NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 429 



: Senate Commititee on Commerce almost immediately began hearings on bills, 

 mostly originated by their members, aimed at implementing the NASCO recom- 

 mendations. 



In these intervening years the budget for ocean research has increased from 

 about $25 million to about $140 million per year and this has been accompanied 

 by a substantial increase in our knowledge and understanding of the ocean 

 environment. This increase has now become so large that we are now confident 

 that this environment is capable of occupation and use to the enormous benefit 

 of the Nation and mankind generally. 



We are even in a position to glimpse roughly how this should be done. It will 

 take a lot more science of both the discipline-oriented and the mission-oriented 

 kinds. It will take a lot of technological and engineering application of what 

 already is known and what will be learned as we expand our ocean activities 

 further. It will take pilot-plant scale operations in some instances (such as 

 Operation Mohole, and the "man-in-the-sea" programs) to work out the practical 

 bugs of getting industry and people into the ocean. In other instances, such as 

 petroleum extraction, industry can move, and is moving, so fast that the Gov- 

 ernment and academic scientists will never catch up with them again. These 

 latter people, as well as the old users of the ocean environment (merchant 

 marine — fisheries and Navy) and the prospective new users (miners of the Con- 

 tinental Shelf and deep-sea bed, submersible merchant marine, etc.) require the 

 expanded normal governmental services of climate and weather predictions, not 

 only in the lower atmosphere, but in the ocean itself. 



Now we are talking about a new subject — ^^the role of the Federal Goverament 

 in the occupation and use of the new environment — the ocean. But we are still 

 hamstrung in our thinking by the excellent public relations job the academic 

 scientists did, we are still using the old term "oceanography" to describe what we 

 are talking about, and we are considering legislation drafted to enhance the 

 ability of the Federal Government to properly handle its role of expanding the 

 scientific aspects of ocean activity. 



The old job of expanding ocean research and arranging its proper coordina- 

 tion in the Federal Government, stimulated by NASCO, has not yet been properly 

 done. But before this has been accomplished a whole new need has descended 

 upon us — the expansion of the whole (not just scientific) ocean use role of the 

 Federal Government and not only the proper coordination of activities in the 

 legislative and executive branches of the Government to this end, hut the estab- 

 lishment of a framework within which all appropriate forces available to this 

 Nation can be bent, in the apipropriate role of each, to this expanded task of occu- 

 pying and using the ocean. These forces do not only include the bureaus and 

 offices of the Federal Government, but the academic institutions, the State gov- 

 ernments, the international agencies in which we are involved, and in a whole 

 new measure the skills, aptitudes, and drives of our complex and enormously 

 .powerful private industry. 



This is a task of much greater size and complexity than was in mind when mosit 

 of the bills before us were thought through and drafted. 



Some parts of this job do not have any enormous urgency attached to them, 

 "The academic community is doing its part reasonably satisfactorily and might 

 'Continue so to do under reasonably normal budgetary increase. The petroleum 

 people are off and running, and only need odds and ends of Government help to 

 Ikeep going. 



In the first sections of this report, however, I have attempted to point out tlie 

 strategic connotations of the general occupation and use of the ocean, in its 

 Tjearing on possible control of the ocean, and the much greater progress Russia is 

 xnaking in this application, which lends a degree of urgency to moving more rap- 

 Idly in this new field of ocean use (including ocean science) . 



NECESSAKY COMPONENTS OF A NATIONAL OCEAN FUNCTION 



Having looked at some of the problems involved in this area it may be 

 useful to look at the components required in a governmental system better 

 suited for bringing them to solution. These might include the following: 



(1) Planning and coordination 



The ocean is vital to our defense, critical to the conduct of our foreign affairs, 

 of substantial and growing importance to an ever-widening area of our economy, 

 and of more than nominal importance to our general public welfare. 



There requires to be in the Executive an entity which is able to view all 

 aspects of U.S. activities in respect of the ocean, as well as all possible effects 



