98 



the organizations where they are and drew them together with this 

 small management staff that has been created under me in the Office 

 of the Oceanographer. 



We let those people do their work, and my job is just to make sure 

 that they do it well and efficiently and as cheaply as possible and con- 

 tribute to the naval program as they should, but we do not tell them 

 how to do it. 



Mr. Pelly. I do not know where we would be today if it had not 

 been for the Navy and the tremendous amount of money they have put 

 into this research work. We do not know what might develop when 

 the report comes from the President as to a recommended organiza- 

 tional setup. I know your testimony here today will be an invaluable 

 aid to many of us in our thinking when the program comes to Congress. 



Thank you very much. 



Mr. Lennoist. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Downing. 



Mr. Downing. Admiral, your statement is so comprehensive and 

 complete tha,t I have only a few questions to ask. I think you have 

 covered the subject in an excellent manner. 



Admiral, what degree of coordination is there between your office 

 and the various Federal agencies which are delving into oceanography 

 within the Government ? Is there coordination of effort ? 



Admiral Waters. Yes, sir, there is, in several different ways. Up 

 until recently we had the Interagency Committee on Oceanography, 

 on which all of the agencies who have an interest in the ocean were 

 represented and which was chaired by the Assistant Secretary of the 

 Navy for R. & D., Dr. Frosch, that served as an effective forum for 

 getting everyone together. It lacked, I think, the authority to compel 

 decisions, but it did a great deal of good. 



This committee has been superseded through reorganizations that 

 were directed by the new National Council and split up into about five 

 committees. Those committees are just getting going. I believe Dr. 

 Wenk, as I remember reading his testimony, told you about that re- 

 organization. So they do exist, but they are really just getting off the 

 ground, so to speak. 



In addition to this sort of coordination, in areas where there is an 

 obvious similarity in the need for various types of information, we 

 have formal and informal types of agreements with other agencies. 

 For example, the Bureau of Commerical Fisheries in the Department 

 of the Interior and the Navy have been working together for several 

 years now, and we have come to the conclusion, quite dramatically, 

 actually, that a great deal of the technical data that we send out in 

 what we call our Antisubmarine Warfare Environmental Prediction 

 Service, ASWEPS, to our forces at sea in order to find submarines, 

 is very valuable to commercial fishermen. It helps them locate schools 

 of fish, because the fish are essentially, to oversimplify it, temperature- 

 sensitive. We have had experiments conducted with them to the point 

 where the results have been so favorable that we are just on the point 

 of signing a formal agreement with the Department of the Interior 

 as to who will do which part of which program and how we will go 

 about helping each other. 



At the same time, the work that they do in studying fish and fish 

 habits and fish migratory habits is very valuable to us, because many 

 things in the ocean can be a false target to an antisubmarine opera- 



