642 
lesser interagency coordinating committees which deal with specific 
ocean issues, including the National Oceanographic Data Center In- 
teragency Committee and the Committee on International Ocean Af- 
fairs. 
The GAO report identified about 50 special-purpose and multipur- 
pose Federal interagency committees in addition to ICMSE. They 
have been established to consider various aspects of marine science 
activities and oceanic affairs. Some of the committees report to one 
department or agency or to the White House, and the others report 
to two or more departments and agencies.” 
Like ICMSE, none of the 5O special-purpose or multipurpose 
Federal interagency committees was found to provide effective coor- 
dination and direction to the fragmented Federal marine activities. 
NEEDED: REORGANIZATION OF OCEAN ACTIVITIES 
Efforts to further improve interagency coordination committees con- 
sisting of high ranking sub-Cabinet level officers of all departments 
and agencies with ocean activities is not likely to lead to centrally 
directed and coordinated overall ocean policy. The reasons we have 
seen are deeply rooted in the interagency committee system itself. 
Rather than continue unsuccessful efforts toward marginally improving 
the current organizational structure, NACOA over the past few years 
has favored amalgamation of the major functions having to do with 
civilian marine and atmospheric resources, regulation, and related en- 
vironmental research and services into a newly structured administra- 
tion within a single department or agency. 
In its 1974 report to the President and Congress, NACOA called 
for the establishment of an independent Marine and Atmospheric 
Agency. Such an Agency would bring together the function of NOAA; 
the marine related functions of the Geological Survey; the marine 
and coastal portion of the civil planning, policy, and funding activities 
of the Corps of Engineers; the submerged lands management and 
mineral leasing program on the Outer Continental Shelf presently 
assigned to the Bureau of Land Management of the Department of 
the Interior; marine-related functions of Interior’s Bureau of Sports 
Fisheries and Wildlife; and finally, the U.S. Coast Guard.* 
NACOA also suggested a functional approach to reorganization of 
civilian marine affairs. The three broad functions, research, regulation, 
and resource management, are brought together in one agency, 
because it is general experience that each would tend to go its own 
way unless there is a capstone, some longer view that sees to the 
following: 
That regulation is sensitive not only to the larger need of the 
public good, but to practical conditions in which it must operate; 
That regulation can call on research to illuminate the dark 
corners of its field of work; 
That resource management is made more efficient and produc- 
tive by making sure the technical standards of regulation, and 
*7U.S. General Accounting Office. The Need for a National Ocean Program and Plan, op. cit., p. 
28. 
“8 National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. A Report to the President and the 
Congress, third annual report, June 28, 1974, p. 18. 
