less than four percent 

 of the total federal basic research budget, down from the seven per- 

 cent in Fiscal '82. 



I am quick to point out, having made that statement, that in my 

 wanderings about Congress in preparation for these hearings 

 today, I was asked by so many — did anybody ever ask the Con- 

 gress? Did anybody ever bring this to their attention? 



The answer is no. 



There hasn't been any unified spokesperson for the oceans in this 

 country. There have been tremendous leaders in the various agen- 

 cies fighting for what they think is right, cut back by 0MB for 

 budget realities. But in aggregate, we've not done a good job in 

 highlighting this, 



I give credit to the space agency for bringing together this nation 

 and exciting the Congress of the United States and the people in 

 that area. And I applaud the almost daily reports in the Washing- 

 ton Post about colliding nebuli, the fact that we're going to blow 

 up in 5 billion years. 



Those are exciting things. 



But, on the other hand, I don't think that those kinds of things 

 are necessarily going to solve the doubling of the population of this 

 globe by the middle of the next century. And those are the things 

 we have to face now. 



And we recognize that we're not going to have the dollars avail- 

 able, possibly. So, therefore, leveraging current and future capabili- 

 ties in new ways is a logical must. 



Now you've heard people describe what science needs to be done. 

 And I believe we have excellent organizations in this country to 

 contribute—the federal agencies, academic institutions — the Na- 

 tional Academy of Sciences pulls together. 



We know what to do. We don't know how to do it when we have 

 this broad-based integration that needs correction. So I'm going to 

 talk about how best to perform the science in a more efficient way. 



Now Dr. Alberts testified about his excellent report of 1992 called 

 "Oceanography in the Next Decade." I consider that to be a water- 

 shed report. It's a clear direction to the community, the academic 

 community, and it deals with a redefinition of what that oceano- 

 graphic community is in the context of societal needs. 



Basically, the report says to the academic institutions, get your 

 act together. Speak with one voice and support national priority 

 programs. And we're really doing that, but not as powerfully as we 

 could. 



It was in this context, then, of that report, with the support and 

 supervision of the National Science Foundation, NASA, ONR, 

 ARPA in the Department of Defense, and the Department of En- 

 ergy, and over 100 scientists and other experts fi-om the ocean 

 science and technology community representing federal agencies, 

 academia and industry, were brought together by my organization. 



