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needed to be done to upgrade and improve this nation’s activities in the ocean. 
Next, was the follow-on study of NASCO, and simultaneously there was being 
conducted a study by the Panel on Oceanography of the President’s Scientific Ad- 
visory Council chaired by ‘Dr. Gordon MacDonald. NASCO, in its second report 
“Oceanography 1966—Achievements and Opportunities”, identified something like 
33 different Federal bureaus and agencies involved with ocean affairs, as well as 
a number of Committees in the Congress, and pointed out that some kind of con- 
solidation or restructuring of the organization is needed. This report of NASCO 
made no specific recommendations for reorganization; it indicated some of the 
ways in which a solution to the organizational problem might be approached. The 
MacDonald Panel of PSAC was actually the first to make specific recommenda- 
tions on a new organizational structure. It proposed to meld together the federal 
functions concerning some aspects of the atmosphere and some aspects of the 
Ocean, With sOme aspects of marine and terrestrial geology, all dealing very 
largely with the physical aspects of the environment, and largely left the bio- 
logical aspects of the ocean out of its proposed new organization. 
The Marine Commission has made its own very detailed study, and has found 
that the ocean is closely related to other parts of the planet, especially the at- 
mosphere, in consequence of which its recommendations for reorganization 
would combine in the new National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency 
some aspects of atmospheric and oceanic affairs. 
I am not convinced that the Marine Commission’s recommendations are the 
best of the possible choices, and I will discuss possible alternatives that I believe 
to be better. However, before getting into this, I must emphasize that an impor- 
tant result of each of the several studies is the recognition that it would not 
be desirable to have one single agency to deal with all aspects of the ocean, 
including military uses, civilian uses, and basic science without regard to mis- 
sions. All of the reports have essentially agreed that there need to be three 
separate, although coordinated, clusters of marine affairs in the United States. 
One of these includes military-related activities, or military oceanography, be- 
cause the Navy has certain unique problems that cannot be very successfully 
‘combined with the nation’s civilian, nonmilitary, mission-oriented problems. 
Second, basic research, the pursuit of information simply for the sake of under- 
standing, and to provide a proper balance of the support of science directed to the 
elucidation of the nature of the world we live in, needs a separate home. Third, 
the scientific investigations, surveys, forecasting, resource-management activi- 
ties, and other functions concerning our nonmilitary uses of the sea and its re- 
sources require a central focus. This is, of course, to some degree,, an over- 
Simplification, because some military-relevant activities have civilian applica- 
tions, and it is also often difficult to distinguish between pure basic research and 
the foundations of engineering. It is, however, quite evident that what we didn’t 
want is a “wet NASA” including all activities in a single agency, because we 
believe that that would not be most effective. 
The important question, then, seems to be what civilian mission-relevant ocean 
activities should be combined within a single agency, and what, if any, 
aspects of the atmosphere and of the terrestrial environment should be included 
in the same agency. I note at the outset, Mr. Chairman, that in my opinion the 
ideal kind of organization would probably be that visualized by Dr. John 
Calhoun in his letter to you of 27 June 1969, in which he pointed out the desir- 
ability of establishing within the federal organization a Department of Natural 
Resources and Environments, which could bring into focus all federal policies 
and programs in these areas. He noted that major elements of such a unified 
department might be subdepartments of the ocean, of the atmosphere, and of 
terrestrial resource systems. I also agree with Dr. Calhoun, however, that such 
an ultimately desirable reorganization cannot be accomplished quickly, that, 
meanwhile, there is an urgent need to provide a focus for ocean resourees, and 
that this cannot afford to wait upon the broader goal. The question seems to be, 
then, what is the most appropriate way to cluster the civilian mission-relevant 
Imarine activities of the Federal establishment so as to get on with our under- 
standing and use of the marine environment, while the broader problem of how 
we might most appropriately combine all aspects of natural resources and 
environments into a single agency is being deliberated. 
One way of examining this problem is to consider the functions that need to be 
performed in both ocean and atmosphere, and ‘see how the proposed NOAA 
corresponds to them. I will review this only briefly, because I presented a fairly 
detailed analysis at a Seminar on “A Critical Review of the Marine Science 
