Special Groups Concerned with Oceanography 



21 



Indonesian archipelago, Japan mines iron from 

 its coastal waters, and heavy minerals are taken 

 from beaches and near beach areas of the United 

 States, Australia, and India. Sulfur is recovered 

 from beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Coal has been 

 mined from tunnels extending from land to points 

 under the seas in Canada and England, and bro- 

 mine, magnesium, iodine, and common salt are 

 recovered commercially from sea water. 



However, all present marine mining is in rela- 

 tively shallow waters less than 400 feet in depth, 

 and the equipment employed is generally the con- 

 ventional hydraulic or bucket dredge. Normal 

 evaporation, chemical precipitation, and ion- 

 exchange procedures are applied to the removal of 

 compounds and elements from salt water. Thus, 

 there is no true deep-sea mining industry today. 



The major deterrent to further extension of 

 even the shallow-water mining, to say nothing of 

 deep-sea mining, is cost. But there is also lack of a 

 clear picture of where and what the resources are. 

 The problems of investigation are formidable. At 

 present, the industry lacks efficient methods and 

 equipment either for prospecting or mining the 

 sea bottom, it lacks knowledgeable marine scien- 

 tists and engineers, and it lacks incentive since 

 present sources are adequate to satisfy present 

 markets. 



It has heard the reports of manganese, phos- 

 phorus, gold, platinum, tin, and a host of other 

 minerals found on the continental shelf or the 

 deep sea floor; but looking at the cost-benefit rela- 

 tionships, the mining industry is apparently o- 

 bliged to wait until there has been a large-scale, 

 long-range comprehensive program of explora- 

 tion before venturing very far into this difficult 

 region. In the national interest, the initial ex- 

 ploration may be the role of government. 



E. Shipping 



In January 1963, the active U.S. Flag Fleet con- 

 sisted of 904 ships of 1000 gross tons or over with 

 a total capacity of 13,575,000 deadweight tons. It 

 included 21 combination passenger cargo ships, 

 601 freighters, and 282 tankers. 529 of these were 

 employed in foreign trade, one in foreign-to- 

 foreign trade, 346 in domestic trade, and 36 in 

 other U.S. agency operations. Another 52 were 

 temporarily laid up for repairs or awaiting cargo. 



Since the Merchant Marine is subsidized, its pre- 

 cise value as a factor in the economy is difficult to 



estimate. However, it provides employment for 

 approximately 200,000 people in seafaring, shore 

 side, shipbuilding, and repair activities and con- 

 tributes more than $5 billion annually to the do- 

 mestic economy. It is estimated that it would take 

 $10 billion to replace it with new construction. 



The primary reason for subsidization is the stra- 

 tegic value of the Merchant Marine to national 

 defense. It is indispensable for the emergency 

 supply of military field activities, defense manu- 

 facturing, and essential civilian needs. 



Although its numbers are slowly decreasing, the 

 average tonnage per ship and ship speed are both 

 increasing so that there is a slow net improve- 

 ment in overall capability. Replacement policies 

 and steps toward ship automation are intended to 

 further this improvement. 



Two oceanographic activities contribute to more 

 efficient operations: ship routing to avoid unfavor- 

 able wave conditions, and optimizing ship hull 

 designs to meet the specific wave and weather con- 

 ditions on routes where they would be used. Both 

 these possibilities are in the experimental or de- 

 velopment stage but appear promising. 



For example, all Military Sea Transport Service 

 ships use forecasts of wave conditions en route 

 developed by the Naval Oceanographic Office and 

 issued by either the Fleet Weather Facility in Nor- 

 folk, Virginia or the comparable facility in Ala- 

 meda, California. Based on an extension by Richard 

 James (of the Naval Oceanographic Office) of 

 basic research conducted at New York University 

 by Neumann and Pierson in the 1950's, wave fore- 

 casting is estimated by the MSTS to save these 

 ships an average of 18 - 20 hours per crossing, 

 averaged over both oceans and all seasons. Over 

 the year's total of about 1000 crossings, savings 

 amount to about $2 million. 



A similar service is available to commercial in- 

 terests through several private forecasting com- 

 panies. Most United States shipping companies 

 fail to use it, however, exceptions being the States 

 Marine Corporation and the Pacific Fruit Com- 

 pany, but it is patronized by European shipping 

 concerns who do not have such a service at home 

 but apparently like what they get here. 



Extensive research on the effects of sea condi- 

 tions on ship hulls, carried on for many years by 

 the David Taylor Model Basin, the Bureau of 

 Ships, Stevens Institute, MIT, and the Maritime 

 Administration, has now progressed to the point 

 where it appears that ships can be designed spe- 

 cifically for weather conditions along specified 



