MARINE SCIENCE 45 
$400,000 for ocean research in the eastern tropical Pacific. Thanks to the energy 
and persistence of Senators Engle and Kuchel, with help from their colleagues in 
the House, we finally got $100,000. This measly $100,000 was the first money 
the badly badgered budget officers of the Department of the Interior and Bureau 
of the Budget had ever permitted to get by their guard into the regular budget 
of the Department of the Interior for tuna oceanography in the eastern Pacific. 
It may be noted that $100,000 will provide funds for keeping at sea a small 
ocean research vessel for about 100 days or a 3-month cruise (which, until re- 
cently, has been the normal length for a tuna clipper single fishing trip in this 
area). It will not provide for any research of consequence. It will only put 
a platform out on the ocean for one trip a year where the scientists could do 
some research, if there were any scientists and if they had any instruments. 
As a matter of fact, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries has never had an 
oceangoing research ship of its own with which to work in the eastern tropical 
Pacific. During this very period of time, it has had to get rid of its Manning 
which worked out of Honolulu, for lack of funds. It has had to get rid of its 
H. M. Smith which worked out of Hawaii, for lack of funds. It has had to 
stringently limit its use of the old yacht Black Douglas (which did work offshore 
in California) for lack of funds. 
Thus, we have been steadily sliding backward on actual fisheries ocean re- 
search vessel capabilities in the Pacific, while the hue and cry for expansion has 
been in full voice. 
As we have grown to expect, the Department of the Interior budget for fiscal 
1962, when revealed this January, once again provided precisely no new funds 
for ocean research operations in the eastern Pacifie, or at all. Accordingly, we 
were in to see Senator Engle, Senator Kuchel, and the new Secretary of the In- 
terior, seeking our still missing $300,000 from the 1959 promises before January 
was out, and we propose to pursue this effort with what vigor we have. 
In the meantime, it has occurred to the Department of the Navy, the Depart- 
ment of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Weather Bureau and 
various other entities, that the eastern tropical Pacific, where all these skipjack 
tuna are purported to be, is also the western approach to the Panama Canal. 
Amongst other things, it has been found that you need reasonably the same 
kind of information about the ocean with which to locate and catch submarines 
as you do to locate and catch skipjack; that you need to know how the currents 
go if you are going to dump nuclear wastes into the ocean without sterilizing it; 
and that tropical hurricanes are borne in the tropical eastern Pacific, as else- 
where in the Tropics, and seldom seen except by tuna boats before their de- 
structive force suddenly hits land. 
Accordingly, last winter the Eastern Pacific Oceanic Conference set up a 
committee among all the Government and university scientists involved to draw 
up a competent program of ocean research in the eastern Pacific to accom- 
modate all these needs. The area to be covered is roughly bounded by 30° north 
latitude, 20° south latitude, 140° west longitude, and the coasts of the Americas. 
It is somewhat larger than the United States. The scope of the plans and the 
‘breadth of U.S. interest in the area is set out in the report of the chairman of 
this committee’s first meeting which is attached hereto as appendix I. 
This is the area of the world ocean which holds first priority for us in ocean 
research for reasons noted above. Most of the research stations in the area up - 
to now have been occupied by our ocean scientists, more often than not with 
funds that have been more or less stolen from other parts of the Federal budget 
in ways the budget officers could not regularly detect and block, for we have 
all learned a little over the years from watching them. We are most happy that 
this area is now rising high on the priority of the Navy, Atomic Energy Com- 
mission, and others. We will cooperate with anybody who has new money to 
Spend on ocean research in this area. 
California Current.—About 20 years ago the California sardine began to de- 
celine in abundance. This is not an unusual phenomenon with the herringlike 
fishes. It has happened off Japan, off South Africa, off western Europe, and 
everywhere that important sea fisheries for this sort of fish occurs. Records of 
sorts over a 1,200-year period in the great herring fisheries of the Norwegian 
Sea show long period cycles of waxing and waning of fish abundance occupying 
a generation or more of man. 
Yet the reason for these changes in abundance are not well understood, their 
predictability is impossible or inexact, the relation between them and the fishing 
