I must say that I personally find such an attitude distressing, and 

 I am gratified to note that a position paper, adopted by most of the 

 scientists at that Conference, stated that : 



Until better evidence is available that irreversible changes are not taking 

 place, reason demands that we proceed more carefully, with greater concern for 

 the health of the seas. 



I will ask at this time unanimous consent that this position paper 

 be included in the record at the conclusion of my remarks. 



The most recent statistics from the Food ancl Agricultural Orga- 

 nization of the United Nations indicates that in 1969, the latest year 

 for which we have complete figures, for the first time in 25 years the 

 total fisheries catch from the world's oceans declined by over 1 mil- 

 lion metric tons, as compared to the 1968 high of 64.3 million metric 

 tons. I would hasten to remind all those here today that this happened 

 at a time when our efforts to increase the ocean catch were intensifying 

 and at a time when it is becoming increasingly important to provide 

 needed protein to a hmigry, growing world population. None of us 

 are prepared to say that the decline was due solely to America's ocean 

 dumping policies nor to those of other nations, but I do feel that this 

 is certainly a very ominous sign, and increases the incentives upon 

 this committee and the Congress to see that this comitry does nothing 

 to decrease the perhaps fragile productivity of the world's seas. 



Simply stated then, we can no longer afford the illusion that out 

 of sight is out of mind, and that the oceans may safely be treated as a 

 gigantic dump. They are, or rather should be, a resource — ^not an 

 infinite resource, but one of given magnitude — and they must be treated 

 with care and respect. 



The main bill under consideration by the two subcommittees during 

 these hearings is the administration bill, H.E. 4723, introduced by 

 the distinguished chairman of our full committee, Congressman Gar- 

 matz, and an identical bill introduced by Congressman Pelly, the 

 ranking minority member of this committee; and identical bills in- 

 troduced by Congressman Kemp ; Congressman Euppe, a distinguished 

 member of this committee; Congressman Chamberlain; and Congress- 

 man Gerald Ford, the minority leader of the House. 



There are a number of other bills to be heard during these hear- 

 ings — in fact, a total of 36 in number — some of which are very simi- 

 lar to the administration bill, some of which contain, however, several 

 provisions of the administration bill, ancl some of which contain pro- 

 visions and cover areas not included in the administration bill. We 

 will not take the time this morning to enumerate the bill numbers and 

 authors at this time, but Mr. Dingell and I would like to make it clear 

 that these hearings will cover all bills pending before the committee 

 that have to do with ocean dumping of waste material. 



Let the bills and departmental reports appear in the record at this 

 point. 



