The UNOLS Council takes this opportunity to affirm its support for the ongoing use of UNOLS ships to undertake operational activities of federal agencies when this is practical, appropriate and mutually beneficial. An example is use of UNOLS ships by the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) to carry out Navy projects. The benefits of this partnership to NAVOCEANO and to UNOLS have been spread nationally: since inception of the NAVOCEANO funding to UNOLS by congressional action in 1997 18 UNOLS vessels of varied sizes operated by 14 different institutions have provided over five ship-years of support to Navy programs in a wide array of coastal and open ocean areas. Consequently, NAVOCEANO has been able to satisfy Navy requirements in US and international waters without diverting its own fleet of ships from other high priority surveys elsewhere, and the UNOLS fleet, the major vessels of which were constructed primarily with Navy funds, has been more fully utilized on oceanographic tasks for which it is well suited. NAVOCEANO program managers have cooperated fully with established UNOLS mechanisms to schedule ships and to make the sometimes difficult scheduling decisions required to optimize the use of all the UNOLS ships on behalf of all participating agencies and projects. NAVOCEANO has received ship support that is technically and operationally first-rank, and has been able to select ships of different sizes, capabilities and costs according to program requirements. These are attributes of a partnership that works, and the Council goes on record in favor of continuing this and analogous partnerships with other agencies. Such continuation must be founded on the existence of genuine need for use of the UNOLS facilities in partnership mode, on the availability of genuinely supplemental funding to support the work, and on the principle of equitable access to UNOLS scheduling by programs of all user agencies.