84 THE NAVY OCEAN SCIENCE PROGRAM 



MARINE FOOD RESOURCES 



The requirements for environmental information needed in 

 exploiting the oceans for food parallel in many respects the 

 requirements of the Navy for support of its activities, primarily 

 that of undersea warfare. 



Knowledge of the temperature and salinity structure of the 

 surface layers of the ocean is an important tool in predicting 

 the abundance and availability of commercial fish and the 

 abundance, distribution, and migration of game fish. The Navy 

 studies of ocean temperature and salinity distributions and 

 heat budgets, and the development of environmental prediction 

 may well be applied to fishing operations to increase 3delds. 



The deep scattering layers of the ocean are comprised of 

 marine animals which range in depth from the surface to about 

 1000 meters. The study of these scattering layers, of interest 

 to the Navy, yields important information on the ecology of 

 marine life, including the role of plankton in the food chain. 

 Navy efforts to identify the acoustic sounds of biological origin 

 in the oceans contribute to the understanding of marine ecology 

 and to the localization of fish schools and species. 



Large-scale cooperative investigations, such as the Inter- 

 national Cooperative Investigation of the Tropical Atlantic, 

 and the current investigation of the Eastern Tropical Pacific, 

 have been spearheaded on the part of the United States by the 

 Bureau of Commercial Fisheries and are strongly supported 

 through the resources of the Navy Ocean Science Program. Such 

 studies have provided descriptions of large regions of the world 

 oceans and have contributed knowledge of the dynamics and 

 physical and chemical processes taking place within them. For 

 fisheries development, these studies have provided environ- 

 mental data for correlation with fish abundance and distribution. 

 For the Navy they have provided environmental knowledge 

 needed to support a variety of naval operations. 



TRANSPORTATION 



The Merchant Marine has many areas of interest in the ocean 

 sciences in common with the Navy. The design of ships and their 



