With the longest coastline in the world, Canada has a vital need for oceanographic information and it has been a matter of national policy for some years to increase substantially the scale and scope of Canadian oceanographic research and survey. A major step in the implementation of this policy, taken in mid-1962, was the opening of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO) at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, since February 1968 known as the Bedford Institute (BI).