NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 433 



the arid, unforested Great Plains, the lower atmosphere, and of nearby space, the 

 successful conquest of this new oceanic environment will require massive assist- 

 ance from, and major restructuring of, the Federal Government. 



2. The United States cannot tolerate control of the ocean being in other than 

 its own, certainly neutral, or friendly hands because the ocean is the avenue 

 that holds our power posture together if thus controlled, or provides a wall 

 between us and out friends and supplies if in control of others. In the last 

 analysis the United States always has, and always will, fight to prevent control 

 of the ocean falling into unfriendly, or uncertainly friendly, hands. Nuclear 

 weapons have not changed this basic strategic consideration in any manner. 

 They only have the ability to postpone the final decision and to escalate the final 

 holocaust. 



Because of the balance of military power presently existing in the world between 

 Russia and the United Statas neither can use military power to control the ocean 

 except in local areas where the other has not a vital interest, or in confronta- 

 tions where one is reasonably certain the other will back down. Accordingly 

 military power for this purpose is neutralized until the final Armageddon. 



3. The customary uses of the ocean to his point in history, aside from the mili- 

 tary, have been the merchant marine and the fisheries. Russia is successfully 

 becoming a naval power, but more important to the present issue is brilliantly 

 ciiltivating the merchant marine and fisheries uses of the ocean. Russia's mer- 

 chant marine fleet is modern, new, and mil surpass the carrying capacity ton- 

 nage of the U.S. merchant marine in the near future. Russia passed the United 

 States in fish production several years ago and produced approximately twice 

 as much fish from the ocean last year as did the United States. Its fleets fish 

 the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Antaric oceans on a worldwide basis and 

 their fieets fishing off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States are 

 better than our own in the same area. These operations perform their normal 

 economic function and are, at the same time, fully integrated into the military and 

 diplomatic aspects of Russian power posture with an effectiveness which we 

 have not begun to contemplate in onr own situation. 



Accordingly Russia is rapidly gaining a preponderant worldwide position, 

 vis-a-vis the United States, in the traditional uses of the ocean — the merchant 

 marine and the fisheries. This lends an urgency to the U.S. attack upon the 

 new environment of the ocean because of the strategic implications of the very 

 successful actions of Russia in applying science and technology to ocean use. 



4. In these two traditional civilian uses of the ocean the United States has 

 done poorly since the war. In terms of tonnage the U.S. merchant marine's 

 share of U.S. foreign trade has fallen from 50' percent to 9 percent since 194.5. 

 In terms of round weight the U.S. fishermen's share of tlie U.S. market for fish- 

 ery products has fallen from 80 percent to 38 percent since 1948. Both of these 

 trends are perfectly capable of reversal, and it would not take much of a re- 

 versal in them to affect materially the trend in the balance-of-payments prob- 

 lem. Known fishery resources immediately off the coast of the United States 

 are adequate to make the United States a major exporter rather than a major 

 importer of fishery products, a change that could have substantial diplomatic 

 connotations in respect of the protein malnutrition problem in the developing 

 world if accomplished, as well as on the balance-of-payments problem and the- 

 general economy. 



5. The resources of 850,000 square miles of the Continental 'Shelf off the- 

 United States became our sovereign property newly under international law^ 

 last year when the Convention on the Territorial Sea came into force. The- 

 revenue to Government already from leases on such submerged lands, chiefly 

 for petroleum and gas extraction, exceeds the total expenditures of the United" 

 States in ocean activities designed to accelerate our occupation and use of the 

 ocean. Other very large resources are known to be available in the Continental 

 Shelf despite the lack of detailed exploration and mapping. Techniques not only 

 for the extraction of such resources but designed to enable men to work imder 

 water for extended periods (weeks) of time in depths suflScient to occupy the 

 traditional Continental Shelf are in an advanced stage of development and re- 

 quire only some sharing of the pioneer risk by Government to be put into prac- 

 tical pilot-plant stage of operation. 



The Convention on the Continental Shelf enlarges the traditional concept of 

 the Continental Shelf by defining it as land covered by not more than 200 meters 

 depth of water but. additionally, "to where the depth of the superjacent waters 

 admits of the exploitation of the natural resources of the said areas (submarine 

 areas adjacent to the coast) ." 



