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this field more effectively, organize more effectively, the United States ocean use 
apparatus to interact better with the improved international ocean use apparatus, 
and to reduce barriers to the full interaction between these two apparati at all 
levels. While his will require substantial new funds in the long run the chief 
present need is to tidy up policy and the machinery for its implementation with 
only modest amounts of new money. The special needs of the United States fish 
trade can be safely ignored in this because if the United States attends to its 
general responsibilities in this international field more effectively the special 
needs of the United States fish trade will be attended to adequately. It is doing 
pretty well by itself under present conditions. 
B. The Federal fisheries function 
Substantive responsibility for commercial fisheries affairs in the United States 
Government presently rests in the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of the Depart- 
ment of the Interior, pursuant to the Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 and other acts. 
This is entirely too restricted a frame of reference in which to conduct United 
States policy and its implementation in the management of the use of living 
aquatic resources at the present date, and it will be quite impossible as new 
developments in the use of the ocean and the fresh water environment come 
under the inexorable pressure of new science and technology, new aspirations of 
United States citizens and humanity in general arise, new pressures on world food 
supply arise from increasing population, and new pressures from changing world 
power adjustments develop. The Federal Fishery Function must be broadened 
and strengthened to a degree that does not fit present or past organization if it 
is to perform its role in United States society with reasonable effectiveness. 
The Federal Fishery Function should be equipped with the following author- 
ities and abilities, for reasons set out both above and below: 
1. Policy.—There should be a Congressionally adopted policy to cover the 
total needs of the United States in respect of the multiple use of aquatic 
resources. The one cited on pages 57 is recommended. 
2. Recreational use domestically.—The fisheries (aquatic resources) func- 
tions presently residing in both the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife and 
the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of the Department of the Interior, should be 
combined into one organization, here called the Federal Fishery Function. As 
noted in the policy referred to above the recreational use of aquatic resources, 
and their commercial use are both so important in the United States, and so 
closely interact in all areas of the nation and at all levels, that it is necessary for 
their administration and governmental support to be much more closely inte- 
grated than it is at present. 
8. Environmental Research and its Application.—Fishing has been conducted 
heretofore pretty well on the basis of experience and aptitude of the individual 
fisherman or skipper. The chief reason for this has been that the state of environ- 
mental and biological research has been so primitive that predictions that were 
very useful to the fisherman could not be made. Natural processes were not well 
enough understood to make this possible. There was little in the way of effective 
governmental machinery available to transmit what was known in useful and 
timely fashion to the only person who could use it, the fisherman (or other 
resource user) at sea. 
This situation is changing rapidly as more is learned of the interrelationship 
of energy flow between sea and air, and the effect of these changes on the bio- 
logical resources. It will change more rapidly with the implementation of the 
World Weather Watch of the World Meteorological Organization, the Global 
Atmospheric Research Program of the WMO, the International Global Ocean 
Station System of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the World 
Resources Appraisal of the FAO Department of Fisheries, the International 
Decade for Ocean Exploration now proposed by the United States, the Expanded 
Program for International Cooperation in Ocean Affairs now being proposed 
by the Secretary General of the United Nations, and the varied scientific and 
technological inputs from dozens of other international, intergovernmental, non- 
governmental, and national agencies and institutions dealing with the ocean and 
the atmosphere. : 
The National Sea Grant College Program now in the National Science Founda- 
tion is beginning to bring a whole new look to means of translating the input 
from these new sources of science and technology to the users at sea in timely 
manner and in form they can readily understand and use. 
The environmental and biological numerical data from all these multiple new 
sources are arriving at the National Ocean Data Center in enormous volume and 
