206 OCEANOGRAPHY 



so far in fact impossible, for our top diplomats to comprehend that the vote on 

 such overpowering policy matters depends upon the fish vote. 



It has been even more difficult to get across the point that these votes arise 

 in large part from ignorance of ocean conditions. A perfect example is posed by 

 the votes of Chile, Ecuador, and Peru that defeated us at Geneva in 19G0. These 

 countries do not know the status of the fish populations off their coast or the 

 relations of variations in oceanic circulation to them. They do not have research 

 establishments of their own to find these things out. Accordingly they feel that 

 the safest way to safeguard their future food supply is to claim sovereignty over 

 all the seas to a minimum distance of 200 miles from their coasts. Then with 

 ownership of the resources they can protect them. 



Yet to get the appropriations, modest though they are, with which to fund an 

 adequate ocean research program in that area of ocean to dispel this ignorance 

 and by so doing to ease this fear is quite impossible. The biggest factor leading 

 to amity in the area has been the ocean research of the Inter-American Tropical 

 Tuna Commission. Yet the same Department of State that is wringing its hands 

 at the defeat in this spring's law of the sea conference (which was lost by the 

 last miiuite defection of Ecuador) denied an increase of .$14,000 in tlie 1961 

 budget for the Inter-American Ti'opical Tuna Commission which the Commission 

 wanted to establish some research in Ecuador of the type Ecuador wanted for 

 the resolution of this prob'em. 



This is only one example out of very many. Each of these fish problems among 

 our allies wliich has made it inijxissible to get the needed votes for a ujirrow 

 territorial sea is based on fear for future food supply, a fear that can only be 

 resolved or mitigated by ocean research to find out the facts. 



2. Wo?-ld food supply 



The press for protein food in the world is gi'eat, and will continue to increase. 

 In Latin America and in southeast Asia it is already critical in areas of the 

 world where high seas fishery resources are known to be large and eflScient fish- 

 eries sparse. 



Our foreign aid program in agriculture goes forward very effectively in a 

 wide variety of countries ; our foreign aid program in high seas fisheries is gen- 

 erally ineffective. One cannot help but feel that this is connected with the 

 millions of dollars i)er year that this country has spent on agi'icultural research 

 in this century, which has so revolutionized food production from the land, and 

 the parsimonious appropriations for ocean food research — a condition that ob- 

 tains to this date. The agriculturist from this country has something to teach 

 the dirt farmer of India to increase the yield of his work. The fishery scientist 

 does not have very much. 



Yet every step taken in the United States to put ocean fishery research on a 

 footing comparable with U.S. worldwide responsibilities has been opposed by 

 the executive branch of the Government irregardless of the party in control. In 

 recent years the original Saltonstall-Kennedy bill was opposed by the Executive. 

 The reorganization of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was opposed by the 

 Executive. Because under these two acts money for ocean reseach had been 

 slipped through the Bureau of the Budget's guard, it has since held down firmly 

 an expansion of the Bureau of Commercial Fishery's regular budget needed to 

 meet modern research conditions. 



S. U.S. food supply 



With the agricultural surpluses that plague the Government it is quite incom- 

 prehensible to the executive branch of the Government that the country's source 

 of food from the sea is in any danger or that this should be any source of con- 

 cern. Yet for the past 10 years one after the other of our major sea fisheries 

 has gone downhill and the fish part of our national diet has become increasingly 

 dependent upon the i)roduct of foreign fishermen. In the years 19.55 through 

 19.59 the value of edible fish imports increased from $208 million to $311 million 

 whereas the export of such products only increase from $20,82.3,00 to $21,640,000. 

 This movement is increasing. In 1959 the imports were about 15 percent higher 

 in value than in 1958. 



While the U.S. high seas fisheries have been permitted to molder and retro- 

 gress the other principal fishing countries of the world have bent every effort to 

 increase the yield of their high seas fisheries. Examples are Japan, England, 

 West Germany, and Russia among the highly industrialized countries. It seems 

 a safe assumption that what is good for our friends and enemies alike might 

 very well be good for us. 



