very year, the federal budget process beginswith a White House-issued budget request,which lays out spending priorities for fed-eral programs. From this moment forward,President Obama and his successors shoulduse this opportunity to correct a longstand-ing misalignment of federal research pri-

orities: excessive spending on space exploration and neglectof ocean studies. The nation should begin transforming theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)into a greatly reconstructed, independent, and effective fed-eral agency. In the present fiscal climate of zero-sum budg-eting, the additional funding necessary for this agency shouldbe taken from the National Aeronautics and Space Admin-istration (NASA).

The basic reason is that deep space—NASA’s favoriteturf—is a distant, hostile, and barren place, the study of whichyields few major discoveries and an abundance of overhypedclaims. By contrast, the oceans are nearby, and their study

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Final Frontier vs. Fruitful Frontier

The Case for Increasing Ocean Exploration

Possible solutions to the world’s energy, food, environmental, and other problems are far more likely to be found in nearby oceans than in distant space.

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is a potential source of discoveries that could prove helpfulfor addressing a wide range of national concerns from cli-mate change to disease; for reducing energy, mineral, andpotable water shortages; for strengthening industry, secu-rity, and defenses against natural disasters such as hurricanesand tsunamis; for increasing our knowledge about geologi-cal history; and much more. Nevertheless, the funding allo-cated for NASA in the Consolidated and Further Continu-ing Appropriations Act for FY 2013 was 3.5 times higherthan that allocated for NOAA. Whatever can be said on be-half of a trip to Mars or recent aspirations to revisit the Moon,the same holds many times over for exploring the oceans;some illustrative examples follow. (I stand by my record: InThe Moondoggle, published in 1964, I predicted that therewas less to be gained in deep space than in near space—thesphere in which communication, navigations, weather, andreconnaissance satellites orbit—and argued for unmannedexploration vehicles and for investment on our planet in-stead of the Moon.)

E

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Growing up on the Southern California coast, JustineSerebrin spent countless hours snorkeling. From an early age she sensed that the ocean was in trouble asshe noticed debris, trash, and decaying marine lifeconsuming the shore. She credits her childhoodexperiences with influencing her artistic imaginationand giving her a feeling of connectedness and lifelonglove of the ocean.

Serebrin’s close observations of underwater landscapesinform her paintings, which are based upon what shedescribes as the “deep power” of the ocean. She hastraveled to the beaches of Spain, Mexico, Hawaii, theCaribbean, and the western and eastern coasts of theUnited States. The variety of creatures, cleanliness,temperature and emotion evoked from each locationgreatly influence her artwork. She creates the paintingsabove water, but is exploring the possibility of paintingunderwater in the future. Her goal with this project is to promote ocean awareness and stewardship.

Serebrin is currently working on The Illuminated WaterProject which will enable her to increase the scope andimpact of her work. Her paintings have been exhibitedat the Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana; the New Orleans Museum of Art, Lousiana; and the McNayMuseum of Art, San Antonio, Texas. She is a member ofthe Surfrider Foundation and the Ocean Artists Society.She is the co-founder of The Upper Six Hundreds ArtistCollective, comprised of artists, designers, musicians,writers, and many others who are working together toredefine the conventions of the traditional art gallerythrough an integration of creative practice andcommunity engagement. She holds a BFA from OtisCollege of Art and Design, Los Angeles. Visit her websiteat http://www.justineserebrin.com/

Alana Quinn

Justine Serebrin

ClimateThere is wide consensus in the international scientific com-munity that the Earth is warming; that the net effects of thiswarming are highly negative; and that the main cause of thiswarming is human actions, among which carbon dioxideemissions play a key role. Hence, curbing these CO2 emis-sions or mitigating their effects is a major way to avert cli-mate change.

Space exploration advocates are quick to claim that spacemight solve such problems on Earth. In some ways, they arecorrect; NASA does make helpful contributions to climatescience by way of its monitoring programs, which measurethe atmospheric concentrations and emissions of greenhousegases and a variety of other key variables on the Earth and inthe atmosphere. However, there seem to be no viable solutionsto climate change that involve space.

By contrast, it is already clear that the oceans offer aplethora of viable solutions to the Earth’s most pressing trou-bles. For example, scientists have already demonstrated thatthe oceans serve as a “carbon sink.” The oceans have ab-sorbed almost one-third of anthropogenic CO2 emitted sincethe advent of the industrial revolution and have the poten-tial to continue absorbing a large share of the CO2 releasedinto the atmosphere. Researchers are exploring a variety ofchemical, biological, and physical geoengineering projectsto increase the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon. Additionalfederal funds should be allotted to determine the feasibilityand safety of these projects and then to develop and imple-ment any that are found acceptable.

Iron fertilization or “seeding” of the oceans is perhaps themost well-known of these projects. Just as CO2 is used byplants during photosynthesis, CO2 dissolved in the oceansis absorbed and similarly used by autotrophic algae and otherphytoplankton. The process “traps” the carbon in the phyto-plankton; when the organism dies, it sinks to the sea floor, se-questering the carbon in the biogenic “ooze” that covers largeswaths of the seafloor. However, many areas of the oceanhigh in the nutrients and sunlight necessary for phytoplank-ton to thrive lack a mineral vital to the phytoplankton’s sur-vival: iron. Adding iron to the ocean has been shown to trig-ger phytoplankton blooms, and thus iron fertilization mightincrease the CO2 that phytoplankton will absorb. Studiesnote that the location and species of phytoplankton are poorlyunderstood variables that affect the efficiency with whichiron fertilization leads to the sequestration of CO2. In otherwords, the efficiency of iron fertilization could be improvedwith additional research. Proponents of exploring this op-tion estimate that it could enable us to sequester CO2 at acost of between $2 and $30/ton—far less than the cost of

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scrubbing CO2 directly from the air or from power plantsmokestacks—$1,000/ton and $50-100/ton, respectively, ac-cording to one Stanford study.

Despite these promising findings, there are a number ofchallenges that prevent us from using the oceans as a majormeans of combating climate change. First, ocean “sinks” havealready absorbed an enormous amount of CO2. It is notknown how much more the oceans can actually absorb, be-cause ocean warming seems to be altering the absorptive ca-pacity of the oceans in unpredictable ways. It is further largelyunknown how the oceans interact with the nitrogen cycleand other relevant processes.

Second, the impact of CO2 sequestration on marine ecosys-tems remains underexplored. The Joint Ocean CommissionInitiative, which noted in a 2013 report that absorption ofCO2 is “acidifying” the oceans, recommended that “the ad-ministration and Congress should take actions to measureand assess the emerging threat of ocean acidification, betterunderstand the complex dynamics causing and exacerbat-

JUSTINE SEREBRIN, Soul of The Sea, Oil on translucent paper, 25 x 40 inches, 2013.

ing it, work to determine its impact, and develop mecha-nisms to address the problem.” The Department of Energyspecifically calls for greater “understanding of ocean biogeo-chemistry” and of the likely impact of carbon injection onocean acidification. Since the mid-18th century, the acidityof the surface of the ocean, measured by the water’s concen-tration of hydrogen ions, has increased by 30% on average,with negative consequences for mollusks, other calcifyingorganisms, and the ecosystems they support, according tothe Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification. Differentecosystems have also been found to exhibit different levels ofpH variance, with certain areas such as the California coast-line experiencing higher levels of pH variability than else-where. The cost worldwide of mollusk-production lossesalone could reach $100 billion if acidification is not coun-tered, says Monica Contestabile, an environmental econo-mist and editor of Nature Climate Change. Much remains tobe learned about whether and how carbon sequestrationmethods like iron fertilization could contribute to ocean

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acidification; it is, however, clearly a crucial subject of studygiven the dangers of climate change.

FoodOcean products, particularly fish, are a major source of foodfor major parts of the world. People now eat four times asmuch fish, on average, as they did in 1950. The world’s catchof wild fish reached an all-time high of 86.4 million tons in1996; although it has since declined, the world’s wild marinecatch remained 78.9 million tons in 2011. Fish and mollusksprovide an “important source of protein for a billion of thepoorest people on Earth, and about three billion people get15 percent or more of their annual protein from the sea,”says Matthew Huelsenbeck, a marine scientist affiliated withthe ocean conservation organization Oceana. Fish can be ofenormous value to malnourished people because of its highlevels of micronutrients such as Vitamin A, Iron, Zinc, Cal-cium, and healthy fats.

However, many scientists have raised concerns about the

ability of wild fish stocks to survive such exploitation. TheFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nationsestimated that 28% of fish stocks were overexploited world-wide and a further 3% were depleted in 2008. Other sourcesestimate that 30% of global fisheries are overexploited orworse. There have been at least four severe documented fish-ery collapses—in which an entire region’s population of afish species is overfished to the point of being incapable of re-plenishing itself, leading to the species’ virtual disappear-ance from the area—worldwide since 1960, a report fromthe International Risk Governance Council found. More-over, many present methods of fishing cause severe environ-mental damage; for example, the Economist reported thatbottom trawling causes up to 15,400 square miles of “deadzone” daily through hypoxia caused by stirring up phospho-rus and other sediments.

There are several potential approaches to dealing withoverfishing. One is aquaculture. Marine fish cultivatedthrough aquaculture is reported to cost less than other ani-

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JUSTINE SEREBRIN, Sanctuary, Oil and watercolor on translucent paper, 25 x 40 inches, 2013.

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mal proteins and does not consume limited freshwatersources. Furthermore, aquaculture has been a stable sourceof food from 1970 to 2006; that is, it consistently expandedand was very rarely subject to unexpected shocks. From 1992to 2006 alone, aquaculture expanded from 21.2 to 66.8 mil-lion tons of product.

Although aquaculture is rapidly expanding—more than60% from 2000 to 2008—and represented more than 40%of global fisheries production in 2006, a number of chal-lenges require attention if aquaculture is to significantly im-prove worldwide supplies of food. First, scientists have yetto understand the impact of climate change on aquacultureand fishing. Ocean acidification is likely to damage entireecosystems, and rising temperatures cause marine organ-isms to migrate away from their original territory or die offentirely. It is important to study the ways that these processeswill likely play out and how their effects might be mitigated.Second, there are concerns that aquaculture may harm wildstocks of fish or the ecosystems in which they are raisedthrough overcrowding, excess waste, or disease. This is par-ticularly true where aquaculture is devoted to growing speciesalien to the region in which they are produced. Third, thereare few industry standard operating practices (SOPs) foraquaculture; additional research is needed for developingthese SOPs, including types and sources of feed for speciescultivated through aquaculture. Finally, in order to producea stable source of food, researchers must better understandhow biodiversity plays a role in preventing the sudden col-lapse of fisheries and develop best practices for fishing, aqua-culture, and reducing bycatch.

On the issue of food, NASA is atypically mum. It does notclaim it will feed the world with whatever it finds or plansto grow on Mars, Jupiter, or any other place light years away.The oceans are likely to be of great help.

Energy NASA and its supporters have long held that its work canhelp address the Earth’s energy crises. One NASA projectcalls for developing low-energy nuclear reactors (LENRs)that use weak nuclear force to create energy, but even NASAadmits that “we’re still many years away” from large-scalecommercial production. Another project envisioned orbitingspace-based solar power (SBSP) that would transfer energywirelessly to Earth. The idea was proposed in the 1960s bythen-NASA scientist Peter Glaser and has since been revis-ited by NASA; from 1995 to 2000, NASA actively investi-gated the viability of SBSP. Today, the project is no longeractively funded by NASA, and SBSP remains commerciallyunviable due to the high cost of launching and maintaining

JUSTINE SEREBRIN, Metamorphosis, Oil on translucent paper,23.5 x 18 inches, 2013.

satellites and the challenges of wirelessly transmitting en-ergy to Earth.

Marine sources of renewable energy, by contrast, rely ontechnology that is generally advanced; these technologiesdeserve additional research to make them fully commer-cially viable. One possible ocean renewable energy source iswave energy conversion, which uses the up-and-down mo-tion of waves to generate electrical energy. Potentially-useableglobal wave power is estimated to be two terawatts, the equiv-alent of about 200 large power stations or about 10% of theentire world’s predicted energy demand for 2020 accordingto the World Ocean Review. In the United States alone, waveenergy is estimated to be capable of supplying fully one-thirdof the country’s energy needs.

A modern wave energy conversion device was made inthe 1970s and was known as the Salter’s Duck; it producedelectricity at a whopping cost of almost $1/kWh. Since then,wave energy conversion has become vastly more commer-cially viable. A report from the Department of Energy in

attractive energy product; they contribute much less thancoal or natural gas to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emis-sions. However, it is worth noting that the oceans do holdvast reserves of untapped hydrocarbon fuels. Deep-sea drillingtechnologies remain immature; although it is possible to useoil rigs in waters of 8,000 to 9,000 feet, greater depths re-quire the use of specially-designed drilling ships that stillface significant challenges. Deep-water drilling that takesplace in depths of more than 500 feet is the next big frontierfor oil and natural-gas production, projected to expand off-shore oil production by 18% by 2020. One should expect thedevelopment of new technologies that would enable drillingpetroleum and natural gas at even greater depths thanpresently possible and under layers of salt and other barriers.

In addition to developing these technologies, entire otherlines of research are needed to either mitigate the side ef-fects of large-scale usage of these technologies or to guaran-tee that these effects are small. Although it has recently be-come possible to drill beneath Arctic ice, the technologiesare largely untested. Environmentalists fear that ocean tur-bines could harm fish or marine mammals, and it is fearedthat wave conversion technologies would disturb ocean floorsediments, impede migration of ocean animals, prevent wavesfrom clearing debris, or harm animals. Demand has pushedcountries to develop technologies to drill for oil beneath iceor in the deep sea without much regard for the safety or en-vironmental concerns associated with oil spills. At present,there is no developed method for cleaning up oil spills in theArctic, a serious problem that requires additional researchif Arctic drilling is to commence on a larger scale.

More ocean potential When large quantities of public funds are invested in a par-ticular research and development project, particularly whenthe payoff is far from assured, it is common for those re-sponsible for the project to draw attention to the additionalbenefits—“spinoffs”—generated by the project as a meansof adding to its allure. This is particularly true if the projectcan be shown to improve human health. Thus, NASA hasclaimed that its space exploration “benefit[ted] pharmaceu-tical drug development” and assisted in developing a newtype of sensor “that provides real-time image recognitioncapabilities,” that it developed an optics technology in the1970s that now is used to screen children for vision prob-lems, and that a type of software developed for vibrationanalysis on the Space Shuttle is now used to “diagnose med-ical issues.” Similarly, opportunities to identify the “compo-nents of the organisms that facilitate increased virulence inspace” could in theory—NASA claims—be used on Earth to

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2009 listed nine different designs in pre-commercial devel-opment or already installed as pilot projects around the world.As of 2013, as many as 180 companies are reported to be de-veloping wave or tidal energy technologies; one device, theAnaconda, produces electricity at a cost of $0.24/kWh. TheUnited States Department of Energy and the National Re-newable Energy Laboratory jointly maintain a website thattracks the average cost/kWh of various energy sources; onaverage, ocean energy overall must cost about $0.23/kWhto be profitable. Some projects have been more successful;the prototype LIMPET wave energy conversion technologycurrently operating on the coast of Scotland produces waveenergy at the price of $0.07/kWh. For comparison, the aver-age consumer in the United States paid $0.12/kWh in 2011.Additional research could further reduce the costs.

Other options in earlier stages of development includeusing turbines to capture the energy of ocean currents. Thetechnology is similar to that used by wind energy; watermoving through a stationary turbine turns the blades, gen-erating electricity. However, because water is so much denserthan air, “for the same surface area, water moving 12 miles perhour exerts the same amount of force as a constant 110 mphwind,” says the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management(BOEM), a division of the Department of the Interior. (An-other estimate from a separate BOEM report holds that a3.5 mph current “has the kinetic energy of winds in excess of[100 mph].”) BOEM further estimates that total worldwidepower potential from currents is five terawatts—about aquarter of predicted global energy demand for 2020—andthat “capturing just 1/1,000th of the available energy fromthe Gulf Stream … would supply Florida with 35% of its elec-trical needs.”

Although these technologies are promising, additional re-search is needed not only for further development but alsoto adapt them to regional differences. For instance, oceanwave conversion technology is suitable only in locations inwhich the waves are of the same sort for which existing tech-nologies were developed and in locations where the wavesalso generate enough energy to make the endeavor prof-itable. One study shows that thermohaline circulation—ocean circulation driven by variations in temperature andsalinity—varies from area to area, and climate change is likelyto alter thermohaline circulation in the future in ways thatcould affect the use of energy generators that rely on oceancurrents. Additional research would help scientists under-stand how to adapt energy technologies for use in specificenvironments and how to avoid the potential environmen-tal consequences of their use.

Renewable energy resources are the ocean’s particularly

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“pinpoint targets for anti-microbial therapeutics.” Ocean research, as modest as it is, has already yielded sev-

eral medical “spinoffs.” The discovery of one species of Japan-ese black sponge, which produces a substance that success-fully blocks division of tumorous cells, led researchers to de-velop a late-stage breast cancer drug. An expedition near theBahamas led to the discovery of a bacterium that producessubstances that are in the process of being synthesized as an-tibiotics and anticancer compounds. In addition to the afore-mentioned cancer fighting compounds, chemicals that com-bat neuropathic pain, treat asthma and inflammation, andreduce skin irritation have been isolated from marine or-ganisms. One Arctic Sea organism alone produced three an-tibiotics. Although none of the three ultimately proved phar-maceutically significant, current concerns that strains of bac-teria are developing resistance to the “antibiotics of last resort”is a strong reason to increase funding for bioprospecting.Additionally, the blood cells of horseshoe crabs contain achemical—which is found nowhere else in nature and so farhas yet to be synthesized—that can detect bacterial contam-ination in pharmaceuticals and on the surfaces of surgicalimplants. Some research indicates that between 10 and 30percent of horseshoe crabs that have been bled die, and thatthose that survive are less likely to mate. It would serve for re-search to indicate the ways these creatures can be better pro-tected. Up to two-thirds of all marine life remains unidenti-fied, with 226,000 eukaryotic species already identified andmore than 2,000 species discovered every year, according toWard Appeltans, a marine biologist at the Intergovernmen-tal Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO.

Contrast these discoveries of new species in the oceanswith the frequent claims that space exploration will lead tothe discovery of extraterrestrial life. For example, in 2010NASA announced that it had made discoveries on Mars “that[would] impact the search for evidence of extraterrestriallife” but ultimately admitted that they had “no definitive de-tection of Martian organics.” The discovery that prompted theinitial press release—that NASA had discovered a possiblearsenic pathway in metabolism and that thus life was theoret-ically possible under conditions different than those onEarth—was then thoroughly rebutted by a panel of NASA-selected experts. The comparison with ocean science is espe-cially stark when one considers that oceanographers havealready discovered real organisms that rely on chemosyn-thesis—the process of making glucose from water and car-bon dioxide by using the energy stored in chemical bondsof inorganic compounds—living near deep sea vents at thebottom of the oceans.

The same is true of the search for mineral resources. NASA

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JUSTINE SEREBRIN, Jellyfish Love, Oil on translucent paper, 11 x 14 inches, 2013.

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JUSTINE SEREBRIN, Scarab, Digital painting, 40 x 25 inches, 2013.

talks about the potential for asteroid mining, but it will befar easier to find and recover minerals suspended in oceanwaters or beneath the ocean floor. Indeed, resources beneaththe ocean floor are already being commercially exploited,whereas there is not a near-term likelihood of commercial as-teroid mining.

Another major justification cited by advocates for thepricey missions to Mars and beyond is that “we don’t know”enough about the other planets and the universe in which

we live. However, the same can be said of the deep oceans. Ac-tually, we know much more about the Moon and even aboutMars than we know about the oceans. Maps of the Moon arealready strikingly accurate, and even amateur hobbyists havecrafted highly detailed pictures of the Moon—minus the“dark side”—as one set of documents from University Col-lege London’s archives seems to demonstrate. By 1967, mapsand globes depicting the complete lunar surface were pro-duced. By contrast, about 90% of the world’s oceans had not

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aspirations of all humanity despite a lack of evidence thatthese missions engender any more than a brief high for some.

Ocean exploration faces similar temptations. There havebeen some calls for “aquanauts,” who would explore the oceanmuch as astronauts explore space, and for the prioritizationof human exploration missions. However, relying largely ro-bots and remote-controlled submersibles seems much moreeconomical, nearly as effective at investigating the oceans’biodiversity, chemistry, and seafloor topography, and end-lessly safer than human agents. In short, it is no more reason-able to send aquanauts to explore the seafloor than it is tosend astronauts to explore the surface of Mars.

Several space enthusiasts are seriously talking about cre-ating human colonies on the Moon or, eventually, on Mars.In the 1970s, for example, NASA’s Ames Research Centerspent tax dollars to design several models of space coloniesmeant to hold 10,000 people each. Other advocates have sug-gested that it might be possible to “terra-form” the surfaceof Mars or other planets to resemble that of Earth by alter-ing the atmospheric conditions, warming the planet, and ac-tivating a water cycle. Other space advocates envision usingspace elevators to ferry large numbers of people and sup-plies into space in the event of a catastrophic asteroid hit-ting the Earth. Ocean enthusiasts dream of underwater citiesto deal with overpopulation and “natural or man-made dis-asters that render land-based human life impossible.” TheSeasteading Institute, Crescent Hydropolis Resorts, and theLeague of New Worlds have developed pilot projects to ex-plore the prospect of housing people and scientists underthe surface of the ocean. However, these projects are pro-hibitively expensive and “you can never sever [the surface-water connection] completely,” says Dennis Chamberland,director of one of the groups. NOAA also invested fundingin a habitat called Aquarius built in 1986 by the Navy, al-though it has since abandoned this project.

If anyone wants to use their private funds for such out-lier projects, they surely should be free to proceed. However,for public funds, priorities must be set. Much greater em-phasis must be placed on preventing global calamities ratherthan on developing improbable means of housing and sav-ing a few hundred or thousand people by sending them farinto space or deep beneath the waves.

Reimagining NOAAThese select illustrative examples should suffice to demon-strate the great promise of intensified ocean research, a hereto-fore unrealized promise. However, it is far from enough to in-ject additional funding, which can be taken from NASA ifthe total federal R&D budget cannot be increased, into ocean

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yet been mapped as of 2005. Furthermore, for years scientistshave been fascinated by noises originating at the bottom ofthe ocean, known creatively as “the Bloop” and “Julia,” amongothers. And the world’s largest known “waterfall” can befound entirely underwater between Greenland and Iceland,where cold, dense Arctic water from the Greenland Sea dropsmore than 11,500 feet before reaching the seafloor of theDenmark Strait. Much remains poorly understood aboutthese phenomena, their relevance to the surrounding ecosys-tem, and the ways in which climate change will affect theircontinued existence.

In short, there is much that humans have yet to under-stand about the depths of the oceans, further research intowhich could yield important insights about Earth’s geolog-ical history and the evolution of humans and society. Addressing these questions surpasses the importance of another Mars rover or a space observatory designed to an-swer highly specific questions of importance mainly to afew dedicated astrophysicists, planetary scientists, and se-lect colleagues.

Leave the people at homeNASA has long favored human exploration, despite the factthat robots have become much more technologically ad-vanced and that their (one-way) travel poses much lowercosts and next to no risks compared to human missions. Still,the promotion of human missions continues; in December2013, NASA announced that it would grow basil, turnips,and Arabidopsis on the Moon to “show that crop plants thatultimately will feed astronauts and moon colonists and all, arealso able to grow on the moon.” However, Martin Rees, aprofessor of cosmology and astrophysics at Cambridge Uni-versity and a former president of the Royal Society, calls hu-man spaceflight a “waste of money,” pointing out that “thepractical case [for human spaceflight] gets weaker and weakerwith every advance in robotics and miniaturisation.” An-other observer notes that “it is in fact a universal principle ofspace science—a ‘prime directive,’ as it were—that anythinga human being does up there could be done by unmannedmachinery for one-thousandth the cost.” The cost of sendinghumans to Mars is estimated at more than $150 billion. Thepreference for human missions persists nonetheless, prima-rily because NASA believes that human spaceflight is moreimpressive and will garner more public support and taxpayerdollars, despite the fact that most of NASA’s scientific yieldto date, Rees shows, has come from the Hubble Space Tele-scope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Kepler space ob-servatory, space rovers, and other missions. NASA relent-lessly hypes the bravery of the astronauts and the pioneering

science. There must also be an agency with a mandate to en-vision and lead federal efforts to bolster ocean research andexploration the way that President Kennedy and NASA onceled space research and “captured” the Moon.

For those who are interested in elaborate reports on the de-ficiencies of existing federal agencies’ attempts to coordinatethis research, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative (JOCI)—the foremost ocean policy group in the United States andthe product of the Pew Oceans Commission and the UnitedStates Commission on Ocean Policy—provides excellentoverviews. These studies and others reflect the tug-of-warthat exists among various interest groups and social values.Environmentalists and those concerned about global climatechange, the destruction of ocean ecosystems, declines in bio-diversity, overfishing, and oil spills clash with commercialgroups and states more interested in extracting natural re-sources from the oceans, in harvesting fish, and utilizing theoceans for tourism. (One observer noted that only 1% of the139.5 million square miles of the ocean is conserved throughformal protections, whereas billons use the oceans “as a ‘su-permarket and a sewer.’”) And although these reports illu-minate some of the challenges that must be surmounted if thegovernment is to institute a broad, well-funded set of oceanresearch goals, none of these groups have added significantfunds to ocean research, nor have they taken steps to pro-vide NASA-like agency to take the lead in federally-sup-ported ocean science.

NOAA is the obvious candidate, but it has been hamperedby a lack of central authority and by the existence of many dis-parate programs, each of which has its own small group ofcongressional supporters with parochial interests. The re-sult is that NOAA has many supporters of its distinct little seg-ments but too few supporters of its broad mission. Further-more, Congress micromanages NOAA’s budget, leaving toolittle flexibility for the agency to coordinate activities and acton its own priorities.

It is hard to imagine the difficulty of pulling these piecestogether—let alone consolidating the bewildering numberof projects—under the best of circumstances. Several ad-ministrators of NOAA have made significant strides in thisregard and should be recognized for their work. However,Congress has saddled the agency with more than 100 ocean-related laws that require the agency to promote what are of-ten narrow and competing interests. Moreover, NOAA isburied in the Department of Commerce, which itself is con-

sidered to be one of the weaker cabinet agencies. For thisreason, some have suggested that it would be prudent tomove NOAA into the Department of the Interior—whichalready includes the United States Geological Service, theBureau of Ocean Energy Management, the National ParkService, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau ofSafety and Environmental Enforcement—to give NOAAmore of a backbone.

Moreover, NOAA is not the only federal agency that dealswith the oceans. There are presently ocean-relevant pro-grams in more than 20 federal agencies—including NASA.For instance, the ocean exploration program that investi-gates deep ocean currents by using satellite technology tomeasure minute differences in elevation on the surface ofthe ocean is currently controlled by NASA, and much basicocean science research has historically been supported bythe Navy, which lost much of its interest in the subject sincethe end of the Cold War. (The Navy does continue to fundsome ocean research, but at levels much lower than earlier.)Many of these programs should be consolidated into a De-partment of Ocean Research and Exploration that wouldhave the authority to do what NOAA has been preventedfrom doing: namely, direct a well-planned and coordinatedocean research program. Although the National OceanCouncil’s interagency coordinating structure is a step in theright direction, it would be much more effective to consol-idate authority for managing ocean science research undera new independent agency or a reimagined and strength-ened NOAA.

Setting priorities for research and exploration is alwaysneeded, but this is especially true in the present age of tightbudgets. It is clear that oceans are a little-studied but verypromising area for much enhanced exploration. By contrast,NASA’s projects, especially those dedicated to further ex-ploring deep space and to manned missions and stellarcolonies, can readily be cut. More than moving a few billiondollars from the faraway planets to the nearby oceans is calledfor, however. The United States needs an agency that canspearhead a major drive to explore the oceans—an agencythat has yet to be envisioned and created.

Amitai Etzioni (etzioni@gwu.edu) is University Professorand professor of International Affairs and director of the In-stitute for Communitarian Policy Studies at George Wash-ington University.

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