686 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM—1965 
meeting of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission under UNESCO 
scheduled to be held in Paris next June. 
Nothing was printed in the press about the really exciting cooperative expedi- 
tion in the tropical Atlantic, only the local papers picked up the stories of the 
various keellayings and ship commissionings, and the one small release from 
Paris about the Moscow meetings was totally ignored by the wire services. It 
is little wonder that practically no one is aware of the marine “great awakening”’ 
taking place in this country. Even if these various items had received the 
public notice they deserved, there is little chance that their relevance to an 
overall scheme would have been apparent. Yet there is such a scheme, and 
these events and many others are part of this Nation’s bold new venture in 
oceanography. 
Thus the meeting of the Lomonosov and the Heplorer in midocean, the con- 
struction of new ships for oceanography, and the trip of those four Americans 
to Moscow were all part of a well thought out and carefully planned program 
being put forward by the United States to insure that this Nation gets the infor- 
mation it so vitally needs for the full utilization of the world ocean as our last 
great resource on this earth. This new approach to learning about the ocean is 
indeed a bold new venture, but it is just getting started. The mechanisms to 
accomplish the task are newly formed, and scientists and governments are feel- 
ing their way slowly—and rightfully so. This is no endeavor to be undertaken 
on the ‘crash’ basis. New ships must be designed and their construction 
planned well in advance so that they will be able to do tomorrow’s job as well as 
today’s, so that they will not come off the ways any faster than men can be 
trained to man them and to interpret the data they bring home, and so that their 
continuing operating costs will not bankrupt the relatively small budget allotted 
this aspect of the Nation’s overall scientific effort. New facilities must be con- 
structed for training and research, and these must be plahned at a rate commen- 
surate with the demand for the people they must train. The various research 
activities should not in any way be controlled by a dictum of the Federal Govern- 
ment, for the very essence of research is the unfettered quest for knowledge, a 
quest that loses its challenge and with it its effectiveness when it is closely 
directed. But the research projects underway should have an input to the 
design of the survey program, the requirements of the researchers must be con- 
sidered in the design of new ships and in the development of new instruments 
and equipment, and the researchers must be apprised of work others are doing 
and of the overall needs of the country in the field of marine science. 
The Interagency Committee on Oceanography within the United States and the 
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission on the international level are both 
currently involved with the formulation of national and international programs 
in oceanography and with the coordination of the various elements that must 
work together if the task is to be accomplished successfully. However, the real 
excitement is in the work at sea. This has begun, but just barely. As the new 
ships become operational, as new facilities are built to train new scientists in 
oceanography, and as the research activity is stepped up, then the bold new 
venture will in fact be well underway. 
All of this may sound interesting—even if somewhat administrative—but why 
is the United States so concerned with developing new knowledge about the 
oceans that a “bold new venture” was necessitated in the first place? Probably 
it was the report of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Oceanog- 
raphy entitled ‘“Oceanography—1960-70” that awakened this Government to 
our real need for an expanded program in the marine sciences. The need, how- 
ever, had been there for years. ‘Since the publication of the NASCO Report, as 
it has come to be known, much has been written on the reasons for increasing 
the U.S. effort in oceanography. However, most of it has appeared in budget 
justifications for the Federal agencies involved, in reports of congressional 
committee hearings, or in equally obscure publications. What little has appeared 
in the popular press has either been overglamorized or else slanted toward the 
particular aspect in which the writer had a personal interest. Perhaps the rea- 
sons why the United States is embarking on an accelerated effort in oceanog- 
raphy can be summarized most briefly as curiosity, economics, and defense. 
Man is an innately curious creature, and in an age of general pragmatism we 
often tend to downgrade sheer curiosity as a legitimate motivation for the 
actions of men and of nations. Certainly it is this motive, which is primary in © 
attracting scientists to the field of oceanography. Man has been to both poles, 
