Also refers to the
fictional National Underwater and Marine Agency, an arm of the
U.S. Government This organization, headed by red-headed firebrand
Admiral James Sandecker, is
ostensibly tasked with coordinating the nation's
oceanographic research, and carrying out particularly difficult bits of it.
One of our own noders takes his name from their head computer
guru.
This organization is part science club, part commando team, part military, part covert-ops specialists, full-time romantics and most-of-the-time secret agents. Their star employee is one Air Force Major Dirk Pitt, whose not-so-subtly coital name hides - or rather, reveals - a character worthy of its sheer brashness. As his creator tells us, Mr. Pitt is dark-haired, green-eyed, and unassuming looking, save for the fact that women find him irresistable and villains find him fearsome.
In any case, NUMA made its first chronological appearance in the book titled The Mediterranean Caper or Mayday! depending on which edition you have. The first story written concerning Dirk Pitt and NUMA was, according to the author, the novel known as Pacific Vortex.
NUMA has lots of cool toys, ranging from corporate jets to submersibles to research ships to holographic comm systems. They were one of the first users of the Iridium satellite telephone system, and we can probably consider the 'rescue' of Iridium to service 20,000 otherwise unidentified 'Government subscribers' to be their mysterious hand and budget at work.
They might be considered to be the wet-dream boyhood fantasy of those who work at the real-life and much more mundane (although much more important) NOAA, or National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency.