21 
as to review the current state of knowledge as regards ocean sciences 
and to improve international cooperation. This study is also going 
forward. The Secretary General has been directed to report to the 
next U.N. General Assembly, just a year from now. 
LEGAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR EXPLOITATION OF OCHAN SPACE 
Meanwhile, more and more people have recognized that we stand 
at the threshold of what may be a very exciting period in scientific 
development in the marine field. We are already able to put a man 
down to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench, just as we are able 
to put a man above the earth’s atmosphere into outer space. Soon 
we shall be able to perform a variety of tasks in what Senator Pell 
calls “ocean space,” just as we are learning to do more and more 
useful tasks in outer space. 
As recently as 1958, we thought it sufficient to provide for exploita- 
tion of the contimental shelf in a convention prepared under U.N. 
auspices by the Conference on the Law of the Sea. That convention 
provided for the exercise of sovereign rights over adjacent ocean 
floor areas to a depth of 200 meters and beyond to the limit of 
exploitability. 
What we must ask ourselves now is whether we do not need new 
legal arrangements for the exploitation of the outer oceans and the 
deep seabed, and whether we do not need a concerted international 
effort to stimulate and coordinate scientific exploration there. Essen- 
tially, that is what the discussion in the United Nations today is all 
about. 
Our objectives with respect to a legal regime concerning exploita- 
tion of the deep ocean floor are readily identifiable. We desire a legal 
regime that will encourage the development and use of the deep ocean 
floor, that will avoid dangerous conflicts among the nations that will 
be exploiting the floor’s resources and that will be broadly accept- 
able to the nations of the world. 
IMPLICATIONS OF THE MALTA PROPOSAL 
The focal point of international discussion, as has been noted, is 
the proposal made by Ambassador Arvid Pardo, the Representative 
of Maita, in the current U.N. General Assembly. Ambassador Pardo 
has proposed that the Assembly look toward a new international treaty 
which, in brief, would reserve the ocean floor beyond the limit of na- 
tional jurisdiction exclusively for peaceful purposes and establish an 
international agency to assume jurisdiction over the deep ocean floor 
and its resources. In the original Pardo proposal, the financial benefits 
from the exploitation of these resources were to be allocated pri- 
marily to the less developed countries. 
This is an interesting and suggestive proposal, but it obviously 
raises a great many difficulties and problems to which the answers are 
not easily found. The plain fact is that no one has yet had the time or 
the opportunity to think through completely the implications of the 
Pardo proposal and of other proposals calling for substantive action 
on the subject of the oceans. 
87—490—67——_4 
