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boundary, but — under this alternative — U.S. fishermen would 

 lose the protection provided to them by the Agreement against 

 sudden changes in shares after the boundary delimitation. 



Finally, there would be a hiatus of several years with 

 continued overlapping management of important stocks on 

 Georges Bank, which would present the difficulties mentioned 

 in connection with Alternative 1. 



4. Negotiation of a Less Comprehensive Resource Agree- 

 ment Pending Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary 



Implicit in this alternative is the recognition that 

 deferral of a definitive resource agreement until after the 

 delimitation of the maritime boundary requires an interim 

 agreement to address some of the unresolved current and poten- 

 tial problems posed by separate or disjointed management of 

 stocks now shared with Canada. Thus, this alternative may be 

 viewed as a suboption of Alternative 3. 



A limited agreement pending delimitation of the boundary 

 has advantages over reliance on simple consultations to ad- 

 dress present concerns regarding overfishing of fishery 

 stocks. An interim agreement could bind both governments to 

 whatever management arrangements could be agreed, as consul- 

 tations between governments would not do. 



Hov/ever, recent experience since implementation of the 

 FCMA suggests that a regime less comprehensive than the 

 one established by the Agreement would not effectively 

 conserve the resources. As noted above, efforts to imple- 

 ment such an interim agreement in 1978 were unsuccessful. 



