NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1965 



House of Representatives, 

 Subcommittee on Oceanography of the 

 Committee of Merchant Marine and Fisheries, 



Washington^ D.C. 



The subcommittee met at 10:10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 

 1334, Longwortli House Office Building, Hon. Alton Lennon (chair- 

 man of the subcommittee) presiding. 



Mr. Lennon. The subcommittee will resume its hearings. 



For our first witness this morning, I would like to call the distin- 

 guished gentleman from Hawaii, the Honorable Spark Matsmiaga. 



STATEMENT OF HON. SPAEK M. MATSIJNAGA, A REPEESENTATIVE 

 IN CONGRESS PROM THE STATE OF HAWAII 



Mr. Matsunaga. Mr. Chainnan and members of the subcommittee, 

 I thank you for this opportunity of appearing before you and express- 

 ing my views with respect to H.R. 10432, the Marine Resources and 

 Engineering Development Act of 1965, which, along with other sub- 

 stantially similar bills, is now under consideration by this subcom- 

 mittee. 



My deep and abiding interest in the ocean and its treasures comes 

 no doubt from my island background. As a boy on my native island 

 of Kauai, fourth largest in the Hawaiian group, I was never very far 

 from the ocean, which I grew to love and respect. Like countless 

 other boys, I often wondered about the mysteries which are locked in 

 the depths of the ocean. Lord Byron's "Ode to the Sea" became one 

 of my favorite poems in high school, for it so well exxDressed the seem- 

 ing invincibility of the sea. 



Oceanography, the science that deals with the ocean and its phenom- 

 ena, is probably less known and understood today than our space 

 program, which has made giant strides in recent years and captured 

 the imaginaltion of not only Americans, but also of the peoples of the 

 world. The development of our oceanic resources through research 

 has been a field of increasing importance in my own State. As mani- 

 festations of this, we have the Geophysics Institute, which is located 

 on the campus of the University of Hawaii, the sponsoring of inter- 

 national scientific conferences on tsunami research, the recent appoint- 

 ment of Prof. Henry M. Stommel, one of the Nation's foremost author- 

 ities on oceanography and presently a member of the faculty at Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology, to fill the newly established Capt. 

 James Cook chair in oceanography at the University of Hawaii, and 

 the National Science Foundation's Mohole project which is designed to 



465 



