What is common to all sectors then is the judgement that not 

 enough ocean technology is on the shelf, that learning as you go may be 

 the only way to get things done now, but that it is not the best way 

 because it means re-inventing the wheel or basing decisions on expedi- 

 ency which comes back to haunt you later. A little foresight would 

 help a lot in many areas. 



FINDINGS: Civilian Ocean Engineering Needs 



We did not cover the entire field of ocean engineering in detail for 

 we had neither the resources nor the desire to make a complete survey. 

 We did not seek to find out why U.S. fishing vessels buy Swedish sonars, 

 or why Japanese build bigger tankers. We accepted the judgment that 

 American oil technology is the reserve on which all the world draws, 

 that the U.S. Navy deep submergence capability is unparalled, and 

 that this won't keep on forever if we simply rest on our laurels. We 

 felt that if we sought specifics where we could find them, a strong 

 common trend would probably show up even in a partial sample if it 

 existed.* 



Attachment B samples the extensive collections of specifics collected 

 by others. We did not try to compete with these studies. The specifics we 

 did find independently were, in general, not very different from the 

 rather more thorough surveys sampled in the attachment. As with these 

 studies, we found no consensus or major imperatives. Unwillingness to 

 invest effort in anything unless it is immediately needed— at which point 

 it is often too late— seemed to be a root cause of many of the problems 

 but that isn't new. Systems failed because the components had not been 

 thoroughly tested. There was no time— or taste— for a disciplined 

 engineering approach. 



Engineering needs exist in such areas as offshore pipelaying, 

 underwater storage tanks, mooring systems, oil spill prevention, dredg- 

 ing, resource recovery, environmental studies, and adequate component 

 testing of ocean engineering systems before deployment to lower the 

 failure rate, which is high. 



For specific applications the panel's attention was drawn to the 

 need for reliable underwater connectors, svibsurface bench marks, non- 

 fouling transducers, and meso-scale current measurements. 



* Special thanks are due to the Sea Floor Engineering Committee of the Marine 

 Board of the National Academy of Engineering for its courtesy in welcoming staff to 

 its deliberations. They are still in progress, in the course of a two-year effort sup- 

 ported by the National Science Foundation, to define the precision with which char- 

 acteristics of the sea floor and structures within and upon it are known, and the 

 precision with which tliey should be known. This effort differs from being merely 

 another tabidation in that it is more quantitative and is a step in the direction of 

 standardization. 



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