We have not carried out such a planning effort, nor do we under- 

 estimate its difficulty. We believe, however, that most of the capacity to 

 do so resides collectively in the numerous agencies of government, and that 

 the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Conferences and Com- 

 missions such as the international Convention for the Northwest Atlantic 

 Fisheries (ICNAF), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 

 have much of the needed statistical information by which fish populations 

 can be estimated by species and by area. We would be surprised, how- 

 ever, if even collectively they have it all in a form which would permit 

 working backwards from a postulated national market to requirements of 

 a resource without gaps in the analysis. It is not our intention to lay 

 out a detailed plan to mobilize specific agency programs for this effort, 

 but to offer a target by which such programs could be rationalized as a 

 national planning effort under an appropriate lead agency — NOAA, for 

 example — ^to strengthen the fishing industry. The experts can identify the 

 programs, the budgetary requirements, and test our hypothesis that the 

 benefit would be worth the cost. 



Underlying these six steps to rehabilitate the fishing industry is the 

 strategy that we must: 



• assure the resource, 



• assure the U.S. share of the resource by establishing the principle of 

 preferential access, and 



• accommodate the needs of both recreational and commercial fisheries. 

 Since no nation is in a position to take such action unilaterally, implicit 



in this proposition is the recognition that, at the Law of the Sea Con- 

 ference to be held in 1973, stricter control of fisheries by the coastal na- 

 tions and procedures for their enforcement must be established to make 

 possible both allocation agreements and biological control of the resources. 

 This will necessitate some readjustment in our understandings with some 

 distant-water fishing nations. The issue is not a trivial one, and we ad- 

 dress it also in our discussion on Law of the Sea. 



RECAPITULATION 



Let us review the reasoning of our proposed approach. 



• The fishing resources of the sea are limited and subject to extinction 

 unless managed so as to permit a sustainable yield. 



• Present fishing technology, especially as developed by protein-deficient 

 nations who themselves do not have sufficient fishing resources, threat- 

 ens the existence of the species they catch. The economics of the 

 situation drive each nation (indeed each fisherman) to catch specific 

 fisheries even to depletion, because if they do not, they fear some 

 other nation (or fisherman) might do so. 



• International fishing arrangements which are species-specific have been 



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