components of NOAA and the State of Massachusetts. Currently the MESA 

 Program is managing the Deep Ocean Mining Environmental Study (DOMES). 

 Deep Ocean Mining Operations (DOMO), the first operational test of 

 DOMES, gathering manganese nodules from the sea floor of the Central 

 Pacific, began in 1977. 



ERL coordinates the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf Environmental 

 Assessment Program (OCSEAP) which is funded by Department of Interi- 

 or's Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Terms associated with the 

 Program are the Bering Sea Mammal Experiment (BESMEX) and the North- 

 east Gulf of Alaska (NEGOA). 



Several of ERL's laboratories are involved in marine research. The 

 two major ones are the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab- 

 oratory (AOML) and the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL). 

 Antecedents of both go back to the Institutes for Oceanography (IOC) 

 in ESSA's Institute for Environmental Research. IOC was subsequently 

 reorganized into two separate laboratories, the Atlantic Oceanographic 

 Laboratory (AOL) and the Pacific Oceanographic Laboratory (POL), which 

 were in turn renamed. 



AOML's mission is to contribute to the basic understanding of the 

 characteristics and processes of the waters of the ocean, the sea 

 floor, and the atmosphere. It operates four laboratories — Physical 

 Oceanography, Ocean Chemistry, Marine Geology and Geophysics, and 

 Sea Air Interaction (SAIL). In 1977 it cooperated with the Rosenstiel 

 School of Marine and Atmospheric Science of the University of Miami 

 (RSMAS) in joint establishment of a Cooperative Institute for Marine 

 and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS), a focal point for concentrated re- 

 search on specific problems of oceans and atmosphere by specialists 

 from the parent organizations. It was also the lead U.S. agency in 

 the recently completed international CICAR — Cooperative Investiga- 

 tions of the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions — program, and is the lead 

 U.S. agency in lOCARIBE. It was responsible for STAX, the Sludge 

 Tracking Acoustical Experiment in the New York Bight. Together 

 with PMEL it is involved with NOAA's Equatorial Pacific Ocean Climate 

 Studies (EPOCS), a plan to investigate oceanographic and climatic 

 variability in the Eastern Pacific. 



PMEL sponsors interdisciplinary research and surveys in oceanogra- 

 phy, marine meteorology, and marine ecosystems. Its programs include 

 OARS — Ocean Atmosphere Response Studies, SCENE — Studies of Coastal and 

 Estuarine Environments, conducted in Alaska waters in 1976; TRANSPAC- 

 MAG, a 1971 study of magnetic anomalies in the Western Pacific; MSS — 

 Modeling and Simulation Studies; MARLAGS — Marine Life and Geocheraical 

 Studies, PMEL's major biological and oceanographic focus, conducted 

 primarily for OCSEAP and DOMES; and SOUL — Studies of Ocean Upper 

 Layers, a cooperative program with the Office of Naval Research 

 (ONR) to study mixing processes in the upper layer of the ocean in 

 response to oceanic storms. 



It is responsible for NOAA's participation in the Joint Tsunami 

 Research Effort (JTRE), a cooperative program with the University of 

 Hawaii. In 1977 it collaborated with the University of Washington in 

 the establishment of a Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere 

 and the Ocean (JISAO). Mechanisms of climate change and estuarine 

 research are the first areas of research for JISAO. In 1977, together 

 with the University of Hawaii, it established a Joint Institute for 

 Marine and Atmospheric Research (JIMAR) to be a focus for cooperative 

 research in oceanography, geophysics, and atmospheric sciences. Other 

 ERL laboratories and offices of interest to marine researchers include 

 the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) formed in 

 1974 by combining the staff of the International Field Year for the 

 Great Lakes (IFYGL) Project Office with that of the Limnology and 



75 



