175 



What our group in California, which is about 18 different enti- 

 ties, state and local, came up with is a whole bunch of chapters, 

 but one on ocean research. 



They made recommendations that I'd like to ask the panel about. 

 One is they said that we really need to have a lot more collabo- 

 rative work in mgiking inventory of current and recent ocean and 

 coastal research. 



We need online computer services of a central directory of ocean 

 educational programs. 



We need to develop in our academic universities ocean policy pro- 

 grams. 



And we need to invest more money in research, not just limited 

 to the Sea Grant Program, which helps our state universities. 



And I'd like to really ask Admiral Watkins, because I really 

 thought your comments were — in politics, we like to say, I'd like to 

 associate myself with that gentleman's comments. After you spoke, 

 I just wanted to say, amen. You were right. 



What my question is is how much of this collaborative effort is 

 still locked up in classified research that should be shared more 

 with academia and with our — we're using — all of the parties at the 

 table are active on Monterey Bay. We have the Navy. We have the 

 University of California. We have Stanford University. We have 

 David Packard's Deep Ocean Research Center. We have NOAA. We 

 have the Fleet Numerical Center that you talked about. 



And the best thing about it is that they're all collaborating there 

 on Monterey Bay and they're turning that collaboration into prod- 

 ucts for the private sector. But more importantly, they're turning 

 it into products for elementary school children that are now com- 

 municating with ocean scientists about weather every day. In the 

 third grade, they've got direct access to the NOAA weather sat- 

 ellite. 



So it's so exciting and so much opportunity because, indeed, I 

 think the answers for the problems of mankind on land as the pop- 

 ulation of this world doubles are going to be found in the ocean, 

 our foodstuffs, our energy sources, and certainly our medical an- 

 swers I think to a lot of biomedicine. 



But a lot of that data is still in somebody's file. How do we get 

 it out of there? 



Admiral Watkins. Well, I think one of the initiatives that we 

 have going in the inter-agency partnership work over the past two 

 years was identified in some of the testimony given by the panel- 

 ists here this morning. 



The NAVOCEANO people down at Bay St. Louis or down at 

 Stennis Space Center, in follow-up to the Environmental Task 

 Force work, focused specifically on the ocean data. And they've 

 identified in a report, and we've provided that to the members up 

 here for this hearing, this MEDEA report. 



It goes into scientific utility of naval environmental data. This 

 was put together by very knowledgeable people who are cleared 

 into the highly classified areas and they're very sensitive to na- 

 tional security. 



They've identified areas that are critically important to research- 

 ers. They don't particularly focus on the integrated undersea sur- 



