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A drop in the ocean: Clinton (front) and Gore pledge little to further these students' research. Credit: PA/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE

President Bill Clinton last week proposed a broad $224 million package to protect and restore ocean resources — although it included only modest increases in funding for oceanographic research.

Speaking at a two-day National Ocean Conference in Monterey, California, Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore promised to extend a ban on offshore oil drilling to cover most of the US coastline and to set up an $800 million trust fund to modernize US ports. They pledged to strengthen protection of coral reefs and to create a permanent oceans commission to coordinate federal policy.

Most of the money — $194 million — would go into a five-year programme to rebuild and sustain marine fisheries, including the acquisition of three research vessels to provide better data on fish stocks.

An additional $4 million a year would be spent between 2000 and 2002 on a variety of exploration and research projects. These would include building two new unmanned deep-sea observatories on the Juan de Fuca ridge off the US west coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, and expanding existing shallow-water observatories in Florida and on the continental shelf off New Jersey.

The plans also include developing, in partnership with industry, two new submersible vehicles, which will be leased by the government and made available to members of the scientific community.

Another $12 million would be allocated to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in order to place hundreds of instrumented buoys in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, beginning in 2000, as part of an expanded Global Ocean Observing System.

Clinton also promised to help speed up the release of classified military data, including underwater acoustical data from listening devices used to track submarines.

Some of the proposals merely reflect plans already under way in NOAA and other federal agencies, while others were still sketchy in their details.

Before the conference, agencies involved in ocean research were canvassed for ideas for future initiatives, which were then screened by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Council on Environmental Quality before being sent on to Clinton and Gore.

But there was little consultation with the ocean science community, says Richard Spinrad, research director for the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE) in Washington.

Spinrad says the research component of the package unveiled in Monterey is “at best a good start” and was nowhere near the kind of investment needed to address the current shortage of observational data for the oceans.

CORE has argued that ocean sciences are chronically underfunded (see Nature 379, 283; 1996). Federal spending on oceanographic research has remained flat at about $600 million a year (in constant dollars) for the past 15 years, while funding for research in general has doubled.

Realizing the research agenda outlined in an influential 1969 report by the Stratton Commission, which led to the creation of NOAA, would require about $1 billion annually, says Spinrad. Still, he believes that the proposed oceans commission could provide a useful forum for ocean scientists to convey their needs.

Clinton last week asked his cabinet to produce recommendations for a coordinated oceans policy within a year, and said he plans to work with Congress to create the permanent commission.

Even if the initiatives put forth in Monterey were a disappointment, Spinrad takes heart that at least the president and vice-president acknowledged the need for more observational data. “If that message came across during the conference to the Administration and Congress, then that's a great message,” he says.