41 



Dr. Wenk. The purpose of all of these contracts was to provide back- 

 ground information on how the sea is to serve national goals and I will 

 elaborate on this. 



In each case we felt we needed information that would help us in 

 providing to the President for fiscal year 1969, recommendations as to 

 areas that deserve long-term priority attention. As a consequence, all 

 of these contracts are small in amount of money and short in time. 



Preliminary reports are already in from all of these, and the final 

 reports, with only one or two exceptions, are due this fall. 



The contracts cover the following areas and I will list these quite 

 briefly and then go back to the mechanism for their selection. 



In the first instance, we have a major study on the national require- 

 ments — not just Federal but non-Federal as well — for oceanograpliic 

 data; on the present techniques by which data are collected and the 

 present network for the dissemination of data. This study thus leads to 

 the question of how to improve the system. 



The second study concerns the unmet needs for underwater tech- 

 nology in civilian fields. The Navy has been the leader in development 

 of underwater technology, but specifically oriented to security needs. 

 We have come to understand that there are civilian activities in the 

 sea which will require new engineering development, will require com- 

 pact powerplants, or may require better navigation, materials more re- 

 sistant to corrosion, and so on, that may not be met. 



In the absence of any central source of this information, we have a 

 contract to collect and identify these needs, especially to identify needs 

 that may be identical in several different fields and which would, there- 

 fore, warrant priority support for engineering research. 



A third contract concerns a systems analysis of U.S. fishing indus- 

 tries. Here is a case where we recognize that this industry has not had 

 the economic viability of many of our other industries, has not benefited 

 from the introduction of modern technology. We are trying, through 

 this contract, to study the entire system from fish in the sea to some 

 product in the marketplace ; to understand at each step along the way 

 whether more research could increase the effectiveness of the fishing 

 operation or reduce costs. We are looking at fish finding, fish mapping, 

 fishing gear, fish processing, including this question of large ships, 

 stern trawlers, and other new techniques, and also this question of how 

 you pass the threshold from the fish on the dock to the fish in the 

 marketplace. 



Another study concerns what has been called aquiculture, which is 

 developing food from the sea by deliberate artificial means. This is 

 something we do in a fish hatchery all the time, but not usually for 

 commercial production. Many countries, however, have done this with 

 regard to fish, shellfish, and seaweed. This study will produce a hand- 

 book of what is going on elsewhere in the world from which we can 

 learn some lessons domestically and maybe identify new steps related 

 to the broader f ood-from-the-sea objective. 



Another contract concerns the potential of observations of the ocean 

 from space. Most of our spacecraft in orbiting the earth spend roughly 

 three- fourths of their time over the oceans. This provides opportuni- 

 ties to take photographs, to take other measurements, perhaps with 

 infrared sensors by which we can collect data about the whole ocean 

 faster and more economically than might otherwise be possible. 



86-705— 68— pt. 1 4 



