30 
A preliminary version of this plan was presented by the 
United States at the First Session of the Intergovernmental 
Oceanographic Commission in Paris in October 1961. Inter- 
governmental working groups met during 1962 to work out details 
of the International Indian Ocean Expedition and the Inter- 
national Cooperative Investigations of the Tropical Atlantic. 
Other intergovernmental groups meeting under the aegis of the 
Ioc addressed themselves to such relevant problems as fixed 
oceanographic stations (i.e., instrumented oceanographic buoys, 
ocean station vessels, offshore platforms, etc.) and the com- 
munications requirements of oceanography. At the Second 
Session of the ICO in September of 1962, the need for cooper- 
ative surveys of the world ocean was reaffirmed and a mechanism 
was set up whereby the "general scientific framework" for sich 
surveys would be established. These meetings of the IOC and 
its various working groups are the necessary preliminaries 
to establishing an international cooperative investigation of 
the ocean on a world-wide scale. Through the IOC the mechanism 
exists whereby such a cooperative international investigation 
of the world ocean will eventually come into being. 
However, the United States must not delay its own survey 
program until such an intergovernmental plan is developed. 
The U. S. will, on the other hand, modify its own program as 
necessary to take into account any commitments made by the 
Government in support of the international effort to achieve 
these same goals. 
