The Ninth Assembly of the IOC, meeting in October-November 1975, 

 instructed the secretary of the IOC to distribute the Comprehensive Plan 

 for GIPME (including the implementation framew^ork) to all member 

 states for comment by March 1, 1976. The seventh session of the IOC 

 Executive Council, meeting in June 1976, has been requrested to review 

 and approve a final document to permit the immediate implementation 

 of the Comprehensive Plan. 



Another significant action of the Ninth Assembly was the creation of 

 a Scientific Advisory Board to serve as a focal point for the IOC's scien- 

 tific programs. The board, to be composed of 12 senior scientists acting 

 as governmental experts, will review the scientific content of the ongo- 

 ing program of the IOC, and also review, proposals for new programs. 

 On the basis of these reviews, the scientific Advisory Board will make 

 recommendations to the IOC as to the priorities that the IOC should 

 assign to its scientific programs and other matters needed to strengthen 

 the scientific activities of the IOC. The Scientific Advisory Board was 

 established as a 2-year experiment. The Tenth Assembly of the IOC, in 

 1977, will decide whether the scientific Advisory Board, or a similar 

 body, will continue to fuUfill these responsibilities. 



The Ninth Assembly also agreed to establish, on an experimental 

 basis for 6 years, an IOC Association for the Caribbean and Adjacent 

 Regions (lOCARIBE). lOCARIBE will be responsible for implementing 

 all the Commission's programs — research, services, training, education, 

 and mutual assistance — in the lOCARIBE region. lOCARIBE will be a 

 semiautonomous subsidiary body of the IOC with its own regional 

 secretariat. 



The 63rd Statutory Meeting of the International Council for the Ex- 

 ploration of the Sea (ICES) took place in Montreal, Canada, in Septem- 

 ber 1975. It was the first time an ICES meeting has been held on the 

 western side of the Atlantic. At the meeting, ICES, which acts as a scien- 

 tific advisor to several international fisheries commissions, decided to 

 advise the Northeast Atlantic Fisheries Commission to stop all exploita- 

 tion of herring in the North Sea in 1976. The stock is now at such a low 

 level that even the by-catch of herring in other fisheries represents a 

 serious problem for the future. 



Another mission of ICES is the scientific study of marine pollution. 

 ICES has organized a monitoring program for the North Sea, based, in 

 part, on earlier baseline studies. ICES has also decided to extend baseline 

 studies to the entire North Atlantic. These efforts are now well under- 

 way. 



The second meeting of the U.S./U.S.S.R. Joint Committee on Coopera- 

 tion in World Ocean Studies was held in Moscow during May 1975. The 

 Joint Committee assists in the implementation of the provisions of the 

 Agreement on Cooperation in Studies of the World Ocean signed by the 



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