578 NATIONAL O.CEANOGRAPHI.C PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



particularly interested in tliis project. It sounds like you had a very 

 sucessful trip. 



Mr. Stephan". A very interesting one. 



Mr. KoGERS. Are there any questions ? Mr. Downing. 



Mr. Downing. A very interesting paper. 



Mr. Stephan. Thank you very much. 



Mr. KoGERS. Thank you very much, Professor Stephan. 



(The following clipping was submitted for inclusion in the record :) 



[From Science magazine, Apr. 16, 1965] 



Oceanography : House Subcommittee Encourages Use op Merchant Ships 

 To Gather Data on the High Seas 



The recently released record of a morning hearings before a House 

 oceanography subcommittee reveals an unusual example of persistence by a 

 congressional committee in advocating a particular mode of research and a novel 

 instance of congressional staff members serving as observers and participants 

 in a scientific enterprise. 



Titled "Oceanography — Ships of Opportunity," ^ the hearings before the Ocean- 

 ography Subcommittee of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee 

 dealt with a project designed to show whether the American merchant marine 

 fleet can be used to gather oceanographic data without hindrance to normal 

 operation of the vessels. 



The hearings, held January 22, were cast in the form of a seminar to discuss 

 what Subcommittee Chairman Alton Lennon, Democrat, of North Carolina, called 

 an "interesting experiment" conducted last fall. Under review was a voyage of 

 the merchantman SS Java Mail across the North Pacific, which Lennon describes 

 as an attempt "to determine whether or not oceanographic data could be col- 

 lected for merchants ships on a truly not-to-interfere basis." 



Called Project Neptune — Pacific, the effort was sponsored by the Office of Naval 

 Research with the collaboration of the Naval Missile Center at Point Magu, 

 Calif, (which provided a mobile lab and scientific personnel), the General Motors 

 Research Laboratories at Santa Barbara, and the American Mail Lines, Ltd., 

 of Seattle. The committee appears to have acted as a kind of broker in the 

 project by helping to bring the principals together. 



The oceanography subcommittee was formed in 1959 at a time when the ocean- 

 ography budget was expanding and congressional committees were vying for 

 jurisdiction. 



"Our subcommittee soon became interested," said Lennon, "in the possibility 

 of the greater use of the merchant fleet for the collection of oceanographc data. 

 The National Academy of Sciences Committee on Oceanography advised us that 

 worldwide surveys, ocean surveys, were prime essentials to any concerted re- 

 search program." 



The subcommittee maintained its interest and looked for ways to learn whether 

 the idea was feasible. 



"The use of the SS Java Mail last fall was the test," said Lennon. "Committee 

 staff members of our subcommittee participated to a rather large degree in an 

 observatory capacity, and they advised our committee that this worked exceed- 

 ingly well, and it proved the merit of this particular concept ; that it showed the 

 way to make a greater and immediate advance in our oceanographic programs by 

 freeing our new, specialized oceanographic research ships to do advanced work 

 while these existing 'ships of opportunity,' as we refer to them, collected the basic 

 survey data." 



A strong proponent of the ships-of-opportunity idea has been Sidney Galler, 

 head of the biology branch of the Office of Naval Research, who has been inter- 

 ested in finding more efficient and less expensive means for obtaining bio-oceano- 

 graphic data which the Navy needs. 



The use of ships of opportunity for gathering scientific data actually has a 

 history which dates back to the earliest days of the U.S. Navy. The Navy 

 Oceanographic Office, for example, is running a 4-year program using Military Sea 

 Transport Service ships to make bathythermograph readings. The Bureau of 



1 Copies of the hearings (Serial No. 89-1) may be obtained from the Committee on 

 Merchant Marine and Fisheries, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., 20515. 



