NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 491 



aspect of ocean station vessels begin and end. I am still taking in 

 the guideline area. 



Do you lay down any guidelines as to what constitutes an ocean- 

 ographic item as contrasted with something that is purely in the mis- 

 sion of the agency — the normal mission ? 



Mr. Seidman. Well, it is our view that the oceanographic programs 

 as a whole which are now being carried out do serve the missions of 

 the agencies — the work that the Bureau of Fislieries does in terms of 

 oceanography, which is the development of fisheries resources of the 

 country 



Mr. Drewry. It relates to its mission, but when do you call it ocean- 

 ography and when do you call it a mission, or somebody might call a 

 survey — what one person would call survey would be called research 

 by another, for instance. 



Mr. Seidmaist. This gets into problems of terminology. I think gen- 

 erally speaking we have defined everything which relates to the 

 oceans as to falling within the broad field of oceanography. As I 

 think I indicated in my statement, oceanography not only includes a 

 wide variety of diverse activities, but many different scientific dis- 

 ciplines. It is not a single discrete area susceptible to precise definition. 



Mr. Drewry. I agree with you and yet it seems to me important that 

 the terminology be sufficiently understood that when one agency refers 

 to something as being research, that another agency in the comparable 

 field will also call that research, as against the applied use of the in- 

 formation just so we can understand what we are being reported on. 



Mr. Seedman. I think Dr. Berg can answer this better. 



Mr. Berg. This does pose some difficulties. Every once in a while, 

 for example, you might be working in the area of air-sea interaction. 

 The question is whether you are talking about atmospheric research 

 or ocean research, and there are different committees of the Federal 

 Council involved. We do think one advantage of handing these 

 things to the Federal Council are that decisions can be made to assign 

 a matter to either the Committee on Atmospheric Sciences or to the 

 Interagency Committee on Oceanography. In fact they both might 

 look at it at the same time. These decisions are quite arbitrary at 

 times. 



Mr. Drewry. Just one more question. So far we have not gotten 

 i:he statutory base for an oceanographic program that we are looking 

 for, but, when we do get it, would you consider that the handling 

 of the problem from this end might be improved by having authoriza- 

 tion legislation, such as we now do with regard to the Coast Guard, 

 for instance, in certain of its work ; that is, have some area in which 

 there would have to be authorization before appropriation. 



I would like to get your reaction from your end of the street as to 

 whether or not that would help hold the program together — if we are 

 going to have coordination rather than the single-agency approach. 



Mr. Seidman. First, I should emphasize that we regard this as a 

 matter for Congress since it involves congressional procedure. 



I have been concerned with the increasing trend to provide annual 

 authorizations for many types of programs. This trend started in 

 quite recent years. Formerly, legislation generally provided a perma- 

 nent authorization. Annual authorizations have created some prob- 



