66 MARINE SCIENCE 
and the Department of the Interior, and should be considered as part of any 
well-rounded scheme for the development of the fisheries of west Africa. 
At a meeting of sea fishery and oceanography specialists held under the aus- 
pices of CSA in Monrovia, Liberia, on and after December 3, 1960, a scheme was 
proposed which envisioned a general survey of the oceanography and the sea 
resources of west Africa. A resolution was adopted suggesting that the Com- 
mission for Technical Cooperation in Africa South of the Sahara (CCTA/CSA) 
ask its member governments to seek on an urgent basis external scientific, tech- 
nical, and financial aid in undertaking this project which would be expected 
_ to yield basic assistance to 60-odd million people living in the 10 or so countries 
bathed by the Benguela Current, the Canary Current and the Counter Equatorial 
Current. 
It is known that the oceanographic conditions of the eastern tropical and 
subtropical Atlantic are similar enough to those of the eastern Pacific that the 
biological productivity of the area must be large. Working on the basis of this 
knowledge the fishing industries of these Asian, North American, and European 
countries have been developing the high seas fisheries off west Africa during the 
past 5 years and with increasing tempo the last 2 years. 
The known oceanographic and fishing information of the area has not been 
available to these new African nations in a form useful to them for the reason 
that they do not have scientific establishments competent to translate ‘these 
data into practically usable terms nor do they have the fishing industries yet 
that are sophisticated enough to make use of the information if it were trans- 
lated into usable terms. 
The nucleus fishery staffs that these new countries do have realize, however, 
the imperative need of gaining this information quickly so that their fish re- 
quirements can be met by building their own fishing industries based on these 
data and these resources. They think this so strongly that they wish to go 
forward with this survey on an urgent basis seeking help for it either from 
East or West or both. There are obvious international political and defense bene- 
fits to the United States which would derive from this work being done under the 
leadership of American scientists. 
A third scheme appeared from ‘the Symposium on Tunas conducted under the 
auspices of CCTA/CSA at Dakar, Senegal, December 17 to 21, 1960. This 
symposium recommended to CCTA/CSA that that international organ recom- 
mend to its member countries the calling of a conference of plenipotentiaries 
for the purpose of concluding a treaty establishing an International Commis- 
sion on Tuna for the tropical and subtropical Atlantic along the lines of the 
Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission that operates in the eastern Pacific 
and for the same purposes. 
The symposium considered that such an international conservation commis- 
sion was mandatory in respect of tuna because already the fishermen of four 
continents were fishing on these stocks of tuna, nobody was keeping the re- 
quired basic statistics to learn when or whether conservation measures would 
be required, and that the African nations were quite unable to handle this 
international problem alone. 
This is the sort of thing at which the Department of State is expert. The 
United States is presently a member of nine of these international fishery 
conservation commissions which are working well. The United States has re- 
peatedly taken the lead in establishing such commissions and calling conferences 
for this purpose even where (as in whaling) the United States has less direct 
interest in the fishery than it has in the west African tuna fishery. The De- 
partment of State has skilled experts in this sort of thing and the Department 
of the Interior has skilled experts in the scientific managerial aspects of such 
problems. 
We believe that it would be desirable for the U.S. Government to look into 
this matter, take such actions as appears to be appropriate, and proceed on it 
with considerable urgency because the tuna fisheries of west Africa are grow- 
ing with surprising rapidity both as to production volume and as to the number 
of nations participating in them. 
There is a fourth subject that needs to be looked at with respect to Nigeria 
in particular and probably also in neighboring countries. That is the provision 
of credit facilities. 
If the Tin-Can Island scheme is put in train there will be the possibility of 
a domestic Nigerian sea-fishing industry growing, which is the desideratum. 
There is not inconsequential moneys available in Nigeria, both private and goy- 
