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Summary 



Federal agencies and the academic oceanography community 

 have been fortunate to work together in productive partnerships. 

 These mutually beneficial partnerships are characterized by the 

 federal agencies' funding research at academic institutions that is 

 important to the agencies' missions or is critical to maintaining 

 the health of the basic ocean research endeavor. 



These partnerships are likely to change because oceanography 

 is developing a new focus as the results of oceanographic research 

 become increasingly relevant to social and economic concerns. 

 There is an increasing emphasis on global-scale and multidisciplinary 

 research, and a changing mission profile of naval oceanography. 

 Ocean research programs that developed primarily from scientific 

 curiosity have attained increased social meaning and urgency, and 

 federal agencies are increasingly pressured to produce cogent policy 

 options. Yet, over the past decade, academic oceanographers have 

 had access to increasingly limited resources compared to their 

 overall capacity to conduct scientific research. The number of 

 Ph.D. -level academic oceanographers increased dramatically be- 

 tween 1980 and 1990. Also, more sophisticated instrumentation 

 and improved data handling and computing techniques have in- 

 creased both the scientific capacity of each researcher and the 

 cost of each investigator's research. The net result is a serious 

 imbalance between what can be accomplished and the available 



