280 SEA GRANT COLLEGES 



My interest in this act stems from my involvement first, as a member of 

 a 10-man national committee on the sea grant college set up in October 1965 

 by Dean John Knauss of the University of Rhode Island and second, as a 

 matter of direct personal concern as director and professor of zoology at the 

 University of Texas Institute of Marine Science, where a large amount of re- 

 search and teaching is oriented toward coastal shelf problems in marine science 

 and engineering. 



Generally speaking, it should be most obvious that the educational systems 

 of the United States are not sea-oriented in terms of education, research, and 

 public service. As a consequence, we have no nationally strong basis for any 

 but a haphazard development of technologies for the long-term exploitation of 

 marine resources. The sound development and application of any technology 

 in the modern world demands a sound and comprehensive educational system, 

 not only in the natural sciences and engineering, but in the social sciences in 

 their broadest sense as well. 



To the statement presented to your subcommittee by the National Commit- 

 tee for a Sea Grant College, I should like to add my hearty endorsement and to 

 add below some comments on the great potentialities of our educational and 

 research organizations in our major universities. 



Many of these universities already have strong academic programs in the 

 research and teaching fields of marine sciences that are directly involved 

 with marine resources. Some of these universities already have rapidly de- 

 veloping engineering programs in water resources, often with considerable ref- 

 erence to coastal marine areas. In addition many of these same universities 

 already have programs in such fields as law, business, and economics. What 

 is still badly needed at the university level is a source of funding that will en- 

 able universities to develop integrated programs of instruction and research in 

 all possible sea-oriented departments that now seek funding from many agen- 

 cies, most of which are not particularly set up to lend large-scale or exclusive 

 support to sea-oriented programs. Because quite a few universities already 

 have a nucleus of departments that can offer an assortment of sea-oriented 

 training and research programs, there is a tremendous potential for such uni- 

 versities to develop broader and more completely integrated programs, if funding 

 is available. 



In recent years many other kinds of integrated university programs have been 

 developed in the arts, humanities, sciences, and engineering by means of large 

 interdisciplinary grants like the proposed sea grants. There is every reason 

 to believe that sea grants could likewise have the same catalytic and supportive 

 effects. These effects are notably the production of a new breed of sea-oriented 

 specialists trained to meet the requirements of an increasingly complex society 

 with increasingly complex technologies. 



Today there is little lag between the development of new interdisciplinary 

 sciences and the development of technologies based on these sciences. (Per- 

 haps the best contemporary example is the development of the comi)lex elec- 

 tronics industries almost immediately on the heels of theoretical research de- 

 velopments — likewise the development of strong educational electronics pro- 

 grams in junior colleges and even high schools almost immediately on the heels 

 of industrial electronics development.) Today it is commonplace to find uni- 

 versity researchers working both in cooperation with government o,r industries 

 and in cooperation with high schools and colleges in developing their curricu- 

 lums in addition to supplying trained manpower. It should be presumed that 

 this type of cooperation would normally exist in sea grant programs. With 

 more than 20 U.S. governmental agencies and a large number of State agencies 

 engaged in marine science development programs or in routine operational ac- 

 tivities, there is also a tremendous need for highly trained manpower in these 

 agencies. Certainly the sea grant college programs would aid immeasurably 

 in supplying trained personnel for these developmental and operational pro- 

 grams, and for industrial and educational establishments as well. 



With the development of sea grant supported training programs, there would 

 normally be expected a greatly enhanced interchange of personnel and ideas 

 from marine industries to the universities and colleges. (Even the most humble 

 and unlettered fisherman often may be expected to know much more about 

 some aspects of a given fishery than his counterpart in a university.) At the 

 present time the interchange of personnel and ideas among the various academic, 

 developmental, educational and technological aspects of marine science is much 

 less organized than in other lines of endeavor, e.g., agriculture. Furthermore, in 



