NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 415 



Government to give such aids as are required for tlie development of the use of 

 the properties. 



Under tlie Continental Shelf Convention the United States has made one of 

 its most valuable and extensive territorial acquisitions. We should attend to 

 its exploration and development for use. 



THE OCEAN AND THE WEATHER 



The advancing science of oceanography and meteorology in these postwar 

 years are demonstrating more clearly each month and year that the relationship 

 between movements in the upper ocean and the lower atmosphere are so in- 

 timately coupled that they requii-e to be studied jointly to be understood and 

 predicted. They form a great heat engine in which the power is provided by the 

 sun. The energy from the sun is absorbed in t'le ocean as in a reservoir, the 

 flowing surface currents of the ocean transport the energy of the svm great 

 distances. It is back radiated into the lower atmosphere and provides the energy 

 which creates the winds, transports the water from place to place, etc. 



The complicated nature of this transport and exchange of energy and moisture 

 between air and ocean, its effect on climate and weather, and the understanding 

 required for prediction is still rather vague. One reason for this is that most of 

 the weather observation stations are located on land, whereas the 71 percent of 

 the earth's surface that is ocean receives most of the sun's energy and transports 

 it elsewhere over the earth's surface. Observation stations at sea are still very 

 few, and in the Southern (ocean) Hemisphere almost nonexistent. 



If man is to predict or, even in the future, manipulate weather it is obvious 

 that a gi-eat many more observation stations will be necessary in the ocean. It 

 was the realization of this that led to President Johnson's Reorganization Plan 

 No. 2 of last month which merged the U.S. "Weather Bureau, the U.S. Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey and the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory into a new 

 agency, the envii*onmental Science Services Administration in the Department of 

 Commerce. 



While the great effects of weather upon all of man's activities on land, and 

 particulai*ly his food getting, will 'bring home to one the high desirability of fur- 

 ther understanding of circulation in the upper ocean once it is understand that 

 this largely controls the weather of the air, it is not unlikely that the study of 

 ocean circulation for the purpose of predicting ocean climate itself will turn out 

 in the long run to be of greater importance to man. 



It is obvious that a knowledge of both air climate and water climate is of high 

 economic importance to those who ti'avel upon the sea because the location and 

 strength of ocean currents, and the location and strength of air storms over the 

 ocean, have such a strong effect not only upon losses at sea through damage, but 

 loss of time getting from one port to another, fuel consumption, etc. 



The great rivers of the upper ocean such as the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio 

 are well known to almost everyone acquainted at all with the ocean because they 

 are such clear cut, strong, and visible features. Less well known are the great 

 currents that are submerged, like the Cromwell Current of the equatorial Pacific, 

 but that vary greatly in strength and velocity. The ocean is not a simple struc- 

 ture. It tends to layer with depth and the currents at the different depths go 

 different directions at different and variable speeds. These things are also be- 

 ginning to assume importance as man increasingly moves beneath the surface of 

 the ocean, and will do so even more as submersible freighters come into service. 



The variation in the ocean currents also have a profound effect upon the 

 ahundance of harvestable aggregations of fish, their location in space and time, 

 and the degree of their aggregation and availability. In some places, such as 

 West India, annual changes in the current structure (related to the reversing 

 monsoon system of that area) cause profound changes in the availability of fish 

 to the fishermen in annual cycles, with longer term cycles superimposed on that. 

 These annual changes may hring modest riches in one year or deep deprivation 

 in another. In other cases long-term variations like the el Nino of Peru affect 

 profound changes in the population of the guano birds, their rate of reproduction 

 and guano production, the whole agriculture of the adjacent land, and the pro- 

 duction of the fisheries. In other instances, siich as the Norwegian herring, 

 much longer term cycles in the ocean climate cause profound changes in the 

 economic structure of the industries based on the local fisheries. 



Those who extract the mineral resources of the Continental Shelf are already 

 finding out that their chief problem is not boring into the shelf, or scraping 



