side that overall quota should be established a reasonable in- 

 dividual daily bag limit for sportsmen adequate to satisfy the 

 recreational purpose. The totality of these daily sportsmen's 

 bag limit catches should be subtracted from the overall quota 

 needed for the protection of the fish stock, and the food fishery 

 permitted to take the rest. The recreation use should have 

 the priority. 



A very considerable number of such wrangles arise simply 

 through ignorance. A classic example is provided by kelp bass 

 near Los Angeles. Sportsmen claimed that the cutting of 

 kelp commercially was ruining their catch of kelp bass. Finally 

 the University of California, as an impartial entity, was re- 

 quested to inquire into the problem. Two beds of kelp in 

 the vicinity, both heavily fished, were chosen for experiment. 

 One was subjected to normal commercial cutting; the other 

 left uncut. Sport fishing for kelp bass continued normally and 

 records of catch from both beds were kept. It turned out that 

 sportsmen caught more kelp bass from the bed being cut than 

 from the uncut bed. That controversy subsided. 



Inefficient and Efficient Fishermen 



A very large part of those sections of state laws inhibiting the 

 growth of the marine fisheries in the United States arose from 

 gear fights among commercial fishermen with or without pro- 

 fessional sportsmen helping one side. These battles are often 

 waged under the virtuous banner of conservation but the naked 

 fact always revealed, when that banner is torn aside, is that the 

 fighting cause is competitive economics. It runs like this. 



One group of fishermen is working with gear or vessels that 

 enable them to scratch out a living, putting by a few dollars 

 in a good season, and going back into debt with the suppliers 

 in a bad season. They are poor and they rather glory in their 

 honest poverty and the homely virtues attendant thereto. They 

 complain about the iniquities visited upon them by the rest of 

 society, but they do not really want any change. 



Then another fisherman develops a new idea, or science 

 yields an instrument that will improve the efficiency of the catch 

 and lower costs, or the Congress wishes to move things along 

 by rewarding initiative in the introduction of new vessel designs 

 or ideas. Historically, on the west coast, the fight also has been 

 initiated when overfishing resulted in requiring the total fishing 

 effort to be reduced. Then the most efficient gear had to go, 

 making way for the less efficient but more numerous gear to 

 still operate. 



The bulk of the fishermen do not wish to change to new, more 

 efficient ideas. They would rather stay poor, inefficient but, 

 as they often say, independent. What they really want to do 

 is keep the competition down or to eliminate it. Since they 

 are more numerous, can be very vociferous, and have the virtue 

 of honest poverty on their side, they nearly always win in the 

 state legislatures where the principal fishing regulations of the 

 nation are established. This was how the fish wheels and horse 

 seines disappeared from the Columbia River, how the salmon 

 traps disappeared from Washington and then Alaska, how it 

 happened that one cannot land halibut caught by trawl in a 

 port of the United States, why one cannot have a trawl net 



aboard one's boat in southern California, why one cannot use 

 a sonar on a purse seiner to locate salmon in Puget Sound, 

 etc., etc. 



This classic opposition to change had been epitomized in the 

 attempts made over the last several years by the Congress to 

 improve the lot of United States fishermen by providing them 

 with improved vessels and vessel designs with federal assistance. 

 Senator Magnuson at first tried to encourage the federal de- 

 velopment of an experimental modern trawler for his people in 

 the northwest to use in competition with the Russian and Japa- 

 nese effort that he clearly saw approaching. His fishermen 

 constituents refused to support him. He then tried to enlist 

 support from New England where European fishermen were 

 similarly approaching the New England grounds with modern 

 vessels and gear. This gambit was repulsed by the fishermen. 

 The fishermen, almost to a man, preferred to ask for the foreign 

 fishermen to be outlawed from the fishery on the high seas (an 

 action beyond the ability of the United States Senate to per- 

 form ) and complain at the Senate and Department of State for 

 not doing this, rather than to accept new ideas and assistance so 

 that they could become sufficiently efficient to compete on the 

 high seas with these foreign fishermen. 



When the Senate desired to remove by direct subsidy the 

 serious block of high priced fishing vessels which federal law 

 supporting shipyards caused in the United States, the major 

 fishing vessel owners' associations in the country were opposed. 

 Finally, after sLx years, a reasonably workable bill on this sub- 

 ject was adopted by the Congress last session over this opposi- 

 tion, but still encumbered with safeguards insisted upon by the 

 vessel owners to prevent them from being made efficient. 



The vessel owners did not, and do not, want efficient new 

 vessels and gear brought into their fishery. If this happens. 



NUMBER OF U.S. FISHING CRAFT, VARIOUS YEARS, 1930-64 



"Ti Other 

 i boats 



Motor- 

 boats 



1930 1940 1950 1960 



1964 



11 



