NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM—1965 685 
[Explorers Journal, December 1963] 
U.S. OcEANOGRAPHY—A BoLtp NEW VENTURE 
(By Harris B. Stewart, Jr.) 
While the exploration of space has been getting most of the headlines, an 
unacclaimed acceleration of the exploration of the world ocean has quietly been 
taking place. Marine science may lack the appeal to the popular press which has 
typified our space effort—certainly oceanography would be hard pressed to match 
the public excitement generated by the manned orbital flights—but those of us 
involved in oceanography are convinced that the future of man’s existence on this 
planet is inextricably linked to his globe-girding sea. Our utilization of this sea 
for our economic growth, for the improvement of our general welfare, and perhaps 
even for our continuation as a species all depends on increasing our basic under- 
standing of the sea, its contents, and the dynamic processes that cause the 
variations we can measure. 
But what of this increased effort in oceanography? What are we actually 
doing? Perhaps the best way to illustrate the accelerated tempo of our marine 
exploration is to list several very recent and apparently unrelated events which 
are in fact part of a carefully worked out plan to provide the knowledge that 
is needed if we are to understand the ocean in all its magnificent complexity. 
This past March the Soviet oceanographic ship Lomonosov rendezvoused with 
the Haplorer of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey along the Equator about 
midway between South America and Africa. The Soviets had planted a buoy 
for measuring subsurface currents, but poor visibility prevented them from 
getting a good position for it. The Americans stayed in the area using the Soviet 
buoy as a starting point for their own work in tracing the current eastward; and 
when the skies cleared, they obtained a good position for the buoy and radioed 
the position verification to the Lomonosov. This was no casual meeting of two 
scientific ships in midocean. It was instead part of a whole network of opera- 
tional plans developed at an intergovernmental meeting held the year before 
at the new National Oceanographic Data Center in Washington, D.C. These 
two ships were part of an armada of 13 oceanographic ships that were carrying 
out a detailed synoptic survey of the tropical Atlantic. There were ships from 
Argentina, Brazil, Congo (Brazzaville), Ivory Coast, U.S.S.R., and the United 
States all working together on a carefully worked out plan to take a simultaneous 
look at the structure and properties of the water masses extending across the 
entire stretch of ocean from Brazil to the Ivory Coast. 
This past spring the 2,500-ton Atlantis IT, a new oceanographic research ship, 
was delivered by the National Science Foundation to the Woods Hole Oceano- 
graphic Institution. In early July the research vessel Pillsbury, a converted 
Navy ship, was commissioned by the Marine Laboratory of the University of 
Miami, and later that same month the keel was laid for the USCGS ship 
Oceanographer, a 3,800-ton oceanographic ship being built from the keel up 
specifically for the study of the sea. This ship and her sister ship, the USCGS 
ship Discoverer, will be the largest oceanographic ships this country has ever 
built. The Navy has two new ships for marine surveys and research, the Davis 
and Gillis, and two more are in the early stages of construction. The Bureau 
of Commercial Fisheries has just recently commissioned the Albatross IV which 
will do oceanographic work related primarily to fisheries, the University of 
Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography has a converted Navy ship 
renamed the Trident which recently completed its maiden oceanographic voyage 
in the Atlantic, and new oceanographic ships are slated for other U.S. universi- 
ties carrying out research and teaching in the marine sciences. 
In early May four young American Government oceanographers journeyed to 
Moscow to meet for 4 days with scientists from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, 
France, Great Britain, Japan, and the U.S.S.R. They were meeting to report on 
what their respective governments had done on such topics as oceanographic 
data exchange, standardization and intercalibration of techniques and equip- 
ment for oceanography, to discuss international expeditions such as the Inter- 
national Indian Ocean Expedition and the International Cooperative Investiga- 
tions of the Tropical Atlantic, and to iron out the many difficulties that in- 
variably develop whenever scientists representing different governments try to 
work out agreements and arrangements to further governmental involvement in 
international endeavors. This meeting was merely a precursor to the full-scale 
