468 
INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE NORTHWEST ATLANTIC 
FISHERIES (ICNAF) ; 
ICNAF was formally established in 1949. The United States has 
been a member since its founding, the Soviet Union since 1958. 
Commission membership presently totals 17, with Cuba being the 
newest member. 
The Commission has the responsibility of investigating, protecting, 
and conserving the fisheries of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean and 
to make such recommendations!as are necessary to maintain the fish- 
eries at the level of maximum sustainable yield. 
The Commission has been quite successful in the past several years 
in obtaining agreement among its members to sharply reduce their 
catches to protect declining stocks. However, these reductions have 
only been achieved after difficult negotiations, with the United States 
firmly insisting that the Commission make the difficult decisions neces- 
sary to protect declining stocks and going so far (in 1972) of threaten- 
ing to withdraw from ICNAF if it failed to do so. Because of the 
complexity of the existing arrangements due to the large mix of species 
involved and the multitude (17) of nations engaged in the fisheries, 
the Commission has not been able to resolve the issues posed to 
it at each annual meeting and has had to schedule special meetings 
every year. 
The most recent special meeting of the Commission was convened 
in Montreal in September 1975. There the United States was able 
to obtain a sharp reduction in the 1976 overall catch quota for the 
area off the U.S. coast which would allow a rapid recovery of the 
depleted biomass. The Commission set the 1976 level of catch 
(including squids) at 650,000 metric tons, a reduction of 23 percent 
from the 1975 quota. According to U.S. fisheries scientists, there 
is a high probability that at this reduced level of fishing the total 
resource should recover within 7 years. 
The Commission, in addition, agreed to close a large area off 
Georges Bank to bottom trawling throughout the year to reduce the 
by-catches of the seriously depleted yellowtail and haddock stocks 
of special concern to the U.S. fisheries. The Commission, however, 
was not able to agree on the implementation of an improved enforce- 
ment system. The establishment of such a system is most necessary 
to ensure that the vessels of all the member countries are conducting 
their fishing operations in full compliance with the Commission’s regu- 
lations. Unfortunately, this has not been the case in the past. 
Since the Soviet Union has the largest fleet operating in the Conven- 
tion area, the sharp reductions in catches, as well as the imposition 
of other restrictions, has naturally affected the Soviet fisheries the 
most. 
MIDDLE ATLANTIC BILATERAL AGREEMENT 
In the middle 1960’s, the foreign fleets, primarily the Soviet Union’s, 
which had mainly operated off the Canadian coast and off New 
England (Sub-Area 5 in ICNAF Convention waters) began to expand 
their operations southward to the middle Atlantic Ocean which is 
outside the jurisdictional limits of ICNAF as far as regulatory measures 
are concerned. The intensive southward expansion made it desirable 
