10 Id-UllQd, 



" Coral harvesting 



° Geological 



" Biological, Fisheries 



" Pollution, ocean dumping 



There are no data in this report on unmanned 

 vehicle activities , although unmanned vehic- 

 les have been busy, but on the average, not 

 as busy as manned systems. An example of 

 one noteworthy mission, carried out for 

 several weeks in the summers of 1974 and 

 1975, was conducted by the U.S. Environ- 

 mental Protection Agency, using the CURV III 

 unmanned vehicle to survey, photograph, and 

 sample around a radioactive dumpsite 

 near the Farralon Islands, off the coast of 

 California. Data concerning the integrity 

 of the radioactive waste containers and the 

 fate of any leaking pollutants is of world- 

 wide interest in establishing a policy for 

 future dumping. 



United States 



Although many new undersea vehicles were 

 built in the United States by Perry, the 

 vehicles available for use in the U. S. 

 has changed negligibly — from 

 29 to 30. The utilization of underwater 

 vehicles in the U.S. over the last three 

 fiscal years, is illustrated in Figure 18 

 The number of total dive-days in Fiscal Year 

 1975 diminished by about 15 percent, 

 from Fiscal Year 1974, and this is primarily 

 attributed to a reduction of U.S. -operated 

 submersibles in the North Sea, from three to 

 one, despite the fact that about 13 out of 

 18 (including those under construction) 

 were built in the U.S. by Perry, but are 

 owned by European operators. Inspection, 

 mainly of pipelines and cables, was the 

 leading U.S. mission, and this correlates 

 with world-wide activities. Coral harvest 

 ing, represented only by the STAR II 's 

 activities off the east coast of Oahu, in 

 the Hawaiian Islands, has been increasing 

 steadily over the last three years, in 

 quest of jewelry-quality, pink and black 

 coral at lOOO-foot depths. 



and other organisms. Other missions have 

 included studies on: the underutilized 

 species of crab at the 2000 to 3000-foot 

 depths; the habitation and migration of deep 

 water lobster and shrimp; and on the deploy- 

 ment and effectiveness of line arrays of 

 lobster traps. In pollution studies, sewer 

 outfalls were monitored, and ocean dumpsites 

 were inspected in the New York Bight region. 



As noted in Table 4, the ALVIN has made 

 over 600 dives , of which about 22 percent 

 involved test and training, and the balance 

 of the missions were mainly oriented to 

 geology and biology. It is interesting to 

 note that the ALVIN has spent an equivalent 

 total of almost 100 continuous days under the 

 sea, and has developed a steadily increasing 

 average time for dives, which is now 4.3 

 hours . 



This is the second of a three-year arrange- 

 ment whereby the Navy, NSF, and NOAA are 

 sharing the cost and use of the deep-diving 

 ALVIN. Two-thirds funding by Navy-NSF 

 enable ALVIN utilization as a national 

 facility under the University National 

 Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) . 

 NOAA is using their allocated time mainly 

 for ongoing fisheries and environmental 

 research programs. 



Federal use of American Bureau of Shipping 

 (ABS) -classed civilian-operated manned 

 vehicles was less than 10 percent of the 

 total available submersible time during the 

 last three years. 



The U.S. Navy's undersea vehicle utilization 

 in FY 1975 involved about 190 dive-days, 

 mainly for deep undersea inspection missions, 

 training and testing, as illustrated in 

 Figure 19. The PC-14C-2, owned by the Army's 

 Ballistic Missile Command, has the special 

 mission of recovering missiles and associated 

 debris entering the spashdown area of the 

 Kwajalein Missile Range. 



World-Wide Utilization 



Utilization of undersea vehicles , as sampled 

 on a world-wide basis, excluding the U.S., 

 is given in Table 5 for reference. U.S. 

 data were combined with Table 5 data to pro- 

 vide the aforementioned figures on world- 

 wide usage. 



Fisheries and biology missions have exhib- 

 ited slight decreases each year, whereas 

 geology missions increased somewhat. Most 

 of the biology efforts are attributed to the 



ALVIN operations in studying the deep-ocean [Although statistical data are not available 

 food chain, and also the deep-benthic fish ^^ is reported that the Soviet undersea 



