15 
STATEMENT OF HON. NORRIS COTTON, U.S. SENATOR FROM 
NEW HAMPSHIRE 
Senator Corron. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I have no prepared 
statement. I just wish to speak to the committee very informally and 
very briefly, before we have to go for rollcall, on the background and 
the purpose of Resolution 111, introduced by me. 
I want to make it very clear that in introducing this resolution, I 
have no quarrel with the executive branch, the State Department, and 
certainly not with the United Nations, in this delicate matter of juris- 
diction over the ocean bottom and the development of the marine 
sciences in oceanography. 
However, I quite understand, Mr. Chairman, that the executive 
branch and, more particularly, the State Department, may well view 
with some opposition this kind of a resolution. I am in agreement with 
that general policy. After all, the Congress vested our foreign relations 
in the executive branch, in the State Department, and I have fre- 
quently opposed this-matter of Congress offering advice at all times 
and places. 
CONGRESSIONAL ROLE IN DEVELOPMENT OF OCEANOGRAPHY 
I do want to emphasize, however, Mr. Chairman, that this matter 
of the development of oceanography has been peculiarly associated 
with the Congress. The statement of the President referred to by the 
distinguished Senator from Rhode Island indicates his attitude and is 
a fine statement. But it was in the committee on which I serve, the 
Commerce Committee, that we first began, not last year but two or three 
years ago, largely because of our distinguished chairman, the Senator 
from Washington, Mr. Magnuson, to try to do something about the 
development of oceanography, and the correlating of its activities. 
Our study indicated that what this country was doing in the matter 
of oceanography was spread and strewed, if I may use the phrase, 
through various departments—the Atomic Energy Commission, De- 
partment of the Army, Coast Guard, Health, Education, and Wel- 
fare, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, 
Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, and so on, down. I could 
name a lot more dealing with this matter piecemeal. 
The result was that Senator Magnuson and I—he invited me to join 
him as ranking minority member of the committee—introduced the 
bill which became law, and which created the President’s Commis- 
sion on Marine Science, Engineering, and Resources, for the purpose 
of trying to bring together, to correlate and make more practical and 
effective this Government’s activities in the field of oceanography and 
marine sciences. 
That Commission was appointed by the President, and on it Senator 
Magnuson and I serve, as representatives of the Senate, along with 
Congressman Lennon and Congressman Mosher on the part of the 
House, and with a group of distinguished scientists. That Commis- 
sion is working in study groups, and trying to organize and recom- 
mend to the Congress a policy for our oceanographic activities. 
