NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 431 



foreign policy and foreign relation component to almost every aspect of ocean 

 activity that the Department of State must have its own specialists in these 

 particular aspects and it must be involved in the planning and coordination of 

 the national ocean program wherever that may aftect foreign policy or foreign 

 relations, and those points are legion. 



The Department of the Navy could not conceivably give up its own military- 

 mission oriented research and development activities respecting the ocean to 

 another agency because this is vital to its total mission. It is with the greatest 

 reluctance that the Navy will admit that it should not continue to bear a primary 

 mission of discipline-oriented research respecting the ocean plus much non- 

 military mission-oriented research and development for the purpose of aiding 

 aspects of the civilian economy (a role that it has long held and cherished 

 respecting the sea). Furthermore this view is held by many outside the Navy 

 who regret that cost-effective budget practices are pressing in this direction. 



The National Science Foundation could not give up its support of discipline- 

 oriented research in the ocean field because this would leave too broad and deep 

 a gap in its primary mission of advancing science as science. 



It is probable that the Atomic Energy Commission also would find it very 

 diflicult to depend upon another agency for its needs in the ocean field. 



In most other parts of the Government, however, there would not be any great 

 diflficulty involved in a considerable consolidation of ocean activities into an 

 agency for that purpose. The way to this has been pointed out in the recent 

 Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 2 which consolidated the U.S. Weather 

 Bureau, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Central Radio Propagation 

 Laboratory into the Environmental Sciences Service Administration in the 

 Department of Commerce. 



As noted above, cost-eifective budget practices as they are applied throughout 

 the Government, if no other thing, will press for further consolidation of this 

 nature in the civilian sector of the Government in order to obtain missions large 

 enough to justify the budget requests needed for services jointly required by 

 several small segments of the ocean community in the Government. 



The Muskie bill (S. 2251) meets this problem in a straightforward fashion by 

 calling for the formation of a new Department of Marine and Atmospheric 

 Affairs. 



This bill recognizes that you cannot practically separate ocean research from 

 ocean statutory responsibilities of an office or bureau. It consolidates w^hole 

 offices and bureaus, as practicable, into the new department wath all of their 

 functions. In this way the new Department of Marine and Atmospheric Affairs 

 would be composed of the U.S. Maritime Administration, U.C. Coast Guard, U.S. 

 Weather Bureau, the National Oceanographic Data Center, the Coastal Engineer- 

 ing Research Center, the Sea-Air Interaction Laboratory, the Central Radio- 

 Propagation Laboratory, the functions of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, 

 and Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife related to marine and anadromous 

 fish, and the mineral resources functions of the Department of the Interior related 

 to submarine production, as well as other such governmental functions as the 

 President considered to be in the national interest. This would form a depart- 

 ment somewhat larger than the Department of Labor, and somewhat smaller than 

 the National Astronautics and Space Administration. 



Such merit attaches to its proposal and I, for one, do not see how we are going 

 to make any sharp step ahead in the operational aspects of the conquest and use 

 of the marine environment until some such major consolidation of ocean activities 

 into a single operational arm of the Federal Government is made. Whether this 

 is tei-med a department as Senator Muskie and his colleagues plan, or an admin- 

 istration, or a commission, is of lesser importance. 



(3) Integration and stimulation of industry into tlie national ocean program 



Even S. 944 is framed almost in toto in the context of activity by the Govern- 

 ment and academic institutions in science, technology, and engineering of the 

 ocean. It does not attempt to tap the vast resources of private industry as has 

 been done previously with, subsidies, grants, and aids when we approached the 

 occupation and use of a new environment. Obviously this is intended only to be 

 a first step in this activity in the hopes that the council and commission e-^tab- 

 lished under it will move in this further direction by recommendation for further 

 legislation. It is not positively clear that the terms of reference in S. 944 are 

 broad enough for this. 



In any event this issue has been met squarely in the Muskie bill (S. 2251) and 

 similar bills introduced in the House (as well as in the preceding Teague and 



