An while the polar bear has been testing his new found strategy, the whale has been asleep. No longer may the Soviet and Red Chinese sea strength be written off as a few rusty tubs in the Baltic, a few subs at Vladivostok and Canton and some dubious cruisers bottled up in the Black Sea. Their navy is second only to our own, and their rising merchant ship tonnage may well exceed ours by next year. On any sea you can name, it's “Drop the anchor and pass the caviar." The Soviet Navy has more than 2.500 ships and some 400 submarines. They have a northern fleet, a Baltic Sea Fleet, a Black Sea Fleet, and a Pacific Fleet. The Soviet merchant marine has more than 1,000 ships and has declared war on the West where merchant navies are concerned. Their timetable calls for the number of their ships, and the tonnage involved, to pass us next year-and to double that capacity in 5 years. The Communists conduct the most vigorous oceanographic program in the world today. They also operate the largest, most modern fishing fleet—a fleet that often seines for things other than fish. All this they have done the hard way. And all this hardship they undertook for just one reason. They saw the Western whale asleep in the deep and found him vulnerable. This is the Communist plan and the Communist challenge for your students during the next decade. It is a challenge that we who are involved with providing education had better prepare our students for. It is a challenge to shake us from our strategic straitjacket of landlubber thinking. Your students, under your urging, must stick a pin in the whale and awaken him before the polar bear bites off his tail and renders him immobile. And that's the task I see for you in the decade ahead. The task involves all of your past problems of administration and discipline and guidance and motivation. And it involves freedom. The committee is recessed until the call of the chairman. (Whereupon, at 3:05 p.m., the committee adjourned.) NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC COUNCIL MONDAY, APRIL 12, 1965 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, Washington, D.C. The committee was called to order, pursuant to call of the Chair, at 10:23 a.m., in room 5110, New Senate Office Building, Hon. Warren G. Magnuson, chairman of the committee, presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. We hope to have a few more members of the committee, but this is not a very good week. Many members are taking a well-earned vacation, but we want to finish these hearings if we can from this end. We will resume the hearings on S. 944, to expand research in the oceans and the Great Lakes and to establish a National Oceanographic Council. This top-level Council would be similar to the National Aeronautics and Space Council, the National Security Council, the Federal Radiation Council, and the proposed Water Resources Council, all of which have membership composed mainly of Cabinet officers. Incidentially, bills which would create the Water Resources Council have passed both the Senate and the House. The composition of the Council in both the House and Senate bills is the same: the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, Army, Health, Education, and Welfare, and the chairman of the Federal Power Commission. These bills, I may add, have the strong support of all administrative agencies concerned and of the Bureau of the Budget. The National Oceanographic Council would be composed of the secretaries of departments having oceanographic missions and concerns, the Directors of the National Science Foundation and Office of Science and Technology, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Establishment of a National Oceanographic Council will put marine and Great Lakes science, engineering, and technology on an administrative parity with the programs of the Space Council, Radiation Council, and the soon-to-be-established Council to coordinate development of our fresh-water resources. Industry has an immense role in all of these programs. It has a tremendous role also in the oceanographic program, though a role which I doubt has yet been sufficiently recognized. American private industry has unquestionably the most advanced technological and engineering capabilities of any nation in the world. Application of this know-how to marine research and development can give and I am confident with some encouragement will giveAmerica undisputed leadership in ocean science, ocean engineering, 87 and in utilization of our rich marine resources, vital to our national security, welfare, and economy. For that reason the committee has invited industry representatives to testify today, plus the present and past Oceanographers of the Navy who have, perhaps, the closest Government contact with industry in this field. May I add that I personally-and the full membership of the committee joins me-am extremely grateful to these industry witnesses who have come long distances and at a considerable expense to testify here today in response to the committee's invitation. We have five or six very important people in this field appearing. I am going to call on them not necessarily in any particular order, but I have listed here first the Honorable Richard T. Hanna, who is a Representative in Congress from California's 34th District, one of the several Congressmen who have introduced bills for this purpose. We will be glad to hear from you at this time, Mr. Hanna. STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD T. HANNA, REPRESENTATIVE OF CONGRESS OF THE 34TH DISTRICT, CALIFORNIA Mr. HANNA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. These bills are companion bills, are they not? The CHAIRMAN. Fine; thank you. Mr. HANNA. Mr. Chairman, and members of this distinguished committee. I am sincerely grateful for this opportunity to appear before you today to discuss Senate bill 944, the National Oceanographic Act of 1965. I will be very brief, since my main purpose is simply to express full support for the proposed legislation. I have, in fact, as the chairman has indicated, introduced similar legislation on the other side. The need for a stepped-up program of oceanographic research is, I believe, undeniable. Our national security demands we respond to the Soviet Union's aggressive challenge in the "wet war." We must preclude a serious "penetration gap" in our respective efforts within "inner-space" as the vast ocean environment has come to be called. Our future economic strength and position dictates that we lead in the world's effort to tap the great resources of the sea for food, for minerals, for energy and for potable water. Our concern for scientific leadership calls clearly for an all-out research effort to learn. more of the anatomy of the sea; its inner relationships of chemistry, biology, temperature, and currents; the outer relationships between the inner-space of the oceans and the upper-space of atmosphere which creates weather conditions that affect all of man's activities. The predictable scientific benefits of this research in climatology, communications, and the mapping of the oceans' floor and currents, are staggering. We are fortunate, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, to have had the benefits in this land, of the good work and sign'ficant accomplishments of individuals and groups within many agencies of government, scientific departments of universities and colleges, and research laboratories of private firms and institutions. Much of this work has been little heralded and greatly underfinanced. Our present position which allows for great potential and rich promise would not be so strong had it not been for the work of those who have labored long in this field. I believe their work has been excellent, and should be applauded as well as encouraged. I strongly disagree with those who would create a new all-powerful super-agency on oceanography, or a new all-absorbent bureau that dries up the activities that now exist. Our program is such that we can ill-afford to have oceanographers administering the work of other oceanographers. Each should be employed on the front lines of research rather than being behind a desk. With this in mind, I am particularly pleased with the emphasis on interagency cooperation employed in S. 944. Here administrators deal with other administrators, while the vital field work goes on. Furthermore, a highly prestigeous National Oceanographic Council would serve the great need for drawing attention to, and increasing interest in and concern about, the study of our oceans while leaving our present force in the field. What I believe is too often our error, gentlemen, is that we hasten to create machinery for coordination before we have thought out and clearly expressed the goal, or goals, we seek or the national purpose or aims we are to pursue. One of the first tasks to which the National Oceanographic Council could well address itself would be the expressions of goals, interests, and purposes to which our Nation should be committed. Closely following such determination we need to develop understandings as to the role the Government should play in achieving its goals and purposes. How it intends to pursue its interests, I do believe that the legal aspects of oceanographic research deserve inclusion among those mentioned specifically in the first three parts, Paragraph E of section 301. These appear on pages 4 and 5 of the bill. We have already seen numerous conflicts over newly discovered fishing grounds and mineral resources found in international waters, and disputes over just what are international waters. With stepped-up oceanographic research being carried on by many nations, we can anticipate an increased frequency and seriousness of these disagreements. Our body of law in this area is clearly inadequate and I, therefore, believe that we should begin now to encourage the legal research necessary to prepare for, and to help avoid, the international legal problems which will otherwise become a very cumbersome burden to oceanographic research. We have recently expanded the jurisdiction of our national waters with legal claims described in congressional action that extends the Continental Shelf boundaries and opens an immense expanse of open territory for exploitation under national law." The need for fuller and clearer expressions of such law will soon be evident and needs to be vigorously developed immediately. The oceans of our world, an expanse of 71 percent of the world's surface, is a great area of comparative lawlessness as regards the newer and heretofore unimagined activities and exploitations. One scientist compares it to the "Wild West" of a century ago. Unless something is done to encourage an evolvement of equitable international law, the possibilities of shoot outs on the ocean main streets will be ominously present. Even in our jurisdictional waters we face a threat of more than one "Quick Draw" McGraw operator and all the headaches of claim jumping we experienced in the early West. And finally, if this legislation is enacted, and I do fervently hope that it will be, I will look forward to strongly encouraging the National Oceanographic Council to recommend that the United States launch an oceanographic expedition, or even expeditions. What I have in mind here, Mr. Chairman, is the establishment of a mission similar to the Lewis and Clark expedition. It would be created for a relatively short period of time, with specific research goals, and would draw upon experts from existing Government agencies, universities, and private institutions and firms. All the personnel could serve on leave when their particular expertise is required, returning afterward to their permanent positions. In this way we could move quickly to meet the research goals which will be established by the Council, without disrupting the fine work now being carried on by existing agencies and institutions. The expedition would also serve, as this legislation will, to spark the interest and imagination of the American people in this exciting and vital science. I would add more than that. It would encourage cooperation and coordination of activities rather than just people and paper work. I think that is important. I thank you once again, Mr. Chairman, it has been my distinct pleasure to testify before you today. If there are any questions regarding my statement, I will be happy to attempt to field them. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Congressman. We thoroughly appreciate your statement. All of us are very encouraged about your interest in this whole question of the legal aspects of the oceans. We are pretty much in agreement that it is high time we start to take a look at this because we are running into more and more difficulties as we move into the high seas of the world, particularly with fisheries. The legal aspects of Continental Shelves, navigation problems, and many of these things as the world gets smaller and smaller and the need of countries to get into the oceans becomes greater and greater, I am hopeful that this bill, although it doesn't directly deal with these matters, might be a vehicle to point up the importance of it. Wouldn't you see it in that light? Mr. HANNA. This is what I had hoped, and I hoped we might get some broader expression to make sure that is the understanding from the bill. I know much of the work that must be done will have to be done through an international agency such as the U.N., or some other organization such as may now be in existence, to carry on the determination of dispute, but, I believe the United States has such an interest that we ought to be a motivating, moving influence in all of this, and we can't just wait for the crisis to occur and then move to the conference table at the crisis, and be sure that our interests are going in the long term to be served. The CHAIRMAN. The Senator from Alaska has a crisis up there pretty near once a month with some of these problems. There is a substantial Russian fishing fleet off of the coast of the State of Washington today. I think about 11 trawlers and a motor ship, as I recall it. |