of research, technology development, and services 
related to ocean engineering and undersea operations; 
and serve as a national focal point for knowledge, 
a catalyst for industrial development, and a mechan- 
ism for technology transfer, relative to civil ocean 
engineering. OOE originally reported directly to the 
NOAA Administrator, but, under a recent reorgani- 
zation, OOE, Sea Grant, ERL, and a newly-created 
Office of Climate Research report to an Assistant 
Administrator for R&D. 
Although the formation of the Office of Ocean 
Engineering in NOAA appears to be in accord with 
the recommendations of the Stratton Commission, 
the NAE/Marine Board, and NACOA, it does not 
have the resources needed to provide the central 
focus for civil ocean engineering recommended by 
these groups. Even within NOAA itself, OOE is not 
yet providing a comprehensive engineering service. 
The Office does not have the responsibility for pro- 
viding engineering and instrumentation services for 
NOAA scientific or environmental monitoring activi- 
ties, and provides minimal services to investigators 
outside NOAA. At present, more than 95 percent 
of the resources of OOE are committed to established 
programs which were transferred to NOAA under 
Reorganization Plan No. 4: instrumentation, data 
buoy program, manned underwater support, and, 
most recently OCEANLAB. 
In its Sixth Annual Report, NACOA observed 
that NOAA’s Office of Ocean Engineering has poten- 
tial for evolving into a leader for ocean engineering 
among the nondefense Federal agencies and private 
groups. NACOA recommended that the Secretary 
of Commerce foster and selectively support programs 
within industry, the universities, and the Federal 
agencies to: %° 
© identify and correct deficiencies in civil ocean 
engineering and technology; 
® assure the availability of technical data needed by 
the ocean engineering community; 
® develop technical ocean engineering criteria and 
material assessments and standards for use by in- 
dustry and the Federal Government; and 
® encourage the cross-utilization of military and 
civil engineering laboratories and facilities. 
The question of its potential for leadership in gen- 
eral-purpose technology aside, NOAA is only one 
among a numberx of agencies involved in ocean tech- 
nology programs oriented to meet mission require- 
ments. The Navy program is the largest and most 
diversified of these efforts. The Navy Technical 
Facility Capability Register, published in 1973 by 
the Navy Material Command, indicates an invest- 
ment of over $260 million by the Navy in laboratory 
facilities for ocean engineering and related tech- 
*" U.S. National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atrmos- 
phere. Sixtit Anrual Report to the President and the Congress. 
Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1977, p. 43. 
nology programs. These facilities include deep ocean 
simulation and pressure test chambers, materia! test- 
ing laboratories, test model facilities, pier facilities, 
hydrodynamic shock simulators, and fluid phenom- 
ena laboratories. The diversity of the Navy ocean 
engineering program can be inferred from the list of 
ocean engineering facilities at Navy laboratories 
(table 7-2). Although the Navy program is directed 
to the development of weapons and systems in sup- 
port of Naval operations, its unclassified develop- 
ments can often be applied in the civil sector. 
One of the engineering recommendations of the 
Stratton Commission was for the “construction of 
high pressure test facilities for testing equipment 
(and) biomedical pressure chambers for testing and 
evaluating man in undersea work . . .” *° The Navy’s 
new Ocean Simulation Facility, at the Naval Coastal 
Systems Laboratory in Panama City, Florida, imple- 
ments the Commission’s recommendation for a test 
facility. Housing the world’s largest hyperbaric 
chamber complex, the facility is certified for testing 
and evaluating diver and equipment performance 
to a depth equivalent of 2,250 feet of seawater. 
Nearly all environmental conditions found in the 
ocean can be simulated under laboratory control at 
the facility. It serves as a national center available 
to Government, academic, and industrial labora- 
tories for research, development, testing, and eval- 
uation of systems and hardware used by divers in the 
ocean environment. A complementary facility used 
in medical research relevant to diving is the Navy 
Environmental Health Effects Laboratory in 
Bethesda, Maryland. This laboratory also has hyper- 
baric chambers used to assess conditions hazardous 
to divers. 
The engineering aspects of NASA’s Ocean Ap- 
plications Program largely evolve around the devel- 
opment and use of remote sensing systems to observe 
ocean phenomena from aircraft and Earth-orbiting 
spacecraft. The Geodynamics Experimental Ocean 
Satellite (GEOS-3), launched in 1975, has success- 
fully demonstrated the global acquisition of ocean 
geoidal data and techniques for measuring sea state. 
SEASAT-A, to be launched in 1978, will be in a 
near polar orbit and will carry an array of custom- 
ized remote sensors to scan the oceans. These sen- 
sors will measure average wave height and sea- 
surface temperature, and provide information on 
windspeed and direction over the ocean surface, ice 
cover, and cloud cover. The SEASAT-A program, 
and use of data from the program, is being under- 
taken as a joint effort involving NOAA and the 
Navy. 
Two Federal agencies, the Department of Com- 
merce’s Maritime Administration (MarAd) and the 
Department of Energy (DOE), have ocean technol- 
40 Our Nation and The Sea, op.cit. note 6, p. 38. 
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