Ch. 7— Federal Programs for Collecting artd Managing Oceanographic Data • 273 



satisfy both the security demands and positional cri- 

 teria estabUshed by the Navy while still providing 

 oceanographers and the private sector with suffi- 

 ciently detailed information to be useful. The 

 prospects of developing a mutually acceptable fil- 

 ter seem remote. 



OTA Classification Workshop 



In collaboration with the Marine Policy and 

 Ocean Management Center of the Woods Hole 

 Oceanographic Institution, OTA convened a work- 

 shop in Woods Hole, Massachussetts, in January 

 1987. Academic and government oceanographers 

 and industry representatives who attended delved 

 further into the impacts and dislocations that data 

 classification might impose on user groups. Work- 

 shop participants were asked to: 



• focus on the costs and risks of classification to 

 scientific and commercial interests, 



• relate the loss of information and/or commer- 

 cial opportunities in the EEZ to the economic 

 and scientific position of the United States, 



• consider the consequences of data classifica- 

 tion on U.S. foreign policy related to the need 

 for access to other Nations' EEZs for oceano- 

 graphic research, and 



• identify factors that could affect the operational 

 integrity of a Navy classification system. 



Costs and Risks to Scientific and 

 Commercial Interests 



Marine geologists and geophysicists believe that 

 it is impossible to evaluate what the loss might be 

 to the U.S. oceanographic community as a result 

 of classifying multi-beam data until a sufficiently 

 large area is surveyed and mapped to discover what 

 scientificiaUy interesting features might be detected 

 as a result of high-resolution bathymetry. The rela- 

 tively small sampling that has been made available 

 to date receives high praise from the academic 

 community and government oceanographers who 

 anticipate significant breakthroughs in understand- 

 ing the conformation of the seabed if general-cov- 

 erage multi-beam data are made available from the 

 EEZ. 



To advance oceanographic science, some scien- 

 tists believe that they must be able to detect and 

 characterize individual geological seafloor features 



with dimensions as small as 100 meters. Only multi- 

 beam mapping systems provide sufficient resolu- 

 tion to achieve that goal in waters exceeding 200 

 meters in depth, although optical systems and side- 

 scanning sonar can provide useful information 

 about such features. Should broad-coverage, high- 

 resolution bathymetric surveys and geophysical data 

 be either abandoned or excessively restricted, ge- 

 ologists and geophysicists are concerned that they 

 would be denied fundamental information impor- 

 tant to their professions, according to those attend- 

 ing the OTA workshop. 



Both NOAA's and the National Science Foun- 

 dation's (NSF) charters require them to share and 

 publicly disseminate scientific data among non- 

 governmental users. Oceanographic data collected 

 under the aegis of NSF's Division of Ocean Sci- 

 ences is required to be made public after two years 

 through a "national repository," e.g., the National 

 Geophysical Data Center (NGDC). As a conse- 

 quence of classification of multi-beam data, there 

 is a possibility that neither NOAA nor NSF would 

 support or undertake large-scale seabed mapping 

 efforts. NOAA has reserved the option of terminat- 

 ing all multi-beam surveys if it is not permitted to 

 conduct unclassified surveys in the U.S. EEZ and 

 elsewhere.'^ Should NOAA forsake broad cover- 

 age multi-beam surveys worldwide, the Navy it- 

 self would likely lose a valuable source of strategic 

 and tactical bathymetric data from both the U.S. 

 EEZ and elsewhere that could strengthen the U.S. 

 fleets' operational position. 



One anticipated indirect long-term impact that 

 could result from restrictions on the collection, proc- 

 essing, and dissemination of multi-beam bathymet- 

 ric data is a move away from academic emphasis 

 on marine geology and a slowdown in progress in 

 understanding the seafloor and geological processes. 

 Ocean mining interests foresee setbacks in exten- 

 sive mineral surveying within the U.S. EEZ if 

 NOAA is restricted in its unclassified mapping pro- 

 gram. Some industry representatives believe that 

 seabed mining holds a special position of national 

 importance, and, therefore, even if classification 

 procedures were imposed, ocean miners should be 

 given access to the classified, "undegraded," high- 

 resolution bathymetric data. Yet, while Federal 



nbid. 



