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TOWARD NEW PARTNERSHIPS IN OCEAN SCIENCES 39 



ture, whereby it could undergo peer review and perhaps gain broad 

 credibility, and a cadre of environmental scientists, who could 

 influence public opinion and policy, was not nurtured. Further, 

 the program's emphasis on short-term results as opposed to long- 

 term understanding provided limited opportunity for research in- 

 novation. To overcome these limitations, MMS has sought to 

 increase the involvement of academic ocean scientists in its En- 

 vironmental Studies Program through a variety of mechanisms: 

 (1) two cooperative agreements with university groups to support 

 investigator-initiated research on the long-term effects of petro- 

 leum development activities (i.e., the Louisiana Universities Ma- 

 rine Consortium in the Gulf of Mexico and the University of 

 California-Santa Barbara in southern California); (2) other coop- 

 erative agreements with academic institutions that have unique 

 capabilities for meeting MMS information needs; (3) the award of 

 competitive contracts for large projects to academic institutions 

 (e.g., Louisiana-Texas shelf physical oceanography studies at Texas 

 A&M's Texas Institute of Oceanography and Louisiana State Uni- 

 versity); (4) extensive involvement of academic oceanographers on 

 the scientific committee of the OCS advisory board and on qual- 

 ity review boards of various studies; and (5) increased emphasis 

 on publication of study results in the open scientific literature. 



MMS is already actively seeking to develop partnerships with 

 academic oceanography, but to further these relationships, it should 

 consider the following: 



• expansion of the cooperative agreements for strategic inves- 

 tigator-initiated research on long-term environmental and socio- 

 economic effects of oil and gas in developed OCS regions; 



• use of academic institutions (similar to the recently initi- 

 ated physical oceanographic studies in the Gulf of Mexico and off 

 California) for complex scientific studies that require the innova- 

 tion and integration for which these institutions are particularly 

 well qualified; and 



• participation in the shared use of the academic research fleet 

 with other federal agencies through more active involvement with 

 UNOLS. MMS research vessel requirements and scheduling con- 

 straints do not always coincide with the availability of UNOLS 

 vessels. 



National Aeronautics and Space Administration 



The National Aeronautics and Space Administration develops 

 new technology for space, demonstrates its use for a variety of 



