OCEANOGRAPHY 1961 — PHASE 3 253 



I think our approach should be that the United States will profit 

 most from the greatest knowledge of the ocean, and to this end we 

 should try to keep the classification problem to a minimum and ac- 

 cumulate the most data that we can on the oceans. 



Mr. Bauer. Now, you received data, I suppose, as input from the 

 Coast Survey and other agencies? 



Admiral Stephan. Yes, sir. 



Mr. Batter. This includes the bathymetric data that they have of 

 the Continental Shelves of our country ? 



Admiral Stephan. Yes. 



Mr. Bauer. I notice you are the coordinator of ocean surveys in 

 the TENOC program. Is it contemplated that perhaps you might call 

 on industry at some time in the future to assist you in the surveys, if 

 you have money ? 



Admiral Stephan. Yes, sir. I think we ought to keep an open 

 mind as to how this can be best done. I think we ought to recognize 

 the tremendous amount of work that has been done by the geophysical 

 industry and cooperate with them. I think that we will have prob- 

 lems of a proprietary nature with some of their data, but I think that 

 these problems can be handled to their satisfaction so that we can 

 use a great part of their data. 



Mr, Bauer. Now, with respect to data inputs, and so on, Congress- 

 man Miller's bill calls for research to be done by the data center, and 

 I think his intention is that research should be of a twofold nature. 

 That is, the first would be of the nature of methods of programing, 

 and so on, that can be done here. But on the other hand, would not 

 the data center be very much concerned with the question of quality 

 control and how good the data input is ? 



Admiral Steps an. Yes, sir; I feel that there has to be research by 

 the data center with the scientific community to determine what data 

 you need, with what accuracy, what are the quality controls, what are 

 the best ways to handle it, and what, if any, avenues there are to re- 

 duce the amount of data that we have to collect. In other words, 

 what specific data can we stop collecting because we can deduce it by 

 formula or by our growing understamding of what is going on in the 

 ocean. 



Mr. Bauer. Would you, or one of your staff, perhaps, talk to the 

 current situation, as to whether or not data olDtained from various 

 sources are compatible ? In other words, if you measure the concen- 

 tration of oxygen in the vertical cast in the Atlantic Ocean and you 

 come up with a certain value of the oxygen in parts per thousand, 

 would that be the same amount of oxygen that would occur mider 

 similar actual concentrations that would be measured in the Pacific 

 Ocean by another institution ? 



In other words, is there any compatibility across the line between 

 things of that nature ? 



Admiral Stephan. Mr. Bauer, I would like to ask IMr. Harold 

 Dubach, who is the acting director of the data center, if he would 

 either talk to that or give you something for the record on that subject. 



Mr. Dubach (acting director, data center). In this regard, this is 

 our basic problem now in data processing. The units are incompatible, 

 in many instances, in the historical type of data ; and this is one of 

 our big problems in amalgamating this data for the "data in." It is 



