an organization provided within it the opportunity to create a focus for 
maritime affairs which current statutes have not made possible for NOAA. 
Attention has faded from this proposal, but the national need for ocean 
management has not diminished. This year we go into more detail on the 
nature of the organization for marine affairs we feel would be desirable. 
We could see it in a DENR, or an existing Department. We would welcome 
it in an independent agency if that proves the practical way to get proper 
attention for marine and atmospheric affairs and if it would strengthen 
the link between the work on the oceans and on the atmosphere. Most 
of all we would welcome it as soon as possible. We deal with the need 
to focus the management of the national oceanic affairs in a major chapter 
of this Report: “Ocean Resources, Regulation, and Research.” 
In a third chapter, NACOA treats a subject of perennial concern to 
the Nation and of annual concern to the Committee: Law of the Sea. 
In it we ask for early consideration of alternative courses of action and 
their respective values with relation to various possible outcomes of the 
Law of the Sea Convention at Caracas and Vienna. NACOA feels that 
diffidence about affecting delicate international negotiations is a poor 
excuse for being unprepared to move when the time has come. 
In a final chapter we give a rundown on topics NACOA has asked others 
to take up, topics we have promised to look into ourselves, and short 
comments on other subjects of importance. One has to do with our concern 
that the Coast Guard is required to enforce an increasing burden of detailed 
standards and regulations but is not given the means to do it properly. 
This mismatch may already be very serious indeed, and we ask careful 
study of the balancing of assignments to the Coast Guard and the resources 
for carrying them out. 
Another topic has to do with the state of support for fundamental ocean 
research in ONR, to whose stubborn defense, in the past, of funding the 
“R” part of R&D we owe so much. 
Another topic has to do with the need to augment and tailor the level 
of effort in the coastal zone, and provide for obtaining the necessary 
information so that good management is possible. 
Once again there emerges, in each major area of marine and atmospheric 
affairs we take up, the need to take the necessary steps to relate their 
management more closely. 
