16 MARINE SCIENCES AND RESEARCH ACT 
because both agencies are submerged in major departments of our 
Government with numerous projects and programs. This is true 
generally of all scientific agencies within the departments engaged im 
various programs of marine research. Other programs in the depart- 
ments require larger expenditures and personnel and apparently re- 
ceive priority in budget considerations. 
The plaints of scientists, like those of small frogs in big ponds, too 
frequently have been only faintly heard. 
Scientific effort in the oceanographic field has suffered generally 
from lack of coordinated planning, effort, and evaluation. Yet a hard 
core of splendid scientific talent, extensive background data, and 
modest technical facilities exist in all of these agencies, and all of them 
have had operational experience. Some also have research or survey 
fleets, however small and antiquated. These facts were well presented 
to your committee during hearings on the bill. 
In view of these facts, it was thought appropriate to continue 
oceanographic operations in the existing agencies, but to provide these 
agencies with improved facilities for research and congressional assur- 
ance, in the form of a 10-year authorization, of contimuity m their 
scientific efforts. 
Likewise it was thought appropriate to place, through provisions 
of the bill, direct responsibility on the departmental Secretaries as 
well as on the agencies, for carrying out the activities authorized 
in the bill. 
The importance of this was emphasized by Dr. Columbus O’D. 
Iselin, dean of U.S. oceanographers, in his testimony at hearings 
before the committee on the bill. Dr. Iselin was discussing a research 
operation now taking place in the Atlantic in which four small ships 
and approximately 45 scientists are participating, and which he 
described as— 
both scientifically excitmg and an important part of the 
problem of detecting and destroying enemy submarines 
equipped with ballistic missiles. 
Dr. Iselin continued: 
This operation has been made possible through the coop- 
eration of several agencies, both governmental and private. 
The cooperation between the fellows who are working 
actually at sea today or in the air or beneath the seas—the 
cooperation is excellent. * * * People are working around 
the clock, not for a day but for days on end. 
From where I sit what bothers me is that the entire opera- 
tion has had to be organized at the working level. The senior 
members of the cooperating agencies have really no time to 
understand what we are trying to do, or what it really means 
to them in terms of efficiency of their service. 
In my opinion, Mr. Chairman, the most important thing 
that any bill that you can devise in support of marine 
science could do is to remind the heads of agencies (agencies 
which are in fact cooperating at the working level) that they, 
too, should take part in the planning of such future operations 
and that they should be cooperating as vigorously as the 
fellows who are struggling with seasickness and airsickness 
this morning. 
