362 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 5 



and its resources came into being because exclusive rights are valua- 

 ble to the people owning them, and national governments exist to 

 guard this ownership. But national governments and national do- 

 main assumed definite legal form and limitations long before ex- 

 clusive ownership of a fishery appeared worthy of much attention. 

 International maritime usages had developed too far before the 

 need for protection and conservation became plain. In fact, it was 

 not until our scientific age provided power to move vessels and 

 trains, to make ice and haul fishing gear, to build cities and import 

 food, that the great marine fisheries other than those for salted 

 herring and cod began to grow beyond the status of small-boat 

 alongshore industries. In a very real sense our greatest fisheries 

 are really not older than men now in full vigor, born in the eighties. 

 So abrupt has been this growth, so new its consequences, that over- 

 night nations have found themselves competing with other nations 

 on the same grounds for a vital raw supply, with their own fleets 

 and governments already committed more to freedom of access to 

 banks on other coasts than to conservation of those on their own.^ 

 Exploited more slowly, property rights to banks nearest to their 

 lands might have gradually grown up. But now, for better or for 

 worse, these great resources are mainly international. They are 

 everybody's property, nobody's particular responsibility; and, just 

 as in armaments, no one wishes to take the first step of self-restraint. 



Indeed, there is difficulty in even deciding what should be done 

 with them, for a biological problem of first magnitude is involved. 

 Fishing, from the standpoint of the fish, is just a greatly increased 

 mortality rate at certain sizes. Its eifects are bound up with the 

 mechanism that enables a species to survive mortality changes. 

 There is but little difference between man as he affects the fish he 

 catches and a kind of disease, or a change in the environment that 

 kills an unusually great number of individuals of special sizes. 

 That a fish may survive through the ages, some mechanism to handle 

 the recurring periods of greater or less mortality must exist; so 

 that, strangely enough, essentially the same biological complex must 

 explain both the reaction of a species to fishing and its evolution 

 and survival. And to understand it the species as a whole or at least 

 an independent part must be studied with complete ability to meas- 

 ure the mortality, the growth, and the movements to and fro. 



The task entrusted to the International Fisheries Commission has 

 therefore been in a very direct way a challenge to the biologist. He 

 is asked to explain this biological complex that governs a valuable 

 resource and to show how it may be used without destroying it. 

 To be sure, the treaty gives him great advantages. The problem 



1 Fulton, Sovereignty of the Seas, pp. 108, 737. 



