OCEANOGRAPHY 193 



of fact, our vessels are quite able to range out that far and we hav© 

 be«n prevented from doing so heretofore by our dependence upon, 

 bait fishing which kept us within 200 or 300 miles of the shore. 



Now, however, we are changing over to puree seining, which lib- 

 erates us from the coast, if you may use that tenn, and we are once 

 more taking a close look at the far reaches of the Pacific which are 

 within our mechanical range, if we can get them within our economic 

 range, which we think we might be able to do. You cannot go out 

 hunting for tuna generally on the ocean. You have to have a place 

 where tuna are going to aggregate in commercial volume in order 

 to cut down your cost of production where you can practically get the 

 tuna on the table at the price the housewife will pay. 



Not only are we engaging in exploratory expeditions in this broad 

 area of the Pacific from time to time, but we have vessels at the 

 present time fishing along the coast of west Africa from Mauritania 

 on the north to Angola on the south. 



One of our companies has exploration contracts with both the Gov- 

 ernment of Ghana and the Government of Nigeria. Another of our 

 companies is establishing a cold storage facility at Sierra Leone in 

 west Africa. 



I say all of this to illustrate your point that the interests of our 

 area are becoming substantially global. We are no longer interested 

 primarily in our fishei-y relations with IMexico or the oceanogi-apliic 

 data directly off Mexico. We are interested in the subtropical, trop- 

 ical, and temperate oceans of the world and all of the political con- 

 nections that go with that. 



This is so in other countries. This committee has had before it, of 

 course, the enonnous expansion that is taking place in the Russian 

 fisheries, which is bound to affect most of the fishery jurisdiction 

 problems in the world. They plan to increase the take of fish of all 

 nations on the high seas of the world by, let us say, 25 percent, witliin 

 the period of the next 7 or 8 yeai-s and they are proceeding very 

 efficiently and effectively in this program of doing so. 



Sir, I had a very important statement to begin with and I have skip- 

 ped around through it a good deal already, so that, if I may pick out 

 some highlights from it and perhaps give for the record at a later 

 time a more comprehensive and consistent statement, I w^ould ap- 

 preciate it. 



Mr. Miller. That would be fine, sir. 



(The statement follows :) 



Statement of W. M. Chapman. Director, the Resources Committee, 

 San Diego, Calif. 



My name is W. M. Chapman. I am director of the Resources Committee with 

 offices at tlie American Tunaboat Association, 1 Tuna Lane. San Diego, Calif. 

 The Resources Committee is an organization whose primary purpose is to repre- 

 sent the common interests of canners, boatowners, and fishermen in the southern 

 California fishing industry in respect of the law of the sea, ocean research, 

 conservation, and like problems relating to the abundance and availability of 

 the ocean resources we harvest. 



We principally harvest tuna. Tunas are preeminently creatures of the open 

 sea. Their eggs are extruded into the open sea and float freely in it prior to 

 hatching. The young drift freely in the open sea until large enough to control 

 their movements, and then spend the rest of their lives as pelagic migrants in 

 the open sea. The relationship of tuna to land masses, while important to us 

 fishermen, is casual to the tuna and is mainly related to the fact that the rub- 



