4.6. SERVICES 
On land, Government traditionally provides many highly technical 
services for a wide variety of uses. We believe that these same serv- 
ices should be supplied to support ocean-going operations. The Panel 
has attempted to identify a most pressing technical need as seen by the 
users of these services. 
Surveys. Good topographic and geologic surveys are needed. 
These surveys should first extend to the Continental Shelf of the Unit- 
ed States. Second priority is given to other continental shelves, third 
priority to the deep ocean off the United States, and fourth rank to 
other deep-ocean areas. A major problem is to reduce the time and cost 
of surveying without reducing precision of the final result. 
Using the best systems available today, it takes a single mothership 
plus small boats and a full crew an entire summer to chart the Martha’s 
Vineyard-Nantucket Sound. It is uneconomical to consider doing the 
continental shelf of the world in this way. There are conceivably three 
ways of improving the technology of these surveys: 
1. Development of a surface ship with much improved sensory 
equipment. This ship should be capable of taking differential 
data rapidly so that changes would be measured carefully, while 
data which vary slowly will be taken at a much slower rate. Both 
data taken and reduction should be automated so that final charts 
are produced in the original surveys. Present methods involving 
hand recording of many results indicate that this field is hampered 
by tradition. 
2. Development of a submersible to carry out surveys. The 
submersible would do the entire job of maneuvering, sensing, data- 
taking, and reduction, thereby improving the accuracy of bottom 
topography and bypassing the surface-speed limitation which re- 
sults from noise-suppression requirements. A major difficulty in 
such a scheme is accurate positioning of the submersible. 
3. Development of towed or surface-commanded, free sub- 
merged platform to travel within perhaps 50 feet of the ocean sur- 
face. The towed body could be manned. Today’s technology is 
adequate to build some sort of towed-body system, and the general 
opinion of industry is that by 1975 we can do bathymetry better, 
quicker, and more economically with submersibles than by follow- 
ing the present route. 
In addition to the technological problems, topographic surveying 1s 
hampered by strict adherence to international conventions developed 
at a time when the technology was more primitive than it is today. 
Adequate surveying for the future will require a more realistic cou- 
pling of international convention with technolgy. 
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