484 



146 



OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE NEXT DECADE 



CO 



nn 



nn I 



II ill 





I 2 I 4 ! 6 18 ; 10 i 12 I 14 i 16 I 18 i 20 ! 22 I 24 I 26 I 28 

 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 



Age (years) 

 FIGURE 4-17 Age of UNOLS ships from time originally built. 



operate. In addition to the UNOLS fleet, smaller vessels used 

 primarily for coastal research are funded principally by local sources. 



Federal agencies that either operate or fund oceanographic ships 

 include the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), the U.S. Geological Survey 

 (USGS) and the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the De- 

 partment of the Interior (DOI), the Environmental Protection Agency 

 (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Naval Oceanographic 

 Office, the Office of Naval Research, the National Oceanic and 

 Atmospheric Administration, and the National Science Founda- 

 tion. The USCG is included because its tv/o icebreakers can sup- 

 port research operations in the Antarctic and Arctic. The need for 

 and operation of federal oceanographic ships arise from the statu- 

 tory mission of each agency that is manifested by approved and 

 funded programs in the federal budget. Individual agency pro- 

 grams dictate the requirements for ships and ship time. The fed- 

 eral fleet is older, on average, than the UNOLS fleet (Figure 4-18). 



Ship use by different oceanography subdisciplines during the 

 1980s is shov^n in Figure 4-19. For all ships, biological oceanogra- 

 phy uses the most ship time. For the larger ships, marine geology 



