development have had extremely limited support. 

 This is particularly surprising, since there is general 

 agreement that search and harvesting costs are the 

 prime obstacles to fuller use of latent resources in 

 United States coastal waters and that the 

 American fisheries, with the exception of tuna and 

 shrimp operations, are technologically backward 

 and generally inefficient. The Bureau can point to 

 a few strikingly successful breakthroughs in gear 

 development in recent years-midwater trawls for 

 hake, improved shrimp nets, fast sinking seines, for 

 example-but a budget of only $600,000 simply 

 will not support more than a few projects.. Perhaps 

 more importarit, the limited budget and staff 

 available in this type of work cannot investigate 

 thoroughly bold and imaginative new concepts of 

 fish harvesting. 



D. Regulation 



Bureau of Commercial Fisheries concern with 

 regulation of Uving resources of the sea in a direct 

 sense is minimal; the Bureau is not directly 

 involved in managing or regulating the use of most 

 of the resources exploited by domestic fishermen 

 in waters overlying the Continental Shelf adjacent 

 to the United States. Although authority appar- 

 ently exists for Federal regulation of fisheries 

 beyond the three mile hmit, the Federal Govern- 

 ment has generally not taken action to manage 

 such resources except through international trea- 

 ties and agreements. The State agencies have, in a 

 sense, taken over by default responsibility for 

 fishery regulation and management both inside 

 and outside the three mile limit. When the United 

 States is a party to international conventions, 

 treaties, or agreements, however, the Federal 

 Government has jurisdiction and the regulatory 

 authority is lodged in the BCF. A detailed analysis 

 of the problems involved in the exercise of State 

 authority over fishing regulation and in inter- 

 national management programs is presented in a 

 subsequent section. The panel merely notes here 

 the administrative mechanisms of the Federal 

 Goveriunent. 



ResponsibiUty for research on the status of fish 

 stocks and implementation of management pro- 

 posals for fisheries under jurisdiction of inter- 

 national conventions varies. In some instances each 

 party to the convention may independently under- 

 take research on the mutually managed resources. 



In such instances, the BCF would be assigned the 

 task. Examples of this type of arrangement are the 

 types of work undertaken for the International 

 North Pacific Fisheries Commission and the Inter- 

 national Corrmiission for the Northwest Atlantic 

 Fisheries. 



In other instances, however, a convention may 

 empower its commission to estabUsh its own 

 research arm. Examples are the International 

 Pacific Halibut Commission and the International 

 Tropical Tuna Commission. In such cases the 

 Bureau is not involved directly in either research 

 activities or in regulation of the fishery, but may 

 play a role in the implementation of management 

 recommendations stemming from the Commis- 

 sions. The United States contribution to inter- 

 national commissions themselves are funded by 

 the State Department. 



In summary, the panel concludes that the 

 Federal Government clearly has authority to de- 

 velop and manage fisheries outside the three mile 

 territorial seas, and, less clearly, to do so within 

 that hmit. It has chosen to ignore this responsi- 

 bility, perhaps to forestall any State-Federal juris- 

 dictional fight. 



The States have undertaken the job, with 

 varying degrees of enthusiasm and funding, but the 

 general level of performance has been poor be- 

 cause States cannot mount the research required 

 to maintain satisfactory understanding of stocks 

 that move freely along the Continental Shelf and 

 in oceanic waters far from the States. Fishermen 

 and processors in various States have different 

 views as to management policies, and the States 

 have no authority to make agreements or conven- 

 tions with foreign powers. For practical purposes, 

 the position of the weakest State tends to set the 

 pace for all where a fishery is shared. There can be 

 no National poUcy toward fishery development 

 and management as long as power rests in the 

 hands of local governments acting on the basis of 

 local interests. 



Even when Federal authority is exercised, the 

 BCF must rely on one or several States to provide 

 such data and to counsel the government regarding 

 conservation aspects of the resource in question, 

 since the basic catch statistics and other research 

 information required for intelligent management 

 are often collected by State agencies. Such data 

 are, moreover, of very uneven quality. There are, 

 however, major exceptions in the cases (such as 



VII-43 



