The Role of Science and Technology in Ocean Management

In the near future, the U.S. will acquire-in the legal sense of property-1.4 billion acres of ocean space within an exclusive economic zone out to 200 miles offshore. In effect, the new area under national control will be an extension of the public lands which are retained under the stewardship of the federal government. This will create a need for the development of an ocean and coastal resource management system which must incorporate the concepts of multiple use and sustained yield. The working tools of resource management is knowledge and information. Marine Science and Technology must play a key role in providing a foundation for the management system. By focusing ocean policy on the development of a resource management system, we will for the first time have a framework for fitting marine science and technology into an integrated scheme which relates to a major national goal. As a consequence, ocean R&D can assume in the future a prominence which it has not enjoyed since the "golden age of technology" in the 1960s.