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I see no reason why multidisciplinary applied research with a man- 
agement or action orientation cannot be carried out in a university 
setting. 
In fact, the sea-grant program is already beginning to produce con- 
siderable headway in this direction in its institutional grants program. 
However, it is uphill work against a long established tradition of dis- 
cipline-orientation, departmental autonomy, and __ professorial 
independence. | 
There are a number of independent research centers around the 
country in addition to my own with capabilities for multidiscipline 
applied and decision-oriented team research of a high order. I would 
hope that these would not be precluded from playing a role where their 
capabilities warrant, 
My third misgiving has to do with what appears to be a gap in the 
proposed applied or management-oriented research activities specifi- 
cally related to the marine areas outside the coastal zone. 
Multiple-use problems are, as the Commission itself says, moving 
rapidly seaward. They are most intense in the coastal zone but they 
are extending seaward and they encounter there the operations and 
interests of other nations on the way. 
The kind of basic research presently being carried on by Scripps, 
Woods Hole, and Lamont, which institutions are cited by the Commis- 
sion as prototypes of a family of university-national laboratories it 
advocates, is of vital importance to the Nation and I am not downgrad- 
ing it. I support the Commission’s interest in it. By itself, however, it 
does not meet the need. 
In my opinion the new agency will need far more practical studies 
in which economic, social and political factors are examined as well as 
scientific and technical ones. I would like to point out that the sea- 
grant program, as originally conceived and presently administered, 
aims at providing a use- or management-oriented program of research, 
education, and services concerned with improved management of 
marine resources wherever they happen to be. i 
In short, I would not like to see the sea-grant program reduce its 
foens to the coastal zone only. Nor would I like to see the university- 
national laboratories forced to turn their attention away from basic 
and toward applied research. 
I do not believe the Commission intended either of these things to 
happen. I would be happier with this section of the report if it had 
recognized that the appropriate distinction between its proposed uni- 
versity-national laboratories on the one hand and sea-grant college 
programs on the other was not the portion of the marine environment 
being studied, which is the way the Commission appears to divide 
responsibilities but rather the objectives and rationale of the research. 
The National Laboratories should aim at a more profound under- 
standing of fundamental marine phenomena and processes. Sea-grant 
studies should aim at fostering better management decisions con- 
cerning the uses of the sea. , 
With this rationale for the sea-grant studies the coastal zone 
laboratories could be seen as one component of the larger sea-grant 
program singled out for emphasis at this time because of the urgency 
of the management problem in the coastal zone. 
