ABSTRACT
Modern aerospace techniques of observation and measurement, which are designed mainly for the acquisition of mass information on the ocean, are characterized by direct 'vision' which is restricted to the sea surface or to several metres beneath it. The scientific effectiveness of these means depends on the development of methods for obtaining with their aid information on the in-depth processes and phenomena in the ocean which would be cheaper, more operative, and comprehensive than the information collected by traditional ship-borne methods, and which would possess a number of principally new properties, i.e. a wide field of view, all-weather and systematic character. The contradiction between the tempting technological potentialities and the afore-cited natural restrictions set a large number of complicated methodological problems in the way of wide-scale application of aerospace techniques and means in oceanology. Their great number is connected in one way or another with the near-surface layer. From the point of view of a scientist who wishes to look into' the thickness of the ocean waters by means of aerospace techniques, the near-surface layer is the medium through which various representations of the indepth processes are 'projected' on the ocean surface, like on a screen. In a certain sense, the near-surface layer with its specific structure plays the role of a complicated information converter which in some cases amplifies or attenuates this information, and is sometimes absolutely impenetrable or 'opaque' for the information flows that are associated with the phenomena, processes, and effects which we are interested in. This last chapter considers certain properties of the near-surface layer in this context. The range of problems that should be discussed in this connection is so wide that, generally speaking, it should be presented in a separate monograph. Therefore, in this chapter we set the objective of formulating only a series of important questions that would then assist essentially in organizing studies of the near-surface layer of the ocean in the necessary directions.
