32 SEA GRANT COLLEGES 



interest I wrote to President Horn and Dean Knauss and received inspiring and 

 heartening responses. They wanted to do something to explore the idea. Dean 

 Knauss suggested early in 1964 that a conference be held- -this is the conference. 



Senator Pell, with a long interest in the sea, its contribution to his State 

 and its potential, talked with me. I remember quipping to the Senator that Rhode 

 Island would be a fine launching place for a sea-grant university in connection 

 with its land-grant university- -after all, I said, you have very little land. 



So, you see, it is most appropriate that this first national conference on the 

 sea-grant university concept should be held here where the original interest was 

 sparked. 



What is ocean engineering? From time to time we give names to assem- 

 blages of our different scientific disciplines for no better reason- -and for the 

 very good reason- -that they apply and suit our principal current preoccupations. 

 So polar science is all the good science that is done relating to the Arctic and 

 the Antarctic. Space science is all good science that relates to space, or more 

 facetiously any science that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 

 will pay for. Similarly, oceanography and marine science comprise the work 

 of any scientist in any discipline who chooses to use the sea as focus for his in- 

 tellectual endeavors. 



On the other hand, in engineering the qualifying nouns become even more 

 meaningful. The engineering problems of the polar regions are quite special 

 and unique. How do you get rid of sewage when everything is frozen? How do 

 you build foundations that sink in permafrost? How do you build structures in 

 slowly flowing ice? Engineering for space, too, has its special problems. Metals 

 can cold weld themselves together in the vacuum of space. Special lubricants are 

 needed, and vacuum tubes may not need an outside cover. So it is in ocean engi- 

 neering. Materials behave quite differently at the seven-ton-per-square-inch 

 pressures encountered in the abyss. Structures must be built to resist the on- 

 slaught of marine borers and other living organisms that attack them and they 

 must withstand entirely different catastrophic forces- -earthquakes, currents, 

 wave forces, and underwater landslides. 



We must recall that where science aims at finding out enough about our 

 environment to describe it and then to find common truths, engineering inter- 

 venes, alters, and uses the environment. The uses and controls that are found 

 good--ones that society wants or can grow to want- -industry repeats so that they 

 can be used by as many people as possible. There are two kinds of ocean engi- 

 neering; there is that kind that has gone on for centuries, like the building of 

 ships to get frona one point of land to another, the building of dikes to keep the 

 sea from encroaching on the land, but these are merely in support of peripheral 

 activities of land based and oriented people not using the sea but withstanding 

 its abuse of the land. There is another kind of ocean engineering, and that is the 

 ocean engineering which must come about when we decide to intervene in the 

 marine environment with the ultimate objective of using it, occupying it and- en- 

 joying it. 



When you occupy a place whether it be an enemy country, uninhabited polar 

 or desert wastes, the moon, the planets, or the depths of the sea, essentially you 

 have to start by worrying about the five basic things for people to live; a way to 

 get there and back, shelter while you're there, power, water, and food. 



Of course, it's not necessary to occupy the ocean right now. We could 

 wait, but somebody else would occupy it. Or, we can make the decision that we 

 will occupy the ocean. We can choose freely to expend part of our efforts and 

 apply our marine, scientific, and oceanographic knowledge toward the peaceful 

 exploitation and colonization of the sea. 



