400 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



who will wish to seek gain from other nations by controls of one sort or another 

 over navigation or other sea use. This has always been the case and it has been 

 always the responsibility of some country or group of countries to keep the sea 

 open for general use by repressing such special interests as long as there has been 

 history. Whenever and wherever ruling sea strength has waned, from the second 

 millennium B.C. to the present decade, piracy has automatically cropped up 

 quickly. It is present now occasionally in the Celebes Sea and the Strait of 

 Malacca. 



The rapid growth of sea use in this century, the swift rise in volume of ocean 

 transport that goes with increasing industrialization throughout the world, and 

 the general increased pace of international communication by sea, make a fully 

 free use of the sea more vital to humanity today than ever before. 



Certainly the interests of the United States in all aspects are served best by a 

 narrow territorial sea and before any change is sought in the 3-mile policy of this 

 Government the reasons for this, and the gain to be derived from it, should be 

 subjected to the most critical examination. 



The 12-mile limit for fisheries 



(2) There is much talk in the United States presently about adopting a 12-mile 

 fishery limit as differentiated from a 3-mile limit for the territorial sea. This 

 derives almost entirely from fishery interests and their representatives who are 

 interested in preventing foreign fishermen from competing with them in fisheries 

 in which they are engaged. This has become politically popular in some parts of 

 the country. 



From the fishery standpoint the whole matter is rather trivial, as I have dis- 

 cussed at greater length in another connection. The number of fish stocks fished 

 upon by U.S. fishermen that will gain more protection from a 12-mile limit than 

 from a 3-mile limit are not many or very important. On the other hand a 12-mile 

 fishery limit adopted by neighboring countries off which American fishermen 

 fish will hurt some of our fisheries somewhat in special localities but its effect on 

 the whole fish production of the United States would not be very much either. 



Additionally there will not likely be any great amount of diplomatic activity 

 grow out of sueh an action on our part. Canadian fishermen have pressed, 

 their Government already to take such action. Mexico already claims 9 miles 

 of territorial sea on the Gulf of Mexico side and would not be adverse to wider 

 limits. The country fishing off our coast most actively, Russia, is the prime 

 exponent of the 12-mile limit and would undobtedly be pleased by us taking 

 slieh action. The countries of northern Europe have already become accustomed 

 to such accommodations off Iceland, Norway, Faroe, etc. Japan is slowly 

 edging toward this viewpoint. Accordingly for the United States to accept a 

 12-mile limit for fishery .iurisdiction only would be a matter of acquiescence 

 not generation of a new action. 



Since this will not provide the protection desired by the U.S. groups pressing 

 for this action some attention should be paid in consideration of such action, 

 to the grounds upon which it is taken. If it is taken on the basis of protecting 

 our fishermen from foreign competition then one must have some concern aboxit 

 the political consequences of the lack of such protection that it will afford, 

 and the effect of what the next step these groups want will be upon the piublic 

 policy of the United States respecting the law of the sea. 



One must have some concern also for the eroding effect of a 12-mile fishing limit 

 may have upon the 3-mile breadth for the territorial sea, and judge whether 

 this is of consequence to general U.S. interest. 



Continental Shelf jurisdiction 



(3) Among the interests in the United States, in both fishing and mineral 

 production, some concern is expressed respecting jurisdiction over the Con- 

 tinental Shelf and its resources. 



In the case of mineral resources there still are unsolved some questions of 

 what the limit of the territorial sea of the United States is in the Gulf of 

 Mexico. 



This affects the relations of the United States with other countries, and 

 particularly with Mexico. It also can hardly escape having an effect on the 

 relations of the United States to the 3-mile limit for the territorial sea and 

 thus this whole field of its military and diplomtic policy. There is no country, 

 to my knowledge, which claims one breadth for the territorial sea off one 

 part of its coast and another off another part of its coast. How the United 

 States could maintain a 3-mile limit off its east and west coasts and its island 



