Where is the National Plan? 



The big question for NACOA is whether some progress is enough 

 progress. On this score we are less optimistic because the solutions do not 

 seem to be gaining on the problems. We believe the general situation of 

 the U.S. fisheries will not be reversed until the NMFS can get a handle 

 on how much effort must be put where, by whom, and by when. NACOA 

 sees little evidence of a national planning effort for U.S. fisheries which 

 would give assurance that priority is given the most critical issues — a far 

 more complicated question than the choice of the most important species 

 because it involves internal and international economic and legal questions. 



The key recommendation of the NACOA Report in Fisheries last year 

 was that a national planning effort for U.S. fisheries is necessary if the 

 U.S. fishing industry is to better its place amongst the fishing nations of 

 the world in the face of a tightening oceanwide race for the resource. 

 Similar efforts at developing a coordinated strategy have been suggested 

 before. They have not taken hold, perhaps because the approach to fisheries 

 problems has been built on response to local or specialized needs. Such 

 efforts are piecemeal. A larger view is needed. We will therefore go into 

 a little more detail about the reasoning NACOA used in arriving at its 

 recommendation for a planning effort and perhaps, in that way, help get 

 things started. 



Finding the Range 



Our national position on fisheries is not independent of our international 

 position and discussion of a national plan should therefore be reviewed 

 against the backdrop of the stand on fisheries taken by the United States 

 in preparation for the Law of the Sea Conference in 1974. We quote last 

 year's succinct statement on this. 



The U.S. position with respect to the fisheries question has been slow in formula- 

 tion because of the lack of an agreed industrywide position. Now, however, the 

 industry as a whole has agreed to support the position prepared by the U.S. Work- 

 ing Group. The coaHtion of interest has been largely induced by the realization 

 that the current worldwide fishing capability can grossly reduce the catch of 

 currently marketable fish and alter the relative species balance in a major way if 

 uncontrolled and unregulated. The position proposed is to assign each coastal 

 fishery to the adjacent state for management and licensing: to assign responsibility 

 for anadromous fish to the country in whose waters the fish spawn ; and to rely 

 on multilateral arrangements for the pelagic fisheries. The basic approach is to 

 place priority on conservation of the resource. This approach, in the case of the 

 coastal fi.shery, has the important corollary that the fixed territorial concept is 

 removed from the important fisheries domain, and should help relieve the pressures 

 which appear to be driving territorial limits outward.* 



* "First Annual Report to the President and the Congress by NACOA," GPO, 

 Washington, D.C., June 30, 1972, p. 7. 



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