515 



ward Wenk, Jr., as Chief. Dr. Wenk provided considerable ground- 

 work toward the passage of the Marine Resources Act of 1966, and 

 later became Executive Secretary of the Marine Council, created by 

 the Act, under the chairmanship of the Vice President. 



Although world attention was focused on the seabed resources fol- 

 lowing the Malta proposal in 1967, in the United States the Marine 

 Council staff had already been active in laying the groundwork for 

 U.S. policy on this issue. Section 6 of the Marine Resources Act 

 assigned to the Council an explicit responsibility to coordinate a pro- 

 gram for international cooperation. Soon after its activation in August 

 1966, the Council staff guided a series of studies and actions to take 

 into account universally agreed upon goals to which the oceans could 

 contribute, such as to remedy the disparity between world population 

 and food supply. Inquiries were also begun as to threats to world order 

 arising out of conflicts over the extraction of marine resources, and 

 ways and means by which the common interest of all nations in gain- 

 ing greater knowledge about the marine environmen coutld be satis- 

 fied by intergovernmental cooperative programs of ocean research. 



By late fall of 1966, the Council staff, working with representatives 

 of the State Department, helped draft a U.S. initiative at the 1966 

 U.N. General Assembly, calling for an examination of international 

 marine science activities. By December of the same year, the Council 

 staff understood from U.N. discussions in New York that there was 

 likely to be interest, particularly among the developing nations, in 

 clarifying uncertainties over ocean boundaries through the medium 

 of a new continental shelf convention. 119 



Again on the initiative of the Council staff, and after prior exchanges 

 with State Department staff as to agenda, the Vice President, as 

 Chairman of the Marine Council, met on February 10, 1967, with 

 Deputy Under Secretary of State Foy D. Kohler concerning these 

 issues, with the result that Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, appointed 

 an Ad Hoc Committee for International Policy in the Marine Environ- 

 ment to serve the interests of both the Marine Council and the Depart- 

 ment of State. Soon after its formation, this Committee began sub- 

 stantive inquiry into legal regime questions — building on a concept of 

 "revenue belts" or "buffer zones" that had been informally proposed by 

 representatives from the Department of State and the Council. 



By that time also, the Council had begun to implement Section 

 4(a) 5 of the Marine Resources Act to undertake a comprehensive 

 study of the legal problems arising out of the management, use, devel- 

 opment, recovery, and control of the resources of the marine environ- 

 ment. Four contract studies were accordingly undertaken to provide 

 in-house policy guidance. The Vice President requested that the De- 

 partment of State provide guidelines for these studies, and the Secre- 

 tary of State appointed an interagency advisory committee chaired 

 by the legal adviser of the Department of State, Leonard Meeker. 



When the Committee for International Policy in the Marine En- 

 vironment met for the first time in April 1967, all of the in-house in- 

 struments for the study of the legal regime for the seabed had been 



u9 This information about the in-house activities of the Council staff was supplied 

 through personal communication by Dr. Edward Wenk, Jr., former Executive Secretary 

 of the Marine Council. Further details appear in Dr. Wenk's book, The Politics of the Ocean's 

 (Harvard University Press). 



