817 
Same recommendation appears with regard to the proposed University-National 
Laboratories, and the statement is made that the Federal in-house laboratories be 
encouraged to acquire such university associations, too. I see no reason why 
multi-disciplinary applied research with a management or action orientation 
cannot be carried out in a university setting. In fact, the Sea Grant Program is 
already beginning to produce considerable headway in this direction in its in- 
Stitutional grants program. However, it is uphill work against a long established 
tradition of discipline-orientation, departmental autonomy, and professorial inde- 
pendence. There are a number of independent research centers around in addition 
to my own with capabilities for 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 specifically related to the 
marine areas outside the Coastal Zone. Multiple use problems are, as the Com- 
mnission Says, moving rapidly seaward, encountering 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, cited by the Commission as prototypes 
of a family of University-National Laboratories it advocates, is of vital impor- 
tance to the nation, and I support the Commission’s interest in it. By itself, how- 
ever, it does not meet the need. 
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 pro- 
gram of research, education, and services concerned with improved management 
of marine resources wherever they are. I would not like to see the Sea-Grant 
Program reduce its focus to the Coastal Zone only. Nor would I like to see the 
University-National Laboratories forced to turn their attention away from basic 
to 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 Univervity- © 
National Laboratories and Sea-Grant College Programs was not the portion of 
the marine environment being studied but the objectives of the research. The 
National Laboratories should aim at a more profound understanding of funda- 
mental marine phenomena and processes. Sea-Grant studies should aim at fos- 
tering better management decisions concerning the uses of the sea. With this 
rationale, the Coastal Zone Laboratories could be seen as one component of the 
larger Sea-Grant Program singled out for emphasis at this time due to the 
urgency of the problem. 
The Global Hnvironment 
I read Chapter 5, “The Global Environment,” with special interest because I 
have come to believe that monitoring and predicting medium to long-term changes 
in weather, climate, and the ocean is becoming more urgent every year. AS the 
Commission points out, “Modification of weather and ocean conditions by inter- 
ference with natural environmental processes is a growing reality which the 
Nation is only beginning to confront.” The pouring of waste products into the 
air and the sea has both immediate and lingering consequences, for example, 
including as a possibility planetary warming, due to carbon dioxide accumula- 
tion, and a rising sea level as glaciers melt or, if the shadowing effect of par- 
ticulates in the air prevails, a long term cooling and possible growth of glaciers. 
The Commission emphasizes the prospects of purposeful and beneficial weather, 
climate, and ocean modification. In either case, ‘‘environmental modification 
problems are inseparable from those of environmental monitoring and predic- 
tion.’”’ For this reason, as well as because the direct benefits to marine and shore 
activities of improved and longer weather and sea-condition forecasts seem so 
great, the Commission’s recommendations on global monitoring and prediction 
are especially important. In particular, the international framework on which 
these recommendations are made is, I think, both sound and perceptive. The 
formation of NOAA would lend impetus to the program. 
Conclusion 
In this discussion, I have emphasized the positive, focusing on those portions 
of the report that seemed to me most directly related to advancing the national 
interest in the sea. I understand this interest to be more pragmatic than 
philosophical. It has economic, political, and military payoffs uppermost in 
