NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 135 



I do not consider oceanog-rapliy any longer to be merely important. 

 I consider it crucial. An Oceanograpliic Agency is no longer an in- 

 teresting experiment, it is rapidly becoming an actual national neces- 

 sity. 



First, from a defense standpoint, underseas knowledge is needed 

 for survival. Other nations, some of them unfriendly to freedom, are 

 working feverishly to gain knowledge of ocean currents, methods of 

 undersea navigation and development of swift, potentially deadly ves- 

 sels, devices and machines . We can ill afford not to match and surpass 

 potential enemies in underwater defense technology. 



We are now engaged in a massive war on poverty. It extends world- 

 wide as well as within our own borders. The uses of the almost un- 

 limited, renewable food supplies in the seas offer a natural solution to 

 the world's problem of hunger. It offers better living standards for all 

 our own people, as seafood is rich in protein, minerals and vitamins. 

 The proliferation of our own and the world's population will make 

 hai-vesting of the foods of the sea an important, needed operation. It 

 will provide us with crops that are valuable not only as foodstuffs, but 

 for the chemicals and fibers industries. 



The sea contains many minerals. We are importing an increasingly 

 greater share of the metals we use in the United States today — es- 

 pecially some of the rarer metals. Nearly all are floating in the sea 

 in vast amounts. We must discover practical means to extract them 

 from ocean water to preserve our independence, to lessen the chance 

 that unfavorable international incidents can cut off our supply of 

 vitally needed metal. 



Water is a big problem in many areas. In this day when many cities 

 are becoming thirsty, desalinization of water should become a crash 

 program. A recently announced process suggests the chance of bring- 

 ing the cost down to 25 cents a thousand gaflons. We have water on 

 three sides of our country. We must find ways to convert it for con- 

 structive use by our people. 



Oceanography will give far more than it takes. There will be thou- 

 sands of new jobs in the future created through developments in ocean- 

 ography. Man will understand more about the mysteries of undersea 

 rivers and the air masses that move above the surface to create much 

 of our coastal weather. 



The Associated Press the other day quoted Dr. Robert S. Dietz, an 

 oceanographer with the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Avho said that the 

 Russians are gaining rapidly on the United States in oceanographic 

 studies. 



Dietz said the Soviets now appear to have two-thirds the total effort 

 in ocean sciences, and their program is growing 10 percent per year. 

 There are about 1,200 Soviet oceanographers compared to about 1,500 

 to 2,000 in the United States. Four Soviet universities are offering 

 oceanographic training and 50 research centers contribute to the pro- 

 grams. Oceanographers are among the highest salaried in the 

 U.S.S.R. 



Technical support of Soviet oceanographers is superior to ours, 

 Dietz declares. He said each senior scientist has 5 to 10 assistants to 

 help work up results of research in contrast to the American scientist 

 who quite often works alone amid a morass of data. 



The Russians have the world's only nomnilitary research submarine 

 operating out of Murmansk. 



