$22 
10 times as many graduate students are enrolled today in oceanogra- 
phy and 6 times as many doctorate degrees are conferred annually. 
The United States has clearly asserted a leadership in international 
circles that, before 1959, was in serious jeopardy. Moreover, our course 
during these 10 years has been steady. We were not lured into unpro- 
ductive sideroads, but carefully assembled the tool kit for the longer 
pull ahead. 
Apart from strengthening the research base during this decade there 
has been a second result—a broadening of perspective: 
To study the potential of the sea to preserve world order, pro- 
tect the environment and foster economic growth and well being: 
To elevate concerns as to use of the sea to a higher policy level 
in the Federal Government; and 
To bring these opportunities to a level of policy interest among 
industrial leaders, university presidents, State officials and states- 
men throughout the world. 
In other words, we have sought to understand, to manage, and 
bring to the service of man the forces generated by what Victor Hugo 
called “an idea whose time has come.” 
A NEW FOCUS ON BENEFITS DURING THE DECADE OF PREPARATION 
The new governmental entity created during the latter part of the 
Decade of Preparation—the National Council on Marie Resources 
and Engineering Development—has sought energetically to carry out 
the purposes of the Marine Sciences Act. It has assisted the President 
to identify explicit goals from numerous and diffuse alternatives: to 
mobilize fragmented, and often dormant, resources into a coherent 
multiagency framework directed toward these goals. The Council has 
formulated priorities and associated plans for implementation. 
The Council has thus deliberately, and I believe creatively, re- 
sponded to the motivating factors mentioned earlier in relating the 
sea to the public weal. Subsequently, I shall elaborate on explicit 
Council actions to implement Public Law 89-454. 
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO REALIZE THESE BENEFITS 
What makes this promise of the oceans so tantalizing is the third 
emerging influence on marine development—a modern science and 
engineering, that permits man to do the things on, in or under the 
ocean that he has long aspired to do, but been denied because of the 
severity of the marine environment. 
To unlock mysteries of the ocean and chart its resources, scientists 
now have “leverage” of new technology: spacecraft and unmanned 
buoys to observe sea temperatures, currents and wave conditions, and 
worldwide systematic data transmissions to central data banks about 
sea conditions at the surface and above. We are also examining the role 
of ships of opportunity. 
Below the surface, underwater television makes possible reconnais- 
sance such as of the Scorpion wreckage in 14,000 feet of water: new 
coring techniques permitted the vessel Glomar Challenger to hold 
station in 11,720 feet of water, locating oil indications in the Gulf 
of Mexico. 
