MARINE SCIENCES AND RESEARCH ACT 3 
The Soviet oceanographic fleet, in numbers of ships, size, tonnage, 
diversity, and laboratory facilities, exceeds that of the Western nations. 
Her marine scientists far outnumber those of the United States, and 
Russia has launched a vast program to train more. 
The United States has Jagged in this vital scientific field, a lag 
that if continued could be enormously costly in time of peace; fatal 
in the event of war. 
This lag was recognized in Senate Resolution 136, adopted by the 
Senate of the United States on July 15, 1959. It was the sense and 
purport of this resolution that the lag in our Nation’s oceanographic 
research be overcome. 
S. 2692 is the legislative approach to doing just that. 
PuRPOSE OF THE BILL 
The primary purpose of the bill is to enhance the national economy, 
security, and welfare by increasing our knowledge of the oceans and 
the Great Lakes in all pertinent scientific fields. These include 
physics, biology, chemistry, meteorology and geology. 
To speed this objective, the bill is designed to approximately 
double, within the next 10 years, the capabilities of the United States 
to conduct a balanced, comprehensive program of marine research 
and surveys. 
Our capabilities in this program are dependent in large measure on— 
1. A national policy of continuous and constructive scientific 
studies of the waters which form 13,428 miles of our 19,793-mile 
national boundary. 
2. Education and training of additional marine scientists in 
numbers adequate to make these important studies. 
3. Construction and operation of new and advanced research 
ships for scientists to work on, laboratories to work in, and tools, 
instruments, and equipment to work with. 
4. Coordination of oceanographic and limnological. activities 
of the various Federal departments and agencies participating in 
the program. 
5. International and interdepartmental exchange of oceano- 
eraphic data. 
The bill, in the interest of maximum economy and efficiency, would 
meet these requirements by advancing the program in realistically 
progressive stages over a period of years. In this way the crash 
characteristics of the more extensive Soviet oceanographic effort will 
be avoided. 
Neep For tHe Bitu 
The need for a program of expanded marine research has been 
evident to scientists and scientific units of a number of Government 
agencies for the past 6 years, and was manifest when these agencies 
found it necessary or expedient in advance of several international 
conferences to call on the National Academy of Sciences for oceano- 
graphic information the agencies did not possess. 
Examples of Federal dependence on the Academy, which is not a 
Government agency, were the Inter-American Conferences on Conser- 
vation of the Resources of the Continental Shelf and Marine Waters, 
held at Mexico City, Mexico, in July 1955, and at Ciudad Trujillo, 
Dominican Republic, in March 1956, and the International Conference 
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