22 • Marine Minerals: Exploring Our New Ocean Frontier 



agreed to a division of effort in EEZ exploration 

 and have taken steps to create a joint office to take 

 the lead in integrating information from govern- 

 ment and private sources. Hov^ever, the Minerals 

 Management Service, with responsibility for man- 

 aging the Outer Continental Shelf mineral resources, 

 and the Bureau of Mines, with responsibility for 

 mining and minerals research and investigations, 

 are not formally linked to the USGS-NOAA co- 

 operative agreement. 



About a dozen Federal agencies administer pro- 

 grams related to the exploration and investigation 

 of the EEZ. The oceanographic and resource data 

 produced by the numerous Federal programs and 

 augmented by similar data collected by States, in- 

 dustry, and academic institutions make up an im- 

 pressive body of information. The data sets are of 

 highly variable quality and were collected in differ- 

 ent places over different time periods. Some of these 

 data are available to other researchers and the pub- 

 lic through formal and informal exchanges among 

 the institutions; other data, however, are less 

 accessible. 



As exploration of the EEZ increases in intensity, 

 data management problems will worsen. Modern 

 instruments, such as multi-beam echo-sounders, 

 satellites, and multi-channel seismic reflection re- 

 corders, produce streams of digital data at high rates 

 of speed. To succeed, a national exploration effort 

 in the EEZ must effectively deal with the problems 

 of compiling, archiving, manipulating, and dissem- 

 inating a range of digital data and graphic infor- 

 mation. Historically, Federal agencies have spent 

 proportionately more on collecting the data than 

 on archiving and managing databases compared 

 to their counterparts in the private sector. Indus- 

 try managers consider data collected in the course 

 of investigations to be capital assets with future 

 value; in general, the Federal agencies seem to con- 

 sider data more as an inventory of limited long- 

 term value and hence have spent less on data man- 

 agement. 



There is no governmentwide policy for archiv- 

 ing and disseminating oceanographic data to sec- 

 ondary users. The National Science Foundation's 

 Ocean Sciences Division has taken steps to ensure 

 that data collected in the course of research it funds 

 are submitted to NOAA's National Environmental 



Modern multi-beam echo-sounding systems and computer 

 mapping technologies can produce accurate topographic 

 maps of the deep seabed. Mapping is the first step toward 

 a systematic program for exploring the EEZ. 



SOURCE; Naval Research Laboratory. 



Satellite, Data, and Information System. There are 

 two national data centers that act as libraries for 

 oceanographic and geophysical data: 1) National 

 Oceanographic Data Center, and 2) National Geo- 

 physical Data Center. Both are managed by NOAA. 

 Data at the centers are acquired from Federal agen- 

 cies under interagency agreements; some agencies 

 are more responsive and reliable in forwarding data 

 to the centers than are others. 



Funds for the centers have never been adequate 

 to provide effective oceanographic data services to 

 secondary users in industry, academia, or State 

 governments. As a result of chronically inadequate 

 funding, the centers are neither able to acquire ex- 

 isting data sets that have intrinsic historical base- 

 line value nor to preserve and store but a relatively 

 small proportion of the new data that are currendy 

 being produced. Oceanographic data discarded for 

 lack of storage facilities is a government asset lost 

 forever. 



Detailed charts of the seafloor, such as those 

 produced by multi-beam echo-sounding instruments 

 (e.g., Sea Beam), are considered to be invaluable 

 tools for geologists and geophysicists exploring the 



