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We are talking about, as I understand it, depths of over 5,000 feet. 

 If there are such enormous amounts of untapped resources at shal- 

 lower levels where you can get protection and can secure concessions 

 such as we are talking about, are you suggesting that there is not any 

 meaningful asset out in these deeps ? 



Mr. Fascell. Then it doesn't make any difference whether there is 

 an international agreement on the deep oceanic bed, or the United 

 States stakes a claim. 



Mr. Frelinghuysen. It seems to me what they are surely saying is 

 that there are easier ways of getting things we need than staking some 

 claim to a place where it is really uneconomic to retrieve anytinng. 



Mr. Fascell, I would agree with the gentleman. I think we might 

 as well add that the Malta proposal may be "much ado about nothing." 



Mr. Frelinghuysen. I would think if we wanted to develop an 

 asset for the United States to share in, we should be talking about the 

 continental shelf, and the utilization of some of the material there 

 and sharing in some concessions. 



Mr. Fascell. That is already resolved by international agreement, 

 so we have both governmental and private industry protection. 



Mr. Frelinghuysen. It sounds like "much ado about nothing'' to 

 me. 



Mr. Bascom. I didn't mean to say what you think I said. 



Mr. Frelinghuysen. I am not trying to put words in your mouth. 



JSir. Bascom. Dr. James said we know very little about the geology 

 of the deep ocean basins and there may be all kinds of possibilities 

 down there, both on the continental slope and in the deep water that 

 we don't know. 



Secondly, the reason that our company is spending so much effort 

 in Southeast Asia looking for mineral deposits is that they are not 

 so widely spread on the continental shelves. We look there for minerals 

 which are very specific to that area ; we have to look there. We didn't 

 choose Indonesia as a matter of convenience. It is because it happens 

 to have tin deposits there. There is no use looking for tin deposits off 

 Florida, for example, because there is no chance of finding them. 



Mr. Fascell. It is all gold. 



Mr. Bascom. I didn't mean to suggest that the continental shelves 

 had loads of minerals or that it was easy to get them. This is a very 

 tough business. 



Mr. Frelinghuysen. I didn't mean to suggest the whole thing is 

 one massive gold mine. Of course you have to be discriminating in 

 where you look. That is your point, that you are trying to be selective 

 and you have taken a small fraction of the area, based on your guess 

 as to where reasonable deposits might be found. 



I don't think anyone has yet suggested that the depths, themselves, 

 are likely to produce much of economic value. This isn't to say we 

 shouldn't explore them 



Dr. James. In the relatively near future, I would say there is almost 

 no chance that there will be any development of materials from the 

 great depths. What it will be in the distant future, I don't know, be- 

 cause we don't know what is there. 



Our job in the next 10, 20, maybe 50 years, will be to explore this 

 enormous area. 



