208 OCEANOGRAPHY 



on to do his work. On top of this come all the comparable equipment, personnel 

 and time costs that the land scientist has. But what happens is that the ocean 

 scientist's appropriations go up on the same scale as those of the land scientist. 

 Thus if he uses his money for ship time at sea he has no money left for labora- 

 tory work at home. 



We run vessels of comparable size in comparable waters and are prepared to 

 testify that ocean research vessels operating in this region operate at as good 

 efficiency as can be wanted. If you want to learn about the sea you have to get 

 out on it, and that costs money. 



This country has the needs, the competent scientists, the able executive 

 agencies, and a high degree of coordination in its ocean re.search planning and 

 execution to enable it to do what is wanted on the sea. What is needed to get 

 our ocean research on an adequate basis is money, and some time. We believe 

 that the enactment of general oceanography legislation such as the committee 

 has before it will expedite getting the money and this will cut down the time 

 required to expand the country's present ocean research program. 



While we do not wish in any way to ileprecate space research we believe that 

 mankind and the United States may be well served by having a good look at the 

 bottom of the o<-ean before examining in detail the back side of the moon. We 

 note that the Russians seem to think so, too. So far as we know they are the 

 only country in the world whose fishery agency has a research submarine at sea 

 working on commercial fishery problems. 



Mr, Chapman. I ajii of course, W. M. Chapman of San Diego, 

 Calif., director of The Kesourc«s Committee. 



The people in our industry live by and on and from the ocean and 

 are interested in all aspects of the medium in which we make our liv- 

 ing. It is our responsibility under international law and practice not 

 to overfish any of the resources that we work upon because these are 

 the property of the international community and are in the public 

 domain. This was wliere our first interest in ocean research really 

 came to us — by the difficuties we had in ascertaining whether or not 

 we were overfishing the resources on which we were working. 



Directly after the war, severfil of the Latin American countries 

 adopted a policy of a breadth of territorial sea extending to a mini- 

 mum distance of 200 miles from their coast. They did so on the basis 

 that the U.S. fishermen were overfishing the resources off their coast 

 and endangering the future fishery resources of their countries. We 

 were the fishermen they were talking about because we were the only 

 U.S. fishermen in the area. 



The United States could not tolerate a breadth of territorial sea 

 like this because of its military and mercantile operations. Yet it 

 could not tolerate being accused by its neighboring States of over- 

 fishing resources which were jointly owned. 



The upshot of this was the establishment of the Inter- American 

 Tropical Tuna Commission, whose director testified before you here 

 last week. 



"Wliile the situation which brought this about is an international 

 political one, the problem had to be settled by scientific investigation, 

 and Dr. Schaefer and his group of young scientists at the Inter- 

 American Tropical Tuna Commission have done this. They have a 

 sufficient understanding of the populations of tuna in the eastern 

 Pacific and the effect of our fishing effort upon them to be able 

 to state in a manner that is agreed to by all of the countries involved 

 that there is no overfishing. Is the mechanism in the treaty estab- 

 lishing the Commission sufficient and adequate to prevent any 

 overfishing when there is danger of that occurring in the future. 



So that particular objective for which the Commission was estab- 

 lished has been fulfilled and is being fulfilled. 



