MARINE SCIENCES AND RESEARCH ACT 11 
League, but this does not necessarily hold true for tomorrow, accord- 
ing to our foremost scientists in this field, if ample facilities are made 
available for continued research. 
These scientists have a twofold problem. 
They have the problem of perfecting ways in which our Navy can 
detect hostile submarines and keep them under surveillance. 
They have the converse problem of perfecting ways that will 
enable our own submarines to escape detection. 
We must be scientifically prepared for both undersea defense and 
offense, and this will require greatly intensified research and engi- 
neering. 
We must be prepared also to counter any underwater mine war- 
fare, in which the Soviet Union has long specialized. Today’s mines 
are more diabolical than any previously used. Some are fired by the 
sound of a passing ship. Others are activated by a ship’s magnetic 
field. Still others require only a change in water pressure, which 
also can be caused by passing ships. Some combine several or all of 
these ‘‘influences.”’ 
In antimine warefare we will need the councils of specialists in 
underwater acoustics (including knowledge of sounds made by fish 
and other forms of life in the sea), wave pressures and water density, 
magnetism, gravity, and bottom topography. 
There are other military uses for three-dimensional knowledge of 
the oceans, some of them classified. 
Economic benefits are incalculable. 
Witnesses at hearings on the bill testified emphatically that elimi- 
nating all military factors, the economic benefits from the projected 
research program would far outweigh the costs of the program. 
Economic benefits will be derived from the resources of the sea. 
These include food, liquid fuels, metallic minerals. 
Food possibilities are tremendous. Population the world over is 
exploding. By the year 2000 it is expected to reach 6 billion, more 
than double the present total. That of the United States will be 200 
million by 1970; 230 million by 1980, according to the lowest Census 
Bureau estimates. 
As population soars the United States and other nations will seek 
to supplement their protein needs from the sea as do Japan and other 
heavily populated countries. 
Russia, though not heavily populated, is making a massive effort to 
increase 1ts protein food supply by harvesting the oceans. The Soviet 
Union has more than 100 fisheries research ships exploring the oceans 
and has invaded waters of the Bering Sea, the Grand Banks off 
Newfoundland, tuna fisheries in the central Atlantic and mid-Pacific, 
and other fisheries along the West Coast of Africa. 
Red China is making desperate efforts to double its seafood pro- 
duction. Meanwhile the United States catch has steadily declined, 
our fisheries research fleet and its activities have diminished, and we are 
in grave danger of losing an industry that produces food in the value 
of a billion and a half dollars annually and gives employment to 500,000 
citizens. 
S. 2692 would authorize a scientific research program and economic 
studies designed to revive this industry and increase our food supplies 
from the oceans, their estuaries, and the Great Lakes. 
Your committee has been told that 40 percent of the world’s known 
reserves of liquid fuels lie offshore beneath the Continental Shelves. 
