432 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



Bartlett bills respecting the Continental Shelf) , by provision for a marine explora- 

 tion fund and a marine and atmospheric research and development fund from 

 which loans and grants can be made for specific purposes and under specific 

 criteria. 



It is obvious that some such apparatus and source of funds •will be required 

 before v^e are able to make any substantial advance in actually reducing the 

 ocean environment to our substantial use. The need, as it always has been in 

 such situations in the past, is for the Government to accept a suffiicent share of 

 the risk of pioneering to induce pioneers into the desired activity. Furthermore, 

 the $600 million authorized for these purposes by the Muskie bill appears to be 

 in the right order of magnitude for what will be required at the beginning. 



(4) Facilities, service, and advice availahle 



At such time as the Congress considers and adopts a wide-ranging proposal as 

 the Muskie bill the director, or secretary, or administrator of the resulting 

 ■operational ocean entity of the Government should : 



(a) Be authorized to form standing or ad hoc advisory committees for 

 particular functions as it finds the need for from time to time, composed of 

 persons acting in their capacity as independent experts drawn from science, 

 government, or industry in such mixes as the entity found to be appropriate 

 for the purpose at hand, and within the form and regulations applying to 

 such purposes elsewhere in the Government ; and 



(&) Have available for its use, by contract or grants, any and all facili- 

 ties and services in this field available to the Federal Government. Given a 

 certain task it should be able to tackle it by the most appropriate of any of 

 the following methods, or any combination thereof : 



(1) By contract to an existing agency of the Government ; 



(2) By contract to an existing agency of a State government; 



(3) By contract to an existing international or intergovernmental 

 agency ; 



(4) By contract to an academic institution in this country or abroad ; 



(5) By contract to an industrial firm ; or 



(6) By means of its own staff and operations. 



(5) Organisational aspects of ocean affairs in the Congress 



While the fragmentation of ocean activities into 22 bureaus and oflBces of the 

 -executive branch of the Government represents such an institutional burden on 

 the conduct of ocean affairs in the Nation that one can see little chance of im- 

 proving that conduct until this fragmentation is substantially reduced and the 

 remainder better coordinated, this is not in any way a worse institutional barrier 

 to our development and use of the ocean environment than is the fragmentation 

 of these affairs in the Congress, where 32 subcommittees and committees are 

 involved. 



None of the bills so far brought forward have attacked this major problem 

 in a straightforward fashion except the Muskie bill (S. 2251). It provides for 

 the establishment of a Joint Committee of the Congress for Marine and Atmos- 

 pheric Affairs on which there would be representation from the principal sub- 

 stantive committees of both the House and Senate affected by these issues. 



While the Muskie bill has other excellent attributes this is a major one. If 

 this step can be taken by the Congress at an early stage it will do more than 

 almost any other one thing in setting our feet securely on the path we need to 

 take in fashioning the weapons, tools, ideas, and institutions that will be required 

 to settle and use this enormous, varied, and bountiful new environment, the 

 ocean. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 



The subjects that have been discussed above can be summarized as follows : 

 1. We are about at the stage in our efforts to occupy and use the ocean where 

 "we were in 1840 with respect to the arid environment of the Great Plains. We 

 have come to a new environment where the weapons, tools, ideas, and institu- 

 tions we have developed in the conquest of other environments will not work 

 successfully. Just as in the case of the successful assault on the arid, forestless 

 'Great Plains environment, the later successful attack on the new environment 

 of the lower atmposhere. and the present effort on making the new environment 

 of nearby space useful to us, we require to develop new weapons, tools, ideas, 

 and institutions that will enable us to conquer and render useful to us this 

 new environment of the ocean. Just as in the case of the new environments of 



