310 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



argument comes up in the support of basic research in other areas by 

 the armed services also. 



I would note that the Navy program in basic oceanographic science 

 is about the same size as the National Science Foundation program. 

 We thus have these two principal focuses but there is a third focus for 

 a different kind of basic scientific investigation in the Bureau of Com- 

 mercial Fisheries of the Department of the Interior. 



The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, of course, is primarily inter- 

 ested, as its name implies, in fishing. On the other hand, looking 

 ahead, there are big general questions such as : Why do you find fish 

 where you do? Where will you expect to find fish in the future? 

 What is the effect of the fish catch on the fishery ? 



Fish are not j ust a pool which one depletes. After all, every fish lays 

 millions of eggs per year, so that the distribution of fish in the oceans 

 depends on very many other factors. The longrun interest in fish 

 farming of the oceans requires that we understand the oceans and their 

 biological and physical environment. 



Thus, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries also supports a program 

 in basic ocean science. 



All of this might conceivably be lumped into a single program. I 

 do not think it would be wise. I have spent considerable time in the 

 Soviet Union looking at their system for administering science, which 

 is a model of block diagrams in which who controls who is abundantly 

 clear. My general observation is that it is far less efficient than our 

 own approach, and if you ask v\^hy, it is because they do not allow 

 enough room for independent choices. 



When one has a very neat bureaucratic system, what inevitably hap- 

 pens is that, far from eleminating committees, one proliferates com- 

 mittees, because it is always necessary to come up to the top to get de- 

 cisions made and this usually involves more committees. At least 

 that is what happens in their system. 



One of the strengths in American science has been to allow a reason- 

 able number of alternatives, so that competing decisions can be made, 

 so that when one man makes a mistake, someone else is in a position to 

 carry the ball. 



I think this applies, incidentally, to our commerce and industry as 

 well as to our science. 



In the case of ocean science, the point I want to make is that each of 

 these three agencies does basic science, which properly has a somewhat 

 different flavor and a somewhat different point of view, which must 

 not be lost. 



I would not want to see these functions transferred to ESSA. 

 Aside from basic ocean science, there is another problem, which is 

 that embodied in the word "survey," or more generally "exploration." 



This is the historical role of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which 

 is the principal oceanographic component of ESSA, to produce pre- 

 cise maps of the coast and of the ocean bottoms for whatever purposes 

 we need to know them. 



This role is being enlarged. The Coast and Geodetic Survey quite 

 properly has, in order to carry out that role, taken an interest in the 

 basic scientific factors because it has extended its survey operations to 

 geophysical surveys as well as simple mapping, and in order to do that 

 well it must also have its roots in the scientific community. 



