MARINE SCIENCE 111 
imperative that. something of this type be done. The research in- 
strumentation development would also profit very materially because 
this would serve as a reservoir of essential hardware and electronic 
components which would be already standardized and available, and 
would need only to be packaged with the specific new portion of the 
instrument development to have a completely satisfactorily operating 
instrument. This would have the very major effect of reducing the 
total time needed for developing a new instrument, plus insuring the 
fact that it would immediately be able to be used with an existing in- 
formation and data processing system. 
One of the major problems at present is that, due to the nature 
of funding of research projects, it 1s frequently impossible to develop 
for many years obviously desirable instruments. This is due to the 
fact that some of the desirable instruments, while being desirable for 
the particular project, cannot be considered critical, and, further, if 
they were available, they would be used on many other projects. 
However, no one research program is able to support the development 
if it involves any significant sum of money. A specific case in point 
involves what may be called a constant tension winch. This would 
require at the present an expenditure of something between $40,000 
and $45,000, and this is substantially more than any current research 
programs could support as a developmental piece of equipment. 
However, it is considered of critical need as we move into newer and 
more precise oceanographic instrumentation. The fact that we do 
not have such a winch at the present makes it difficult to make winch 
recommendations for the new proposed series of oceanographic re- 
search and survey vessels. 
Somewhat parallel with the above problem is the need for being 
able to occasionally test and evaluate, and in some rare cases build 
instruments which have been proposed or developed by outside groups. 
The difficulty at present is that often an instrument developed by an 
outside group may demonstrate what appear to be very useful charac- 
teristics, but the measurements which the instrument may make do 
not seem to appeal to antisubmarine warfare groups, for instance, 
simply because they do not understand the nature of the measure- 
ments, and would prefer to have it checked out by some oceanographic 
research group. Here again it is often impossible to find a research 
scientist who is willing to take the time to properly evaluate and 
test the instrument. A coordinating agency should be able to solve 
this type of problem. 
Since it appears that at least for a long time in the future oceano- 
graphic oriented research will continue to be conducted by a fair num- 
ber of different organizations and agencies, it should be obvious that 
coordination is imperative. I do not mean coordinate in the sense of 
control, but rather to assist in the major function of communication 
and exchange of information. There does not presently exist any 
mechanism to accomplish this highly desirable and essential function. 
Such coordination would certainly reduce often unnecessary experi- 
mentation and in the long run make major cost savings. 
The Cuarrman. You do pose a problem. This is probably one 
which the Interagency Committee could discuss with the FCC, be- 
cause it is a broad problem; maybe in the future there should be some- 
thing set aside for this sort of thing. 
