48 MARINE SCIENCE 
thing again with a view to having a competent, comprehensive program of 
research available for the next meeting of the marine research committee in 
early June. 
This is the second area of ocean research priority of the California fishing 
industry. Unlike the first priority area of the eastern tropical Pacific where 
new and added data are perhaps the great need, in this second area abundant 
unworked data are already on hand and what is needed perhaps most is not new 
data but new understanding. One might say that the prime component of the 
eastern tropical Pacific area problem is survey, while the prime component 
desire in the California Current area is research. 
In both areas it may be noted that while the fishery people are the prime 
promoters and have been to date the prime doers of the basic ocean research, 
we are not any longer the largest or most important users of the research re- 
sults. Accordingly, we hope and intend that the new users will begin to feel 
uncomfortable if they don’t start picking up their share of the tabs. At least 
we intend to work in that direction. 
West Africa—The third example of ocean research which we wish to eall 
to your attention lies in the area of the eastern Atlantic from Morocco on the 
north to Angola on the south, and perhaps 1,000 miles to sea from the African 
coast. 
In the northern section of this area, along the coast of Morocco and Mauri- 
tania, considerable trawl fisheries are beginning to be developed by the French, 
Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Israeli, and Tunisian vessels. To the south 
of this already large tuna fisheries are being developed by those countries, the 
Japanese, Nationalist China, the United States, and Norway. Off the coast of 
Ghana substantial sardine fisheries are being developed by the Russians, Poles, 
and Hast Germans. 
Leaving aside for the moment the fishermen of all of these industrially de- 
veloped peoples, one must look at the situation of the numerous new nations of 
Africa which border on this section of sea. 
Running from Gambia on the west through the Cameroons on the east into 
the Congo, and central Africa is a belt of dense rain forest. In this jungle live 
some 50 to 60 million Africans. ‘There also lives the tse-tse fly which carries 
diseases and makes the cultivation of domestic food animals inpracticable, and 
game animals scarce. These Africans depend consequently for the protein 
part of their diet upon dried and smoked fish. Their richly productive inland 
waters do not produce enough for their sustenance. They import large quanti- 
ties of dried fish from other countries with foreign exchange they cannot afford 
to spend. The individual inhabitants are poor and cannot in many instances 
afford to buy enough of even these poor products to more than maintain life. 
Protein deficiency to some degree is the normal lot of most of these Africans 
all of their life and the dreaded protein deficiency disease “Kwashiorkor” is 
tae of the larger contributors to the abnormally high childhood death rate in 
e area. 
Directly offshore from this weltering mass of poorly fed people is one of the 
most productive sectors of the world ocean, producing precisely the sort of 
food which the people ashore both need and want. So far as they are concerned 
the fish may as well be on the backside of the moon because you can’t harvest 
high seas fishery resources with hand-paddled or sail-driven dugout canoes with 
enough efficiency to feed many people very long or very well. But this is 
the only sort of vessel these people have or know how to use. 
The Russians discovered all of this about the same time we did and with 
characteristic efficiency began bending these factors of human misery and 
opportunity to their diplomatic profit. ‘The Poles have now undertaken to 
provide Guinea with a modern fishing industry; the Russians, according to 
our trade information, are considering doing the same for Ghana. It is not 
an unrelated fact that Guinea appears to be lost to the free world and that 
Ghana, at the very best, appears to be on the fence. Our best trade information 
leads us to believe that the United States and the free world has between 
18 and 24 months to demonstrate its good will and the efficiency of our way of 
government and doing business to these newly originated nations and thus 
Keep them from drifting behind the Iron Curtain. 
We are fish people. We do not purport to be diplomats, but we do get around 
the world a good bit and watch what is going on. In our humble opinion, the 
United States could do much in the next 2 years to win friends in West Africa 
by showing these people how to get the fish out of the nearby ocean that they 
