OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES 117 



Mr. Oliver. Mr. Chairman, might I request permission to inchide 

 in the record any information that might come to me within the 

 next 2 or 3 days with respect to the Albatross? 



Mr. Miller. Without objection, so ordered. 



(The following was furnished for insertion.) 



DOBCHESTEB, MASS., March I4, 1959. 

 Hon. Levebett Salton stall, 

 Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 



Dear Senator Saltonstall : My reasons for objecting to the deactivation of 

 Albat7-oss III are as follows : 



In 1938 Russia had 2,727 boats. In 1958 Russia had 12,387. Poland built a 

 fishing motorship for Russia, 515 feet long, 65 feet wide, to operate in any 

 waters. She carries a helicopter, also. Russia had 20 large trawlers built at 

 the Lowestoft yards. England completed 20 large trawlers for Russia. One 

 shipyard in Germany employing 5,000 people was taken over to build nothing 

 but trawlers for Russia. At a meeting in Halifax in June 1958 the Soviet 

 Union's scientific spokesman described research work carried out by his country 

 in the convention area and indicated that this was to be increased this year. 

 Three trawlers, the Odessa, the Kt-enil, and the Novorossiysk will carry out 

 research work in the region of the Grand Banks, Flemish Cap, Labrador, and 

 along the west coast of Greenland. Soviet fish landings from two banks off 

 Newfoundland in 1957 totaled 70.000 metric tons. 



England is building 500 trawlers over a 10-year period. 81 have been com- 

 pleted and 149 have been approved. Offshore craft, 309 have been completed 

 with 43 under construction. England also grants a subsidy or a support price 

 on some species of fish. They also grant as much as $17.80 per day toward the 

 expenses of large trawlers. 



Canada just completed a research vessel costing $1,750,000. She was built to 

 operate in any waters. Canada also is appropriating $130,000 and hired four 

 trawlers to destroy dogfish. They are also paying the fishermen 10 cents a 

 pound for dogfish livers. She is also spending $500,000 on improvements in 

 Newfoundland. Canada has purchased 1 million pounds of bait from the United 

 States to help her fishermen. She also helps her lobstermen and small-boat 

 men. 



Norway built a research vessel named the John Hjort, delivered in March of 

 last year, carrying a crew of 32 men and 8 research workers. 



Germany has a modern research vessel. England has several modern re- 

 search vessels. A West Germany trawler named the Falkland, in the fall of 

 1958 returned to Bremerhaven, Germany, with 259 metric tons taken 120 nauti- 

 cal miles up the south coast of Labrador on Hamilton Bank. As far back as 

 June 1956, at a meeting held in Halifax, N.S., Dr. L. A. Walford, at that time 

 chief of the branch of fishery biology of the Fish and Wildlife Service of the 

 United States and chairman of the Standing Committee on Research and Sta- 

 tistics, stated that because of increased population and resulting demands for 

 fish, the problems of fully utilizing the sea resources in the northwest Atlantic 

 are likely to grow in complexity and are not likely to be solved in a hurry. 

 Broadly, these complexities consist of the effective use of men and materials for 

 the needs of the whole Commission. In planning research programs for the 

 convention area, and in judging needs of men, material, and equipment, there- 

 fore, certain inescapable facts must be faced. The convention area is large, 

 nearly 1 million square miles ; the hydrographic conditions of the environment 

 are exceedingly complex ; the fisheries in this area are among the most valuable 

 in the world ; over 4 billion pounds annually are taken. He further quoted from 

 the report of the Standing Committee on Research and Statistics as follows : 

 "Understandings of the mechanism of replenishment and of the identity and 

 degree of independence of stocks is essential to the scientific direction of North 

 Atlantic fisheries in order to obtain maximum utilization." 



(The foregoing facts were gathered from the "Commercial Fisheries Review.") 



Above I have outlined some of the things which other countries are doing 

 to aid the world's food supply. 

 . What is the United States doing? 



At the present time our trawlers operating out of Boston average 20 years 

 in age. In 1958 we landed 123,800,000 pounds of fish in Boston, the lowest in 

 36 years. But we did import 144 million pounds, which is almost 22 million 

 pounds more than we ourselves landed in Boston. 



