MARINE SCIENCE 43 
by the budget officers in the Bureau of the Budget and the various departments, 
and that again we will come out with very little. 
I will also predict that once again the Bureau of the Budget will force the de- 
partmental witnesses on S. 901 to testify that the bill is not necessary and that 
Senators and Congressmen will take great delight in crucifying each of these 
witnesses when both they and the witnesses know that the opposition stems not 
from the witnesses, who want the bill passed, but from the budget officers who do 
not. 
Without wishing to comment on details of this legislation, I should like to 
point out the basic importance of the training programs in oceanography and 
the marine sciences highlighted in section 9 and elsewhere and state that the 
prime bottleneck in expanding the Nation’s ocean research activity at present 
appears to be the lack of trained oceanographers. 
Having made these general comments on S. 901, I would like to point out 
three examples of what we seek in the way of ocean research. 
Eastern tropical Pacific—Our tuna fishery was built and grew in the eastern 
Pacific in the area from southern California to northern Chile. In this area 
occur two kinds of tuna, yellowfin and skipjack. They are present in differing 
volumes and react differently to ocean changes and to the fishery. 
The yellowfin are concentrated around the land masses, or within a few 
hundred miles of them, during the first 4 years of their life when they are 
schooled in the surface layers of the ocean and thus available to American fisher- 
men. They are present in the eastern Pacific Ocean in finite quantity. Thanks to 
the researches of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, we know this 
quantity to be such as will produce, on a basis of sustainable yield, about 80,000 
to 120,000 tons of tuna per year. Our fishing effort has now just about reached 
this level and is still growing. Accordingly, we can anticipate conservation 
regulations being applied on yellowfin fishing in the area in a short while, and 
we are doing what we can to make this possible when needed. 
The skipjack are obviously enormously more abundant in the area than are 
the yellowfin. We have produced as much as 80,000 tons of skipjack in a year 
in the area and our fishing effort has never yet been big enough in relation to the 
stock of skipjack available in the area to have produced a measurable effect 
upon it. Obviously, the way to provide for the continued growth of the tuna 
fishery in the area is to shift its intensity continually onto the enormously 
abundant skipjack stocks. 
The trouble is that the skipjack are not very cooperative. After a year or two 
in the surface waters reasonably close to shore where they can be located by the 
fishermen, they go out to sea perhaps 500, perhaps 1,500 miles from shore. There 
we know that they are concentrated by the ocean in various places and con- 
ditions. To put it very roughly, they appear to be concentrated in relation to 
the interfaces between currents, either vertical, horizontal, or sloping, where up- 
welling and consequent enrichment of biological productivity is present. Put 
even more plainly, wherever in the ocean that temperature is tolerable to them 
and food is most abundant, there skipjack are likely to be concentrated in suf- 
ficient abundance that you can catch a load quickly enough to get back to port 
and deliver your cargo at the low, prevailing prices and have a profit left. 
The ‘trick is to find out where the interface, ocean front, or food concentra- 
tion is. Since the ocean currents are ever shifting over wide areas of latitude 
and longtitude, this is not an easy job. We have advanced in our knowledge 
of the ocean and the fish, however, to the point where we know that it is not 
an impossible task. 
We know that such concentrations of skipjack may be expected, for instance, in 
the band of ocean between 5° and 15° north latitude and between 110° and 140° 
west longitude. While this is only a little piece of the Pacific Ocean, it is a big 
piece of water. To work this area from San Diego is perfectly feasible physi- 
cally with our present fleet, the larger units of which are quite competent to 
make a 10,000-mile fishing trip. But to operate profitably one must locate the 
fish quickly, catch them quickly, and get back to port quickly. 
The problem of the San Diego fisherman now is about the same as would be 
that of a fisherman setting out from Washington, D.C., westward, not knowing 
whether he could expect to locate a catchable school of tuna off Chicago, or 
New Orleans, or maybe off Kansas City, and with a fair chance they would be 
found off Phoenix or Seattle. His vessel is perfectly capable of going to any or 
all of these places, but if he has to spend time looking at two or three of them 
on one trip before catching a load, the bank will be foreclosing on his mortgage 
soon. 
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