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report on harvesting activities with a view to ensuring 

 sufficient coordination to prevent conflicts or overhar- 

 vesting. 



This alternative would seek to build an essentially 

 voluntary system of conservation in which no nation would 

 be bound internationally. The kinds of obligations this 

 alternative involves could be relatively easy to negotiate. 



There are, however, a number of practical difficulties 

 inherent in this approach. It would tend to limit effec- 

 tive influence upon the development and implementation of 

 conservation measures to those nations actually engaged in 

 commercial harvesting. The voluntary nature of the system 

 would mean that it would be less stable and could lead to 

 application of inconsistent conservation standards to har- 

 vesting. Its impacts upon the Antarctic marine ecosystem 

 could be quite adverse. 



C. Negotiation of an International Agreement for 

 Collection, Exchange and Analysis of Data 



This alternative would concentrate upon the first 

 necessary steps toward providing for adequate conservation 

 of Antarctic marine living resources : establishment of 

 the necessary obligations and means for creating an ade- 

 quate data base. It would involve setting up a scientific 

 and information collecting organization. The alternative 

 is based upon the assumption that it is possible to obtain 

 early agreement on those aspects of a regime which would 

 build the needed data base, with the corollary assumption 

 that negotiation of a full-scale regime could prove suffi- 

 ciently difficult to justify a gradualist approach. 



This option would satisfy one of the major prereq- 

 uisites for adequate conservation of Antarctic marine 

 living resources, the acquisition of basic scientific 

 data. It might set forth a commitment to establish a 

 system for developing and implementing specific conserva- 

 tion measures at some point in the future. Harvesting 

 would not be regulated until the information gathering 

 system was set up. It could involve a high level of risk 

 to the Antarctic marine ecosystem since there would be no 

 firm guarantees that the necessary standards and machinery 

 to provide for conservation measures would in fact be 

 developed. Delay in addressing the development of conser- 

 vation measures could well make it more difficult to 

 achieve agreement on an effective mechanism. 



