MARINE SCIENCE 103 
Field operations and staging areas in the immediate vicinity of the 
ships is imperative. This would include facilities for storage, some 
of the areas covered and uncovered, handling facilities for heavy 
equipment, such as cranes, forklifts, and so forth. Maintenance shops 
should also be located close to the ship docks. The field operations 
area should also include suitable dock space, crane facilities, and 
small boats to make practical shore testing of research equipment. 
Adequate shore test facilities of this sort would often save substantial 
amounts of ship time which would otherwise be necessary for testing 
purposes. 
Need for long-range programs: One of the major problems which 
confronts all of the oceanographic research institutions at the present 
time is the fact that most research projects are funded over a short 
period of time. Unfortunately, there are usually delays for one pur- 
pose or another, which results in the fact that purchases and instru- 
ment construction cannot begin when desired. At the Scripps Insti- 
tution of Oceanography the effect of the short-term support has been 
to make nearly all of the research projects assume the nature of 
“crash” programs. This often means, as far as instrumentation for a 
given research program is concerned, that it must be tailored more 
often to the time available than to the requirements of the project. 
Frequently the limited time means that no new devices will be pro- 
duced simply because there is simply not enough time, or that the 
research leader prefers not to take any chances and to use older equip- 
ment, which though not desirable will nevertheless function with a. 
minimum expenditure of shop time. This means, of course, that. 
research is basically handicapped and progress is severely retarded. 
From the support shop standpoint these “crash” programs have the 
effect of producing severe excessive peak demands which may require 
inordinate amounts of overtime which besides being tremendously 
wasteful does not always by any means result in the construction of 
satisfactory instruments. 
It is sincerely hoped that allocation of oceanographic research funds 
may be made available over a substantially longer time base by the 
funding agencies. 
Communications: Communications, in one form or another, is in- 
extricably linked with oceanographic research and oceanographically 
oriented research projects. Unfortunately, it is only withm com- 
paratively recent time that the oceanographers have begun to become 
aware of their needs. The oceanographers’ needs involve truly world- 
wide requirements. 
For convenience we may classify our communications requirements 
as follows: ship to shore, ship to ship, oceanographic instrument buoy 
to shore, oceanographic instrument buoy to ship, shore to oceano- 
graphic instrument buoy, and ship to oceanographic instrument buoy. 
Kven relatively simple oceanographic research programs require In- 
quire increasingly better communications. Officially, the oceanogra- 
phers have very poor frequency assignments which result in limited 
range and unreliable communications. Often necessary research re- 
quiring radio communications is accomplished under somewhat ques- 
tionable and perhaps extra legal ways. The Scripps Institutoin of 
Oceanography has been indeed fortunate, due to the cooperation ob- 
tained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has made 
