[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 21, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H3144]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




FURTHER REPORT ON CONFERENCE OF ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PROTECTION OF THE 
                                  SEA

  (Mr. FARR of California asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring attention to the 
conference that my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] just talked about. We are very blessed in 
this country to be surrounded by oceans and pay a lot of attention to 
it, but we really do not pay enough attention because the seas of the 
world are important to keep us alive. This is a water planet, we are, 
78 percent of this globe is water and it is threatened.

                              {time}  1715

  One thing that we found out in this conference is that everybody in 
the world agrees with that and wants to do something about it. If we 
could just dedicate enough of our commitment to research and science 
using the military, using the scientific community, the academic 
community, using the commercial community, and unlock the information 
about the ocean, at the same time to gather a lot more. In fact, this 
country spends more on studying the seas of outer planets than we do in 
studying our own seas, and that is wrong.
  The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] did an incredible job 
for this country by leading this conference in the last 3 days. And I 
just want to urge all of my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats 
alike, that this is not a partisan battle, this is a world struggle to 
try to keep our oceans clean, to try to keep our atmosphere from 
getting overheated so that the oceans will rise, we know those things 
are going to happen. We have to combat it. I thank the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] for his leadership and I look forward to 
working with my colleagues.

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