Ill 



I think it is perfectly obvious that in spite of the fact that they have 

 been privileged to establish their own priorities over the years that 

 they have evidenced little interest in oceanography just by virtue of 

 the fact that the budget they submitted to the Congress has included 

 funds of a very minor character for this purpose. 



I think that is understandable, Mr, Chairman. After all, the Depart- 

 ment of the Interior has always been land oriented as opposed to ocean 

 and atmosphere oriented. I w^ould think that, if we did what Captain 

 Bauer suggested, that for all practical purposes what we would be 

 doing is establishing a brandnew agency, except that we are calling it 

 Initerior rather than calling it NOAA. Captain Bauer is suggesting 

 we take out of Interior that which probably has little or no association 

 with the environment, such as Indian affairs and other things that the 

 witness has mentioned and bringing to Interior other sections of other 

 agencies or departments that now, of course, are in other agencies or 

 departments having little past association with Interior. 



The fact of the matter is, Mr. Chairman, as I understand it at least, 

 the Marine Council did try to encourage the Geological Survey to spend 

 more funds on ocean related activities but even with this encourage- 

 ment the Department of the Interior has never evidenced any great 

 interest. 



They have never really had a sense of commitment to the oceans. Had 

 they had that sense of commitment, I suppose they would have pro- 

 posed to us the type of legislation that the Congress took the initiative 

 in passing when we created the Council and the Commission in an 

 effort to get the show on the road, so to speak, as it relates to an ocean- 

 ographic interest that this Nation ought to have. 



Generally, executive agencies having that kind of an interest evi- 

 dence it by proposing legislation to the Congress and in this case, of 

 course, has obviously been lacking. 



With this history of lack of interest I doubt seriously, Mr. Chairman, 

 that Interior could convince the Congress that they ought to raise the 

 kind of money for that agency to do the kind of jobs we think ought 

 to be done in the field of oceanography and that all of us feel so strongly 

 about. 



I think this past fiscal year the witness' figures indicate that the 

 budget was somewhere in the neighborhood of $140 million. I don't 

 know how much of that total was spent on ocean related subject matters, 

 but I have a strong feeling that it was a very slight portion of the total, 

 maybe in the neighborhood of $5 million or so. 



However, I want to join the other members of the committee, Cap- 

 tain, in commending you for bringing to us jour personal opinions on 

 this very important subject. I don't, as I suppose I have already indi- 

 cated, however, agree with your conclusions. I feel very strongly that, 

 if we are going to talk about the total environment as ]Mr. Shadeberg 

 very ably pointed out, then we do in fact have to talk about space, outer 

 space as well as atmospheric space, as well as the sea, and as well as 

 the land, because there is a very direct and close relationship as the 

 witness understands, perhaps much better than the gentleman from 

 Minnesota does. However, we know that a good part of our total 

 weather, Mr. Chairman, is caused by phenomena that takes place out- 

 side of the inner atmosphere for that matter even outside of the outer 

 atmosphere, takes places in outer space ; and not too long ago the feel- 

 ing was that the sun spot cycle had a very direct relationship to the 



