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36 OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE NEXT DECADE 



The present NOAA fleet consists of 23 ships, of which 5 are 

 inactive and many are old compared to the UNOLS fleet. NOAA's 

 fleet is used primarily to carry out its operational mission in 

 mapping, charting, and fisheries assessment, as well as NOAA 

 research. The fleet occasionally supports other federal and state 

 agencies, academic institutions, and private industry through various 

 arrangements. For several years, NOAA has experienced funding 

 shortfalls for ship operations, resulting in unmet program require- 

 ments. NOAA will have to replace its aged fleet and/or use ships 

 owned by others. Under a cooperative arrangement with the aca- 

 demic community, NOAA Corps officers operate the Vickers, owned 

 by the University of Southern California. This experiment has 

 not yet concluded and thus has not been evaluated. NOAA and 

 the academic institutions should consider other mechanisms for 

 cooperative ship use, including the use of academic ships by NOAA 

 scientists. 



Discussion of the future shape and use of NOAA research 

 vessels should take place within the larger debate on how to man- 

 age, upgrade, and use the research vessels operated by all agen- 

 cies. The concept of a national research fleet is providing a con- 

 text for this discussion. It is clear that we can no longer afford 

 the luxury of regarding individual agency vessels as unrelated, 

 with no sharing of resources. 



A major obstacle for marine science lies in the difficulties of 

 developing and managing spaceborne instruments over the next 

 decades. Historically, NASA developed meteorological spacecraft 

 that eventually evolved into operational systems managed by NOAA. 

 However, for marine observations, apart from long-standing ef- 

 forts in visible and infrared sea surface temperature observations 

 and microwave sea ice measurements (both of interest to short- 

 term forecasting), there is no effective mechanism for the system- 

 atic development or transfer of technology from research to opera- 

 tions. Some mechanism must be found to routinely collect such 

 observations that are important to the NOAA mission. NOAA 

 will need additional funding to carry out these observations, and 

 a partnership arrangement will be necessary to identify the essen- 

 tial variables to be observed. 



Another area of potential partnerships involves data bases, es- 

 pecially their accessibility. NOAA is responsible for the National 

 Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). Created in the 1950s, NODC 

 is intended to provide both present access to data and an archive 

 for future generations. However, the center has failed to keep 

 abreast of changing technologies in observation and data base man- 



