to the demanding nation. If, as seems desirable, international agree- 
ment is to be the principal mode for regulating these resources and for 
providing the necessary control and management, major problems 
may be expected in reaching an international consensus about appro- 
priate limits on exploitation, methods for limiting exploitation and 
allocation or sharing of permissible yields. It is possible that entirely 
new international institutions and procedures must be created if 
optimum use of these international resources is to be realized. The 
Panel believes that intensive multidisciplinary study is needed of 
relevant factors which are likely to be encountered in the course of 
these developments. 
(3) Employment of bottom-mounted installations and equipment 
(see secs. 4, 5). 
Implementation of the national ocean program envisaged by the 
Panel requires use of the ocean bottom for positioning instrumenta- 
tion and equipment for a variety of purposes, including emplacement 
of laboratories and test stations. Potential international legal prob- 
lems involved in these operations appear to depend on precise locations 
employed, various characteristics of the equipment or installation and 
the specific assertion of national authority demanded over the area 
concerned. If equipment or installations (manned or unmanned) 
are to be emplaced within the ocean territory of other nations, includ- 
ing in this context the Continental Shelf, problems of the type already 
discussed under (1) above may be expected, as well as others. 
The precise scope of the adjacent nation’s authority over activities 
by other nations on its Continental Shelf, which is described in the 
Continental Shelf Convention as “sovereignty” for certain purposes, 
is not yet fully delineated, but it extends at least to certain kinds of 
scientific research. In addition it is conceivable that these ocean- 
floor activities, whether undertaken on a foreign Continental Shelf 
or on that contiguous to the United States, entail interference or con- 
flict with other kinds of activities in the same area, depending on 
characteristics of the equipment or installation on the bottom and the 
nature of the area’s other uses. Even for otherwise permissible under- 
sea operations there might be a need, therefore, for specific efforts at 
accommodation with other activities. It should be noted again, for 
emphasis in this context, that the region of “Continental Shelf” within 
the authority of the adjacent nation has not yet been determined 
finally, and the possibility exists that under the current vague defini- 
tion of the continental shelf enormous expanses of the ocean bottom 
may come to be regarded as subject to certain controls by a particular 
nation. 
Difficult questions are also involved if emplacement of equipment 
or a manned installation, such as a laboratory or test station, in high- 
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