FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70. NO. 2 



adjacent areas which now support an annual 

 combined yield of perhaps 3 million metric tons 

 and which would have remained unexploited or 

 grossly underexploited without their effort. 

 Japan has developed the tuna resources of the 

 world ocean exploitable by longline. Again along 

 with the Soviet Union, Japan initiated large-scale 

 exploitation of groundfish resources along the 

 west coast of Africa. The Soviet Union has been 

 most active in developing new resources in the 

 northwest Atlantic area. Japan has developed 

 other resources, though not as great as those 

 mentioned above, in various parts of the world. 



On the international scene, how^ever, Japan 

 has seldom been given credit for her contribu- 

 tion towards resource development, for the im- 

 pact of Japanese distant-waters fisheries on the 

 resources in international waters, some of which 

 are also utilized by coastal states, was such that 

 many nations look upon Japanese fishing, along 

 with Soviet fishing, as one of the major factors 

 responsible for the depletion of fishery resources 

 on a global basis. There are many obvious cases 

 in which Japan should be blamed for overexploi- 

 tation of the resources that were either utilized 

 by other states at the same time or were con- 

 sidered important potential resources for them. 

 Japan and the Soviet Union are largely respon- 

 sible for the present state of the Antarctic whale 

 stocks; Japan obviously overexploited many of 

 the important stocks in the East China Sea; she 

 overfished the yellowfin sole stock in the eastern 

 Bering Sea, which was also an important re- 

 source for the Soviet Union; the impact of off"- 

 shore salmon fishing on the Soviet salmon stocks 

 is apparent, although no critical assessment has 

 been carried out; many of the crab stocks in the 

 Bering Sea and Kamchatka have been overex- 

 ploited to varying degrees; some of the stocks 

 of porgies (sparids) in West Africa have been 

 overfished by the trawl fisheries of Japan and 

 some other nations. 



In other instances, Japanese fishing has not 

 had any substantial eff"ect on the fisheries of the 

 coastal states concerned, as is the case with the 

 pollack fishery in the Bering Sea, much of the 

 tuna and skipjack fishing, deepwater trawling, 

 fishing for cuttlefish and octopus in northwest 

 Africa, herring fishing in the eastern Bering Sea, 



squid fishing oflf New York, etc. But even in 

 those cases, the w^ay new resources have been 

 developed by the Japanese looks frightening to 

 many other nations. A new resource may be 

 exploited to a maximum level within several 

 years, sometimes in 2 or 3 years. Emphasis 

 shifts from one resource to another, or from area 

 to area. The way Japanese trawl fisheries in 

 the Bering Sea and adjacent areas are being 

 expanded mainly based on one species, pollack, 

 makes biologists wonder how long the resource 

 can support the fisheries and what would hap- 

 pen if the pollack stock collapsed suddenly. 



This new pattern of fishing, characterized by 

 concentration of effort through large fleet op- 

 erations and shift of emphasis from one resource 

 to another, may not necessarily be a bad strategy 

 from the point of view of maintaining the total 

 production and the profitability of the industry. 

 But it is not acceptable to many other nations be- 

 cause it is contradictory to the established prin- 

 ciples of management based on the concept of 

 maximum sustainable yield and, more important, 

 because such a pattern of fishing can be adopted 

 only by nations having well-organized distant- 

 water fisheries. If a nation is unable to partici- 

 pate in the utilization of a resource for techno- 

 logical or economic reasons, she would rather 

 keep it undeveloped than see some other nation 

 exploit it. 



There is little doubt that the development of 

 Japanese and Soviet distant-w^ater fisheries has 

 had very appreciable effects on the international 

 fishery regimes. The impact of these fisheries, 

 whether real or imaginary, has been one of the 

 major factors motivating unilateral jurisdiction- 

 al claims by coastal states. This applies, for ex- 

 ample, to actions taken by the United States, 

 Canada, South Korea, some of the Latin Amer- 

 ican nations, many of the West African states, 

 and even some of the Southeast Asian nations. 

 Even the Soviet Union has taken unilateral ac- 

 tions to protect its fisheries against Japanese 

 high seas activities. In addition to these events, 

 the expansion of Japanese and Soviet fisheries 

 has been at least partially responsible for a 

 worldwide trend for coastal states to justify var- 

 ious forms of jurisdictional control as effective 

 means to deal with international fishery prob- 



266 



