350 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



knovni in terms particularly of oil and gas, and of manganese, other 

 riches which one can onl}' conjecture. 



Tlie Geneva Convention of 1958 granted to the United States the 

 privilege and the duty of developing this area. One of the prerequi- 

 sites to the development of any area is a structure which permits the 

 orderly and well-planned development of this by private industry, since 

 insofar as we are talking of the discovery, the development and the 

 utilization of natural resources, this is done in very large part by 

 private industry. 



The area is even larger than the map indicates, since the Geneva 

 Convention also states that the sovereign nations have the right and 

 the duty to develop resources beyondt their adjacent Continental Shelf 

 to anv depth at which they are technologically capable of operating, 

 and this at present is a limit not too well defined, but certainly extend- 

 ing far beyond the 200 meters water depth indicated on the chart. 



The second area in which additional effort is needed is in develop- 

 ment of ocean engineering data. It is useful to make a distinction 

 between engineering data and scientific data, in spite of the fact that 

 the borderline is somewhat cloudy. 



Engineering data needed to perform useful work in the ocean. 

 They cover such matters, for example, as the nature of the soil on the 

 bottom. It is vital to know whether a particular spot is soft and silty 

 or hard and rocky, to give a very simple example, before one can even 

 contemplate exploiting it in any detailed way. 



One needs to know a great deal about methods of working in and 

 near the ocean floor, because it becomes more and more clear that a 

 great deal of the actual development of the ocean's resources will be 

 done in the ocean itself rather than from vessels which float on its 

 surface. 



The data needed are collectively referred to as engineering data 

 since their motivation is to enable the performance of useful, economi- 

 cally productive work. The obtaining of the data may be technically 

 extremely demanding, and they do not in and of themselves come out 

 of scientific studies. 



A great deal of the engineering data and knowledire required are 

 already being generated by those private concerns which are active 

 in the ocean. But on careful study one can find a few examples of 

 engineering problems whose scope is so great or whose complexities so 

 diffuse that it is more appropriate to seek a governmental rather than 

 an industrial source for them. 



Most importantly, while there is considerable activitv in ocean engi- 

 neering, there is at present almost no central focus for it, and it is 

 rather difficult and time consuming to discover what is known and 

 Vv'hat is not known. 



The third leg of this triangle is the scientific knowledge of the ocean. 

 It is to this point that the earlier testimony has primarily been directed 

 before this subcommittee. It is vital to any corporation or any indi- 

 vidual who contemplates a business venture in the ocean that he have 

 good scientific data about its properties and its performance. He does 

 not always want the same data that a scientist wants, and this has given 

 rise to some problems on occasion. 



The point which is being brought out here is that these three needs — 

 the legal, the engineering, and the scientific — are all equal. One must 



