153 



We've got to make sure in this current budget environment that 

 we don't do that, or at least if we do it, we understand what the 

 impKcation is and the impact in this case of the Navy taking on 

 something that they hadn't been responsible for in the past. 



So in some cases, we're getting a false sense of savings in this 

 area that really, I think, has yet to be borne out. In the case of the 

 oceanographer and the written response I got, there was no savings 

 at all. It was an increased cost to perform missions that have been 

 done by NOAA. 



Mr. Rohrabacher, one of the things that you could do to help us 

 is to sensitize members of Congress and perhaps conduct surfing 

 classes for us out on the West Coast. 



Would you do that? 



[Laughter.] 



Mr. Rohrabacher. You're all invited. 



[Laughter.] 



But Mr. Ballard, I would suggest that, you know, surfing gets a 

 lot of attention, and deservedly so because it's a great sport. But 

 I'm also a scuba diver. And I will say that that sport, too, is a real- 

 ly significant sport in terms of the amount of money being made 

 in terms of people who are teaching other people hov/ to scuba dive, 

 equipment, et cetera. So it's an important economic factor. 



But I believe that scuba diving is becoming something now that 

 is really opening up a new understanding of this underwater uni- 

 verse for so many people who 20 years ago would never have been 

 included in this. 



It all was sort of "Sea Hunt" years ago. We remember that. So, 

 sure. 



Mr. Weldon. Admiral Watkins, did you want to respond to a 

 scuba diver comment? 



[Laughter.] 



Admiral Watkins. We've been hurt by scuba diving and congres- 

 sional funding in the past. And so, I want to avoid that. 



[Laughter.] 



What I wanted to add to Mr, Rohrabacher's question, though, 

 was the fact that NASA joined our consortium to try to bring new 

 visibility to the ocean component of Mission to Planet Earth, the 

 earth observing system. It was 70 percent of the earth. If you're 

 going to go observe it, let's include the oceans. 



If you include the oceans, let's correlate it with the ship data, the 

 buoy data, the other data we're getting so that we have ground 

 truth correlation so that we can begin to build the models. 



And so, it's a new start for NASA in a way. The/ve been ham- 

 strung, to a certain extent, by the funding debates, by the re- 

 organizational things. I've talked to Dan Goldin a number of times 

 on this. 



I think we have to get serious about the oceans as being part of 

 that mission. And that's where the cooperative effort between 

 Navy, NOAA, NASA, the academic institutions can be brought to- 

 gether. It's when you begin to correlate that data. 



And we're getting it all over the place now, with all kinds of 

 small observatories in the water that we need to correlate. And so 

 it's extremely importsint we not forget that. 



