I 



QUALIFICATIONS FOR ABSTENTION 41 



fish have attained tlieir maxiniiiiii size. Thus, the fishermen from 

 this side never do catch any Asian sahnon. It does not, therefore, 

 appear to be possible to make an "equitable" distribution of Asian 

 and North American salmon between the Japanese, Canadian, and 

 United States fishermen by permitting tiie Japanese to catch some 

 North American salmon, and permitting Canadian and United 

 States fishermen to catch an ecjual amount of Asian salmon. The 

 next best possibility would seem to be to attempt to prescribe the 

 line in such a way as to prohibit any high seas catch of North Ameri- 

 can salmon by the Japanese. 



Before making our concluding comments we feel that some men- 

 tion shoidd be made about the impact of the 1955 Rome Conference 

 on current fisheries management practices, specifically with regard 

 to the conditions necessary to support the abstention principle in the 

 North Pacific. This has to do with a some^vhat luirealistic attitude 

 about scientific evidence which seems to have sprung from the 1955 

 Conference. 



It will be recalled that the Rome Conference ^vas the first time any 

 official definition of the concept "maximum sustained productivity" 

 as used in the 1953 treaty, was attempted. In the United Nations 

 report it ^vas variously called "average sustainable yield" and "opti- 

 mum sustainable yield." It was defined as: 



"The immediate aim of conservation of living marine resources is to 

 conduct fishing activities so as to increase, or at least to maintain, the 

 average sustainable yield of products in desirable form. At the same 

 time, wherever possible, scientifically sound, positive measures should 

 be taken to improve the resources. 



"The principal objective of conservation of the living resources of 

 the sea is to obtain the optimiun sustainable yield so as to secure a 

 maximum supply of food and other marine products. When formu- 

 lating conservation programs, account should be taken of the special 

 interests of the coastal state in maintaining the productivity of the 

 resources of the high seas near its coast." 



After defining the objectives of fishery management and in par- 

 ticular the optimum sustainable yield, the Rome conferees listed the 

 types of scientific information required for a fishery management 

 program. Throughotit this section of their report they stressed the 

 fact that effective conservation of any resource of the sea requires 

 "scientific information." In the first place, they indicate that it is 



