OCEANOGRAPHY 199 



those of the land. They do not belong to anyone or to any country. They are the 

 common property of all mankind. The only property rule which applies is that 

 they belong to him who first reduces them to his possession. 



The nations of the world have earnestly tried for 1.3 years to reach some gen- 

 eral worldwide settlement of this problem. The International Law Commission 

 has devoted a major part of seven of its annual sessions to this proljlem since 

 1947. The General Assembly of the United Nations has debated and considered 

 it at several .sessions during that time. It has been from time to time a major 

 topic in meetings of NATO, which is supposed to be primarily an organization 

 for mutual defense. It has long been a topic for discussion in the Organization 

 of American States. A 4.5 nation conference under United Nations auspices was 

 held on the subject in Rome in 1955 ; an 82 nation conference considered it in 

 Geneva in 1958; an 88 nation conference considered it fruitlessly in Geneva in 

 1960. 



The inevitable conclusion to be reached from these broad, very active and in- 

 tensive international diplomatic efforts is that there is no general conclusion 

 to this problem that can be reached by the international community at this time. 



The problem is composed of two parts: (1) Shall the living resources of the 

 sea be protected from overfishing so that each of them can produce its maximum 

 sustainable harvest each year into the future, and (2) how shall this be done? 



The first part of this problem was settled at the Rome Conference and con- 

 firmed at the First Geneva Conference. All nations wei'e able to agree on the 

 necessity and desirability for conservation, define it, and accept responsibility to 

 see that their fishermen did not overfish these resources. A very good mecha- 

 nism for in-suring what should be done was adopted by a big majority at the First 

 Geneva Conference. 



The second part of the problem, how should the fish be divided among the 

 nations, proved incapable of solution. This failed primarily because of ignorance. 

 The fishing countries did not know enough about the ocean and the fish, and 

 the relationship between the two and the fishing effort to give any broad assur- 

 ance to the nonfishing countries that they knew how to frame proper conserva- 

 tion regulations, except in a few instances, such as our tuna fishery, the Pacific 

 halibut, etc. Given this state of knowledge, the nonfishing countries in order 

 to protect their joint ownership interests in the high seas resources wished to 

 be able to extend their jurisdiction unilaterally out over the fisheries in the 

 adjacent high seas at their will. Their contention was that only they could 

 insure the protection of the fish resources from the rapacity of the foreign 

 fishermen. 



The fishing nations could not accept this solution on these main grounds : 



(a) They needed the fish, too, to feetl their populations and to protect their 

 economies. Good examples of this among small countries were Greece, Portugal, 

 Belgium, and the Netherlands. Good examples among big industrial nations 

 were Japan. Englan-rl. and Russia (for Russia has adamantly been against any 

 controls by the coastal state over fisheries more than 12 miles from its coast 

 except those necessary for conservation and jointly developed and agreed to 

 by the fishing country and the coastal state). 



(h) Granting preferential controls over high seas fi.sheries to the coastal state 

 would .give no assuran-ce of proper conservation and might tend to defeat that 

 objective because, by and large, what have come to l>e known as the coastal 

 states have little or no scientific establislnnents comjietent to ferret out the 

 facts required to undertake adequate conservation regulations in high seas 

 fi.sheries. Good examples of this are the emergent nations of Africa, the new 

 nations of southeast Asia, and almost all of the older nations of Latin America. 



(c) For the coastal state to have the right to block off foreign fishermen from 

 high seas resources that were not fully fished would merely increase the wastage 

 of ocean resources and decrease the supply of protein food in the world. 



(d) The principal problem in increasing the flow of food from the ocean up 

 to this time at any rate has not been the prevention of overfishing, but decreas- 

 ing the cost per ton of production Cas noted below) so that consumers could 

 afford to buy the product. Splitting up the ocean into spheres of influence or 

 ownership by the nations would simply increase the cost of fish production by 

 the most efficient producers, the large distant water vessels. 



( r) As nofefl bfinw-, there seems to be no possibilitv of agreeing on a system 

 of ownership of high se-is resouvr-ps thnt does no involve ownership of fho n<^oan. 

 and this v.-ould «o intf>rfpre with the free use of the sen bv vessels of all kind 

 as to be nuite inconsistent with the best interests of mankind or of even a simple 

 majority of nations. 



