CC9
Summer Session Kansan Friday, June 24, 1966
Mysteries of sea continue to engross science
BY JOSEPH L. MYLER
WASHINGTON-(UPI)-The sea is the world's greatest relatively untapped source of knowledge and wealth.
So it is not surprising that the federal government has been pumping money and effort for many years into oceanographic research and development. The motives are the age-old: hunger for knowledge, food, wealth, safety and national security.
At least 22 separate U.S. bureaus and agencies are heavily engaged in various aspects of oceanography ranging from basic research to ocean engineering.
SINCE 1960 the work of these agencies has been coordinated by the White House interagency Committee on Oceanography (ICO).
Each year the ICO presents to Congress via the President what it calls the National Oceanographic Program designed to pull into focus efforts of the federal and state governments, industry, and scores of universities and private institutions to understand and use the oceans.
For the fiscal year starting July 1, President Johnson asked Congress to appropriate $219.9 million, compared with $178.2 million for the current fiscal year. This would be an increase of about 23 per cent.
THE NATIONAL goals include physical and chemical research into the characteristics of the sea, study of the ocean's "living populations," strengthening of national defense, protection of life and property from storms and earthquake-generated waves, management of ocean resources and control of pollution, improvement of seafood harvesting, and development of the sea's recreational potential—including, in the word of a congressman, "bikini watching."
The Navy normally gets half or more of government funds for oceanography. It spends much of what it gets on basic research into the nature and behavior of the ocean from the bottom up. It also spends more—$350 to $400 million a year—on research to build up its strength in antisubmarine warfare.
IN THE PAST YEAR the nation's ocean research fleet has been increased by seven to a total of 113 surface vessels, along with new survey ships, deep diving vehicles, underwater platforms, instruments, laboratories, and computer systems.
Space satellites, viewing the sea from orbit, also promise to help the oceanographers to understand the oceans.
These improvements in ocean research and exploration equipment and methods should help bring about better forecasts of sea states and weather, better navigation, and better understanding of the sea-atmosphere relations which produce both hurricanes and monsoons and the great hemispheric weather regimes which may afflict dry land regions with blizzards, floods, or droughts thousands of miles from the sea.
Mental health winner
IS IT President Johnson's hope eventually to save many lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage by improved disaster warning system involving everything from seismic sea waves, stemming from undersea earthquakes, to sea-spawned hurricanes and typhoons.
The $200 initial Greenwood County Mental Health Association Scholarship has been awarded to Judy C. Beeman, Oxford senior.
Russia, with more than 400 vessels, has the most powerful submarine fleet ever built. So the United States naturally is putting a lot of effort into antisubmarine hardware.
But that is apart from the National Oceanographic Program which is concerned, among other things, with acquiring fundamental information about the ocean as a fluid medium in which to wage war.
PRESIDENT Johnson's oceanographic message for fiscal 1967 has this to say about the sea as a
theater of war; "Submarines armed with ballistic missiles can use the ocean's cloak of concealment to strike any target on earth. In the near future naval warfare may be extended to the seabed, as nations intensify their competition for resources and strategic positions on the ocean floor ...
"It is therefore urgent that the United States develop a military capability to operate-offensively and defensively-throughout the total marine environment."
The United States has a coastline of 12,500 miles. Under an international agreement signed by the United States and 45 other countries in 1964 a nation has the sovereign right to exploit adjacent continental shelf areas out to a depth of about 600 feet.
UNDER the same agreement any nation also has a right to exploit any deeper areas to which it may be able to extend its operations. This in effect starts a race, by such nations as may want to enter, for establishment of national sovereignty over vast regions of the deep sea floor beyond the sharply sloping shelves which bound the continents.
In any case, it adds 850,000 square miles of shelf seabottom—equivalent to about 25 per cent of the continental United States itself—to the economically exploitable area of the nation.
And according to the President's oceanographic message, "advanced deep ocean recovery techniques are now being employed by the U.S. petroleum industry that will open new vistas in oil exploration beyond the 600-foot depths."
Even the bottom of a Volkswagen looks funny.
We are speaking to you from underneath a Volkswagen.
Not much to look at, is there?
Too bad that big sheet of steel is in the way. Otherwise, you could see all of the VW's works. But don't feel cheated.
That sheet of steel is the Volkswagen's bottom. No other car has anything quite like it.
The steel bottom protects the VW's vital parts against everything. Including time. It's one of the big reasons why VW's last so long.
The VW's bottom wasn't an afterthought. It's part of the design. The car is sealed to the bottom and the bottom is sealed to the car.
Which is why a VW is practically airtight. And why some of the rumors you've heard about floating Volkswagens aren't just rumors.
The VW's funny-looking top and funny-looking bottom have one thing in common: they both work to make the Volkswagen as good as it is.
It would be easy enough to change them.
But we think we'll leave bad enough alone.
"Lawrence's Only Authorized Volkswagen Dealer"
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