use of the living resources of the sea (Gulland, 1969)." ^ ' 



Certainly the recent development of highly mobile distant-water fleets 

 by many nations has required "...studies of the availability, distribution, 

 abundance, and yield potentials of latent or little-used resources. "(5) 

 These studies continue at the present time (expressed, for example, in the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service program to develop "underutilized 

 species"), driven partly by a large existing infrastructure that has de- 

 pleted many of the species of traditional commercial value. 



Assessments seek to develop information on what the maximum sustainable 

 yield (MSY) of a fishery is; that is, fisheries are viewed as a renewable 

 resource, dependent upon (1) the introduction of young fish into the 

 population (recruitment); (2) their rate of growth; (3) their natural 

 mortality; and (4) the mortality caused by fishing activities. The manage- 

 ment goal is to not remove more from the population than can be replaced, 

 thus allowing maintenance on a steady basis of an allowable surplus over 

 and above the necessary parental stock to produce that surplus. The 

 principle that catches should not exceed the level of MSY has found 



* Until the development of distant-water factory fleet operations in the 

 1950s, Georges Bank was harvested solely by American and Canadian 

 vessels. During this era, the major species sought were haddock, cod, 

 and yellow-tail flounder. Georges produced nearly one billion 

 pounds a year of groundfish annually from the 1920s to 1960. In 1961, 

 however, the Soviet fleet began to operate on Georges, and three years 

 later over a dozen nations were heavily concentrated, fishing initially 

 for species that had not been of commercial value to American fishermen: 

 herring, mackerel, and silver hake. However, it soon became clear that 

 species of value to domestic producers were being harvested also, and by 

 the late 1960s Georges Bank was considered to have lost half of the 

 formerly available biomass. By 1970, effort had increased seven times 

 and landings three times from 1960— up to over one million metric tons 

 from under five hundred thousand. 



