Technology Development and Support: New instrument and vehicle capabilities can both 

 accelerate progress in ocean sciences and render its operations more cost effective. It is 

 essential to bring new concepts into reality and assure their effective use through technical 

 support centers sen/ing large segments of the community; an example is projected development 

 and support of an accelerator mass spectrometer center for isotope studies. It is important to 

 upgrade geochemical analytical capabilities with new generation instruments (electron 

 microprobes, ion probes, mass spectrometers, etc.) and to provide physical oceanographers 

 with modern current meters, instrumented current-tracking floats, and acoustic 

 current-measuring systems (tomography, multibeam doppler). Biological oceanography 

 requires continued development of new sampling and analytical tools (acoustic and optical 

 sensors, flow cytometry, satellite remote sensing, mid- and shallow-water submersibles, and 

 remotely operated vehicles). 



Establishment and Operation of Essential New Facilities: The effectiveness of ocean 

 sciences research would also be enhanced by establishment of several new support facilities. 

 The principal need is for an essential data and communications network offering a selection of 

 hardware/software options for accessing satellite and other data, for building local data 

 archives, and for interactive processing, analysis, and interpretation of these data. There is a 

 related need for an ocean modeling facility to provide high-quality supercomputing capability 

 for large data sets. In order to take advantage of recently developed capabilities to take long 

 undisturbed cores from the seafloor, a long-core facility should be established to fill the gap 

 between standard piston coring and the continuous cores obtained by the Ocean Drilling 

 Program. 



General Facilities Improvement: Enhanced support is required to upgrade and renovate 

 the generally decaying and outmoded shorebased infrastructure, including buildings and 

 facilities at academic institutions and coastal laboratories. This is needed not only to ensure the 

 continued productivity of the core programs but also to provide facilities essential to the 

 success of unified ocean science initiatives. 



Postdoctoral Program: The vitality of ocean sciences requires not only that we maintain 

 our community through graduate education but also that we bring new skills and viewpoints 

 into areas such as numerical modeling, satellite imagery.and multichannel seismics. An 

 expanded postdoctoral program would be the best way to meet this need. 



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