SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH BY THE UNITED STATES 



by Dr. J. L. McHugh 



Chief, Division of Biological Research 



Bureau of Commercial Fisheries 



Washington, D. C. 



Research conducted by the Bureau of Commercial Fish- 

 eries for the Commission has two major purposes, to provide 

 scientific knowledge necessary to determine whether the 

 stocks of fish specified in the Annex to the Convention 

 qualify for abstention, and to study the distribution of ssdmon 

 on the high seas to provide knowledge required for proper 

 interpretation of the provisions of the Protocol. The first 

 objective, you will remember, is to show: (1) whether or 

 not more intensive exploitation of the stocks of salmon, 

 halibut, and herring will yield substantial increases in yield 

 that can be sustained year after year; (2) that this exploita- 

 tion is regulated by legal measures to maintain or increase 

 the maximum sustained yield in accordance with scientific 

 knowledge; and (3) that extensive scientific study is in prog- 

 ress to discover whether the stocks are being fully utilized 

 and determine the conditions necessary to maintain maxi- 

 mum sustained yields. The second objective is to determine 

 if there are areas in which salmon of North American and 

 Asian origin intermingle, and if so, to determine a line or 

 lines which best divide salmon frora these two sources, and 

 to show beyond reasonable doubt that this line or lines nnore 

 equitably divide such salmon than the present provisional 

 line at 175° West longitude. 



Information bearing on the abstention question has been 

 provided by several agencies. We have received, and are 

 pleased to acknowledge, the assistance of the Alaska De- 

 partment of Fish and Ganae on many occasions. The rela- 

 tionship between numbers of spawners and the success of 

 fishing when their progeny return from the ocean has been 

 determined from information provided by the scientific staff 

 of Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Region 5, based in 

 Juneau. The staffs of the International Pacific Halibut and 

 Salmon Commissions have given us nauch useful information, 

 also, as have the Washington, Oregon, and California State 

 fishery agencies. Investigations of high-seas distribution of 

 salmon have been made by the staffs of our Seattle Biological 

 Laboratory and the Fisheries Research Institute of the 

 University of Washington, 



Continued exploitation of a fishery resource is possible 

 because nature makes adjustments to offset the catch that is 

 made by man. If this were not true, and the numbers of fish 

 in the sea were always directly in simple proportion to the 

 numbers that spawned, then continued fishing would lead to 

 complete extinction of the resource, at a rate proportional 



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