NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 587 



eludes graduate students working in the field. There are 3,000 peo- 

 ple in our country charged with exploration of 71 percent of our 

 planet. 



Now, if that is not an imbalance, I have never heard one, and if 

 that is not the opportunity for young people to get into a field, I 

 have never heard of an opportunity. 



Mr. Casey. I certainly appreciate your observations and I think 

 they will be most helpful in generating more interest, and I just hope 

 that we cam accomplish some of the things you pointed out here to 

 stimulate development of some, particularly the human resources 

 that you referred to, because when you fall short of human resources 

 you may have all the material to work on, but if you do not have the 

 people to develop it, you are in poor shape. 



Thank you, very much. 



Commander Walsh. That is right. 



Mr. Casey. Mr. Tupper? 



Mr. Tupper. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to thank Commander 

 Walsh for an excellent extemporaneous statement, I think it shows 

 considerable expertise in this field and when printed it will be very 

 interesting reading for all members of the committee and hopefully 

 the Congress. 



Commander Walsh. Thank you, Mr. Tupper. 



Mr. Casey. Mr. Downing ? 



Mr. Downing. Mr. Chairman, I share the views in his statement. 

 Several of us on this committee had the privilege of going down in 

 an experimental submarine 150 feet this year. How far down did 

 you go down in the Trieste ? 



Commander Walsh. Approximately 7 miles. I would like to say 

 that this is a good example of, shall we say, non-me-tooism in that 

 in 1958 we purchased the bathyscath Trieste^ in 1958 the Trieste Group 

 at the Navy Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, Calif. — proposed 

 a program to the Navy Department that we take it to the island of 

 Guam and have a try at conquering, I suppose in exploration jargon, 

 conquering the deepest known place in the ocean. 



Mr. Downing. Why did you stop at 7 miles ? 



Commander Walsh. That is all there is. That is the deepest place 

 in the ocean. 



Mr. Downing. In other words, you hit bottom ? 



Commander Walsh. There are finite limits as far as depth ex- 

 ploration goes in the ocean. In the best tradition of exploration, by 

 the way, we planted the U.S. flag in the deepest place in the world 

 ocean, much as Sir Edmund Hillary put his country's flag on top 

 of Mount Everest. 



This record was set by the U.S. Navy in the name of the United 

 States and we placed our flag there at that time. 



Mr. Downing. How far did you go off Guam ? 



Commander Walsh. About 200 miles, this is the Marianas Trench. 

 The low points in the Marianas Trench, the two principal ones are 

 the Nero Deep and the Challenger Deep. The deeps usually are 

 named after the survey ships that discovered them, and this Challenger 

 Deep is named after the British survey ship H.M.S. ChaUenger. 

 which found this point in the early 1950's ; it was later checked out by 

 the Eussians and then by our own Scripps Institution of Oceanog- 

 raphy. 



