APPENDIX VI APPENDIX VI 
38 
States government. Many now advocate that the United States abrogate 
the ICNAF treaty, and unilaterally eliminate all foreign fishing off the 
coast of the United States out to the 200-mile limit. Obviously, the 
United States will be obligated to withdraw from the ICNAF convention or 
to renegotiate the treaty with major modifications because of the FCMA. 
In summary, ICNAF and the Atlantic bilateral agreements have not 
prevented a large decline in the fishery stocks off the coast of the 
United States. In the past five years, however, the conservation 
measures taken and the new provisions of the amended convention which 
permit allocations of the total allowable catch favoring the coastal 
states, have provided for some rehabilitation of the fish stocks and 
have prevented more serious economic dislocation of United States 
Atlantic coast fisheries. 
The Gulf of Mexico 
There is a relatively small amount of foreign fishing off the coast 
of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Some 
Cuban shrimp vessels and Japanese longline tuna and marlin vessels fish 
off the United States coast in this region, but their impact on either 
the stocks of fish or American fishermen is minimal. 
Several hundred United States flag vessels fish off the coast of 
Mexico primarily for shrimp and finfish of the snapper family. These 
United States distant-water fishing vessels will be seriously and 
adversely affected by an extension of fishery jurisdiction to 200 miles 
by Mexico and other Caribbean naticns. 
DISTANT WATER OR WORLD-WIDE FISHERIES AND 
MARINE MAMMAL TREATIES 
The United States-Brazil Shrimp Agreement 
This bilateral executive agreement signed on May 9, 1972, and since 
renegotiated, provides for bilateral or cooperative studies of shrimp 
and limited fishing by the United States in the 200-mile zone claimed as 
a territorial sea by Brazil. The agreement was extended in 1974 and has 
been further extended with certain modifications up to the present date. 
In the absence or this agreement, there might have been a serious 
foreign relations problem with Brazil because of the claim by that 
ccuntry of a 290-mile territorial sea at a time when the United States 
recognized a 3-mile I.Z. and a 9-mile Contiguous Fishery Zone. The 
agreement has permitted a continuation of a limited United States shrimp 
fishery off the coast of Brazil and at the same time has facilitated the 
improved enforcement and coliection of data for eventual improved manage- 
ment of the shrimp fishery cf the western tropical Atlantic Ocean and 
Caribbean Sea. 
