84 MARINE SCIENCE 



Scripps, let's say, or Woods Hole, or someplace else — the University 

 of Miami, or the University of Washington, to do this sort of thing? 



Mr. Brown. Or contract with a private company. 



The Chairman. Or with a private company. 



Mr. Brown. Yes. 



The Chairman. That authority would come under the broad au- 

 thority of the Science Foundation, even now. 



Mr. Brown. Or conceivably in certain other Government agencies 

 the same type of contracting might be carried on. 



The important aspect of this, however, would be that it be well 

 coordinated so that one agency knows what the other is doing, and 

 what responsibility it is taking for its part of the overall job. 



We found in our own survey of the oceanographic situation that 

 this is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of improving the status 

 of oceanography, particularly within the Government. This is a 

 field which as you know completely cuts across numerous Government 

 agencies. Almost every agency in one way or another has oceano- 

 graphic interests and the problem is how should this be coordinated ? 



Our own committee discussed this at great length. There were some 

 of us who at one time felt that perhaps some kind of a central agency 

 should be established. There were others who felt we ought to at- 

 tempt to maintain independent development within individual agen- 

 cies as much as possible and after thrashing this out we came to 

 the conclusion that we favored a compromise between the central 

 agency and the independent development approach. 



In other words, we favored the establishment of some kind of a 

 coordinating group but nevertheless to encourage the independent ap- 

 proach within each agency. 



The Chairman. That might logically follow if we can get this pro- 

 gram started, because that was the pattern on space. We started out 

 Avitli different agencies and finally we said, ''Well, let's have a separate 

 space agency," which we now have. 



Mr. Brown. Now, I believe that tlie decision that your own com- 

 mittee makes in this legislation far transcends oceanography, itself. 

 I believe it will get at tlie core of the very basic fundamental problem 

 of decisionmaking, concerning science and technology in Government. 

 Just how does one go about handling it ? Your bill may well establish 

 some kind of a precedent and for that reason we believe that it is some- 

 thing that really has to be thouglit through extremely carefully. 



If the coordination is to be done under the National Science Foun- 

 dation as you propose in the legislation, we believe that there should 

 be a broadening of the wording. We believe the wording as it is now 

 is unnecessarily restrictive. For example, the scientists who are repre- 

 sentatives of the proposed panel would be, as it is now written, scien- 

 tists who are from institutions which have oceanographic contracts. 

 We believe that other scientists who have no direct oceanographic in- 

 terests should be included as well in order to maintain a degree of 

 impartiality, shall we say. 



If we are to double our support of the 



Tlie Chairman, I thoroughly agree with you on that, too. The 

 Science Foundation fell into a pattern over the pasit 8 or 9 years where 

 they started to go to one or two institutions and finally we found 

 nearly 80 percent of everything they were doing up in one section. In 



