34 MARINE SCIENCE 
of the U.S. Government’s ability and authority to inquire into the 
physical, chemical, and biological processes of the high seas of the 
world, the bottom below it and the air above, and so long as those 
amendments do not dilute the objectives of the bill by spreading them 
over inquiries concerning the inland and strictly coastal waters of 
the Nation. 
With respect to the former, I will repeat what you said, that we 
believe that the Nation’s interest is as boundless as the sea itself; 
with respect to the latter, we believe other bills and other means are 
adequate to properly cover the Nation’s interest in the inland and 
coastal waters, that the sector of the Nation’s ignorance upon which 
S. 901 is properly concentrated is that of the ocean out of sight of land, 
and that dilution of the bill to accommodate inland and coastal objec- 
tives will defeat its purpose by spreading the rather skimpy funds— 
and I would like to say that these are rather skimpy funds which are 
envisioned in the bill—it authorizes over so much scientific inquiry 
that the Nation would remain, after its passage, about as ignorant 
concerning the high seas as it 1s now. 
In our view, this bill is primarily concerned with getting funds 
allocated to ocean research adequate to learn what the Nation needs 
to know about the ocean. Heretofore and presently most of the Na- 
tion’s ocean research facilities and agencies have been scattered 
through the structure of the executive branch in such a fashion that 
most parts of them are small units in large agencies. Hach of them 
gets starved by having larger entities in the agencies get all of or 
most increases in appropriations. In consequence of this, the whole 
ocean research establishment of the Nation is undernourished and 
incompetent for its great tasks. 
The result of these processes is that although the United States, 
as the paramount leader of a confederation of nations held together 
by the sea, absolutely requires to have (with its confederates) com- 
mand of the sea and knowledge about how it works, it is being out- 
distanced in the rate of acquiring knowledge about the sea, and the 
use of the sea’s resources, by its chief competitor, Russia and its alles. 
Indeed, within the confederation of the free world, smaller nations 
such as Japan, England, Denmark, Norway, Germany, and France— 
not the United States—have been noted heretofore for their ocean 
researches and have built the history of ocean research to which we 
have lately come. 
We view the primary purpose of this bill to be the drawing together 
into one skein of all these threads of ocean vessels in the executive 
establishment so that that skein as a unit will bulk large enough to 
require budget officers to allow sufficient moneys to be allocated to the 
whole of the ocean research establishment in the Nation so that it 
can accomplish its appointed tasks and responsibilities. 
The Bureau of the Budget and the departmental budget officers 
did not want this legislation passed by the last Congress and I predict 
that they will cause it to be opposed, or amended into innocuousness, 
or damned with faint praise in this Congress. The reason for this 
essentially is that these officers do not wish to have the Congress limit 
their control over the allocation of funds in the Federal budget nor 
to call attention to the inadequacy with which they have furnished 
funds to this critical area of scientific inquiry in the past. 
