42 MARINE SCIENCE 
The result of these processes is that although United States, as the para- 
mount leader of a confederation of nations held together by the sea, absolutely 
requires to have (with its confederates) command of the sea and knowledge 
about how it works, it is being outdistanced in the rate of acquiring knowledge 
about the sea, and the use of the sea’s resources, by its chief competitor, Russia 
and its allies. Indeed, within the confederation of the free world smaller na- 
tions such as Japan, Hngland, 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 research in the executive establishment so 
that that skein as a unit will bulk large enough to require budget officers to al- 
low sufficient moneys to be allocated to the whole of the ocean research estab- 
lishment in the Nation so that it can accomplish its appointed tasks and respon- 
sibilities. 
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. 
There has been so much talk about oceanography since the NAS-NRC’s Com- 
mittee on Oceanography began its work, since the Congress! began its considera- 
tion of the subject, and especially since an ocean-oriented President has been 
elected, that the casual observer of the national scene must believe that the 
Nation’s ocean research is in a flourishing state. Nothing could be further from 
the case. The ocean research establishment of the Nation is very little better 
off for funding than it was 8 years ago and in certain important respects it is 
worse off. 
Ags one example of the latter, one may point out that the Bureau of Commer- 
cial Fisheries of the Department of the Interior has less ocean research ships at 
sea now than it had 5 years ago and that it has actually been laying up ocean 
research ships for lack of funds with which to keep them at sea. 
The Nation’s ocean research has been further hampered because of a lack of 
higher, so-called supergrade positions. These just don’t seem to be available for 
our Oceanographers. As a consequence, the Government cannot bid for and 
obtain the services of top ocean scientists to plan and lead its ocean research 
work. 
No one in the country is better acquainted with the intransigence of the Bu- 
reau of the Budget and departmental budget officers in providing funds for ocean 
research than the chairman of this committee. It was he who took the lead in 
seeking the passage of the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act, for example. The principal 
purpose of that act was to bypass the budget officers and pump new funds into 
fisheries research. It was he who took the lead in reorganizing the Department 
of the Interior’s handling of fishery affairs which resulted in the Fish and Wild- 
life Act of 1956. A principal purpose of that act was to raise the status of 
fishery work in Interior to where it would have a budget of its own to defend by 
giving it the status of a Federal bureau, and to increase and make permanent 
the funds provided by the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act. It is he who has taken 
the lead in implementing the NASCO report through an omnibus ocean research 
act. The prime purpose of this bill is to pump funds into ocean research. 
We have followed with praise and support each of Senator Magnuson’s efforts 
over this long period of years as we do now. We must report, however, that all 
of these efforts of the Congress, and we who live by the ocean, to blast or wheedle 
funds for ocean research from the land-oriented officials of the Bureau of the 
Budget and the Departments of the Interior and Commerce have had very mod- 
est success to date. 
: I should like to point out, for example, that despite the great fanfare of pub- 
licity about the Department of the Interior’s expanded research program, the 
net increase of operational funds for ocean research in the Department’s regular 
budget now before the Congress is precisely zero. With the great enthusiasm 
for ocean research which President Kennedy has carried from his Senate and 
Boston knowledge of these problems, it would look as if this deep-seated ani- 
mosity against ocean research might again receive a setback. So far as I can 
learn on the outside, the high hopes we had had for adequate funding for ocean 
research under this energetic new President are being whittled down steadily 
