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Written Presentation to Joint Briefing of House Science Committees 



Dr. Gary B. Griggs 

 Director-Institute of Marine Sciences 

 University of California, Santa Cruz 



Subject: Leveraging National Oceanographic Capabilities 



Like Jim Kennett, I left an undergraduate Oceanography class this morning, with nearly 

 200 students; a class I have been teaching for 27 years. I have now have had over 6000 

 students in this course and a similar number have taken a companion course taught by 

 colleagues; this totals about 12,000 interested students over this time period. 

 Oceanography continues to be one of our most popular introductory science courses 

 and are students remain interested and curious about this large and somewhat unknown 

 porhon of our planet. This class gives me the opportunity to impress upon these young 

 people the significance of the oceans to our past, present and future. 



The Oceans are truly immense, and 



• cover 71% of earth's surface 



• include 300 million cubic miles of water, 97% of the total on earth 



• the include the great majority of the earth's habitat, because of their great 

 volum.e, (ocean has an average depth of 2.5 miles), 



• if we leveled the earth's surface, we wouldn't have any land, but the entire 

 globe would be under 1.5 miles of seawater- we are indeed an ocean planet 



Since 1 began teaching this class in 1969, the population of California has increased 60% 

 from 20 to 32 million, and most of these new people want to live on the coast. 

 Unfortunately 86% of California's shoreline is eroding which presents some significant 

 problems to the state. If all of us went to the California coast at the same hme, we 

 would each have about 2 inches. Unfortunately only about 25% of the shoreline is 

 accessible such that we only have about a half an inch apiece, and even this has to be 

 shared with visitors from other states and countries. No wonder it feels crowded. It is. 



Meanwhile, in this same 27 year period, global populahon has increased 50% from 4 to 

 6 billion, and they all, at a minimum, need someplace to live, something to eat, and some 

 energy. Many would like to believe that the oceans can somehow provide for all of tfieir 

 needs, but this is probably wishful tfiinking. 



Although the oceans cover 71% of the earth's surface, they provide only about 16% of 

 humanity's food supplies. Overfishing has had a significant effect on global fish 

 populations. Fish catches are declining in 13 of the world's oceans' 15 major fishing 

 areas, and most scientists would agree that tfie 90 million tons taken globally in 1995 is 

 the peak and declining catches will be the case in the future. I don't believe that there is 

 any immediate solution to thLs declining "renewable" resource dilemma. 



The oceans at present also provide about 25% of our oil and gas, very obvious here in 

 the Santa Barbara area. This is one of the few areas where private industry has made a 

 major investment in marine research. We need to ask why has this been the case? Why 

 hasn't there been more industry investment and involvement in ocean research? I thii{k 

 for the most part this is because most of the private industry involved with the ocean is 

 relatively small operations and simply are heavily into research. 



