Rehabilitating 



United States Fislieries 



Fishermen have long contended with one another. Competition for a common 

 resource has set commercial fishermen against the sportsman, one segment of 

 the industry against another, one locality in the Nation against another, one 

 nation against another. But now, as a consequence of technological improve- 

 ment and overcapitalization, there exists the capability to fish to extinction. 

 Awareness of this dreadful possibility is becoming universal and, NACOA feels, 

 has produced the opportunity to achieve agreements by which to manage the 

 ocean's living resources and conserve the ability to harvest them. This in turn 

 would make it possible to create in the United States an environment which 

 attracts private enterprise and thus leads to rehabilitation of a declining fishing 

 industry. This section discusses the new awareness and the means by which a 

 coherent program may be developed. 



A COMMON THREAT 



A gap exists between the declared national policy to rehabilitate the 

 fisheries of the United States and the specifics of how to do it. One reason 

 is that agreement on which of many problems is most important is no 

 easier to come by than agreement on \vhat to do if certain ones were 

 picked. We are thus twice removed from coming to grips with the issues. 



NACOA believes this situation is changing in the face of a common 

 threat. We believe there is a general awareness — quite recent in origin — 

 of what had previously been shrugged oflF as local by all except those 

 affected. This threat, which now touches all coasts and all segments of 

 the fishing industry and of sports fishing, is the threat to fish as a re- 

 source itself. 



While there are underutilized fisheries, the potential for over-fishing 

 exists by the international and interstate nature of much of the industry 

 and the technolog\- which underlies it. This potential for overfishing is 

 stimulated by improving technology and by an economics which offers 

 incentive to overfish to the fishermen who have little responsibility for 

 management. It is not the husbandman who would kill the goose that lays 

 the golden egg. but the hunter. 



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