1105 
It did so again in its 1967 report. Every independent advisory group studying this 
problem since has done so, including the Joint Working Party of SCOR/ACMRRE/ 
WMO (A.C.) in its “Helio Caballa” report ‘International Ocean Affairs”’. 
The key block to establishing a World Oceanic Organization has been the 
incoherent state of the organization of ocean affairs in the United States Federal 
structure. Our allied nations and friends are not going to move ahead of the 
United States. If the United States prefers a chaotic organization of its ocean 
affairs they think there must be some reason for it that is good and that they 
haven’t discovered yet. 
One consequence is that the United States delegations to Intergovernmental 
Oceanographic Commission meetings consist of a dozen to 20-odd members, among 
which there has been a decreasing number of scientists in recent years. Haeh 
ocean agency in the United States Government must have at least one repre- 
sentative on the U.S. delegation to protect its interest vis-a-vis the other agencies, 
and the Department of State must have three or four members so each can guard 
his interest against other interests within the Department of State. There is no 
room for industry-oriented experts on the delegation. Most of the United States 
scientific representation comes from American Scientists attending in other 
capacities, representing other entitities, for there is no room for more than one 
or two scientists on a U.S. delegation any more. It is a standing joke that the 
diversity of interest in a U.S. delegation is so broad that almost anything an 
entire U.S. delegation can agree to within itself will bring a vote of two-thirds 
of the delegations of other nations present. There was a good deal of kidding 
of us at this last IOC meeting when it was found that Italy had fielded a larger 
delegation than the United States had. Of course with our hangers on outside 
our delegation (of which I was one) we had much the largest group, every one 
of which was protecting his interest. 
The specialized agencies, the scientific community, and even the United States 
Government took a considerable fright two years ago when the General Assembly 
took an active interest in ocean affairs and began to move sharply on them. This 
increased with the formation of the Seabed Committee by the General Assembly, 
and the vigorous pattern of work it began to follow. 
This was probably the best thing that ever happened toward the improvement 
of international cooperation in marine affairs. The diplomats who work in the 
United Nations not only are not knowledgeable about ocean affairs but, as with 
the United States, delegations to the United Nations, are harly accessible to 
ocean scientists and technologists in their own government and national scien- 
tific communities. Delegations to the United Nations come from Foreign Offices, 
and the Foreign Offices of all nations are notoriously insensitive to other branches 
of their own government, just as the Department of State is in ours. 
Thus, all of a sudden, one had a group of very able and energetic diplomats 
at the General Assembly orating and adopting resolutions about ocean affairs in 
a very vigorous manner on the basis of a very modest amount of knowledge about 
ocean problems or the ocean. They did not like what they discovered. They did 
not thing international ocean affairs were being run very well. They did not 
hesitate to say so, or to start reforming them. 
This threw the fear of God into the specialized agencies, and the ocean scien- 
tists and technologists both inside and outside the national governments. It was 
plainly apparent that the scientists and technologists were going to lose control 
of ocean affairs to the diplomats if they did not stir their stumps and get 
organized to do their work more effectively. 
There was another surge of activity to create a World Oceanic Organization, 
but this foundered as had previous ones. The specialized agencies were startled 
by this unwonted ocean activity in the General Assembly, but not frightened 
enough to be stampeded into giving up some of their empires to a new specialized 
agency. Hardly any agency at any level of any government gets that freightened 
about anything. 
The shock was sufficient, however, that they realized they had to band together 
a little tighter for mutual protection against the United Nations mother organi- 
zation, which had some eager bureaucrats itching to get control of international 
ocean affairs. The upshot has been that UNESCO, FAO, WMO, and IMCO have 
formally agreed to coalesce behind strengthening and broadening the IOC to help 
them all, and to contribute even some money and personnel to it for that purpose. 
IOC will still stay in UNESCO administratively but its affairs will be jointly 
governed by an inter-agency committee. 
This is strong medicine for any bureaucracy, and the international ocean 
bureaucracy appears to be responding ‘to pressure and reality much more effec- 
