Indian Ocean Investigations and, more recently, 

 for investigation of aquatic resources off the west 

 coast of South America. Similarly, the Atomic 

 Energy Commission has provided for this purpose 

 funds to various academic institutions and to the 

 Bureau, although they have been relatively small. 

 For example, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries 

 receives about $57,000 annually from the Atomic 

 Energy Commission for investigation of the deep- 

 water demersal fauna in the region of the 

 Columbia River on the west coast of the United 

 States. 



The total allocation of funds from all sources 

 for exploration over the past decade has been 

 surprisingly small in view of the Bureau's own 

 rough forecasts of potential yields from aquatic 

 resources and the need for better definition of the 

 time/space distribution of these resources and 

 their total potential if private investment in 

 fisheries is to be expanded. 



The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries currently 

 has active exploratory fishing programs in five of 

 its six regions. Relatively strong exploratory pro- 

 grams are in progress in the Gulf of Mexico, along 

 the southeast coast of the United States, and in 

 the Pacific Northwest off the coasts of Oregon, 

 Washington, and British Columbia. A moderate 

 exploratory program is conducted in the New 

 England and Great Lakes States. The Alaska 

 program is new and relatively small, despite the 

 great latent potential in the area. BCF exploratory 

 fishing programs in the waters off California and in 

 the Hawaiian Island region are now very limited, 

 although rather intensive work has been done 

 previously off the coast of California and some 

 exploratory fishing has been carried on around 

 Hawaii. 



The field work undertaken by the Branch of 

 Exploratory Fishing is generally conducted by 

 Bureau-owned vessels, and a large part of the 

 budget allocated for exploration is utilized to 

 maintain and operate these vessels. There are three 

 such fishing vessels operating along the east coast 

 and two small vessels along the Pacific coast of the 

 United States. 



The exploratory programs undertaken by the 

 branch are generally organized to sample system- 

 atically major sectors of the aquatic community 

 for example, demersal fish populations, pelagic 

 fish populations, shellfish populations, etc. There 

 is general agreement that the work completed to 



date has been of high quality. Relatively good 

 indices have been provided, as a result of explora- 

 tions, of the demersal fish potentials of the 

 northeast Pacific and of the shellfish potential of 

 the Gulf of Mexico. Work undertaken by the 

 Woods Hole Biological Laboratory (Branch of 

 Marine Fisheries) has also provided rather good 

 forecasts of the demersal fish potential off the 

 northeast coast of the United States. However, if 

 one considers the present state of knowledge of 

 the distribution, abundance, and yield potential of 

 the fish and shellfish of United States coastal 

 waters, the conclusion is inescapable that the level 

 of the effort has been far too limited. We are 

 simply in no position to provide the kind and 

 quaUty of information on production potential 

 that would be required to initiate a major increase 

 in landings by U.S. flag vessels (assuming, for the 

 moment, that the institutional barriers to such 

 development were removed). 



The magnitude of these gaps in knowledge is 

 particularly frustrating since the response of indus- 

 try to the findings of Bureau of Commercial 

 Fisheries exploratory fishing activities has been 

 generally positive and favorable. A prominent king 

 crab producer in the Alaska area has stated that 

 the exploratory fishing activities of the Bureau of 

 Commercial Fisheries in the Bering Sea led to the 

 development of the multi-milUon dollar king crab 

 fishery that exists in Alaska today. Similarly, the 

 pandaUd shrimp surveys that were conducted in 

 the waters of the northeast Pacific from southern 

 Oregon to Kodiak Island were subsequently fol- 

 lowed by a rapidly expanding shrimp industry. 

 The Bureau survey work was completed in 1957, 

 at which time less than three million pounds of 

 pandaUd shrimps were being harvested along the 

 entire Pacific coast. In the last decade catches have 

 expanded rapidly; they reached 50 million pounds 

 in 1967 and may well exceed 70 million pounds in 

 1968. Obviously, all of the expansion of this 

 fishery cannot be attributed to exploration by 

 BCF, but certainly the speed with which it 

 developed was in direct response to that work. As 

 indicated below, the initial gross estimates de- 

 veloped from exploratory fishing programs must 

 be followed by more refined resource assessment 

 as data become available from expanded commer- 

 cial fishing operations. 



The currently rapidly growing scallop fishery in 

 Alaska and the calico scallop fishery in Florida are 



VII-41 



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