10.6 SUPPORT AND OPERATION OF OCEANOGRAPHIC 
SHIPS 
Current American oceanographic ships are for the most part oper- 
ated by oceanographic laboratories through grant and contract funds 
from the Federal Government. This mode of operation developed 
during the 1930’s when Woods Hole, Scripps, and some biological 
laboratories each operated a single ship in coastal and nearby oceanic 
waters. This method of operation made good sense, because almost all 
oceanographers were at these few laboratories; ships were inexpensive 
to operate; and scientists and crews were partially interchangeable, 
especially on sailing ships. This mode of operation has continued even 
though oceanography has changed rapidly. At present ships cost at 
least 10 times what they did in the 1930’s. Crews and scientists have 
far more specialized abilities and are rarely interchangeable. An 
increasing number of oceanographers are not members of major ocean- 
ographic laboratories and have corresponding difficulties in obtaining 
time on ships. Finally, the MOHOLE platform, drilling ships and 
the Antarctic research ship, 7tanin, among others, are operated as 
national facilities because they are too expensive for individual labo- 
ratories. We believe that the funding, scheduling and operations of 
most oceanographic ships should be revised in order to make them 
more economical and effective and to broaden opportunities for all 
American scientists and engineers to use federally owned and sup- 
ported ships, reducing the burden on oceanographic laboratories of 
maintaining large marine facilities. 
In the past the system of ship operations was flexible and respon- 
sive to scientific objectives. This may be attributed to the fact that 
ships were scheduled by scientists and were under the operational con- 
trol of scientists. These virtues must be preserved and some radical 
action may be necessary at this time to do so. Ships are already being 
scheduled more than 2 years in advance; this is hardly flexibility. 
Large ships are used to test lightweight gear near ports because labora- 
tories have only one ship, and it is large; this is hardly responsiveness. 
Reasons for changes in ship funding are almost self-evident. At 
present the operating cost of a ship is met by a conglomeration of 
grants and contracts. The daily cost is commonly determined retro- 
actively by dividing the annual cost by the number of operating days. 
Thus, an unpopular, small ship may cost more per day than a popular, 
big one. This mode of funding came to a crisis in fiscal year 1966 
when many new ships had been built, and insufficient funds to operate 
them had been requested by the supporting agencies. The problem 
has not yet been solved. This mode of operation may be contrasted 
with the method used by the Navy to keep books on ships provided 
for its own laboratories. Before a ship is built, the Navy makes an 
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