which particular operations meshed into National 

 programs to achieve National objectives. The 

 advent of Program Planning and Budgeting is 

 beginning to exert a healthy pressure for change in 

 this situation, but it is far from fully accepted, 

 even within the Bureau, and its full benefits are 

 yet to come. 



A closely related aspect of Bureau operations 

 that has inhibited its effectiveness in contributing 

 to the vigor of American fishing industry has been 

 the project orientation stemming from its organi- 

 zational structure (which is disciplinary in nature) 

 and the dominant position of administrators wdth 

 narrow scientific or technical backgrounds. The 

 emphasis has been on individual projects of merit 

 rather than on programs oriented to the achieve- 

 ment of broader misssions that cut across both 

 disciplinary and geographic boundaries. This orien- 

 tation has been further strengthened by decentraU- 

 zation of authority within the Bureau under which 

 a major part of the responsibility for initiation of 

 programs rests with regional offices. There is a 

 natural tendency to focus attention on problems 

 of regional interest, and, even more narrowly, on 

 those problems for which the region's own person- 

 nel are best equipped or in which they are most 

 interested. Only by sheer accident would the 

 resulting pattern of activities add up to effective 

 National efforts designed to break bottlenecks in 

 the development of under-utilized or latent re- 

 sources or the more efficient management of those 

 already under full exploitation, though they may 

 produce good regional programs. 



Another source of weakness is the geographic 

 dispersal of BCF activities. To some extent this is, 

 of course, inevitable in a Nation with as diverse 

 marine resource units as those of the United 

 States. However, the panel feels that the poUtical 

 pressure on BCF to spread its available funds and 

 manpower among all regions of the Nation, with 

 only secondary attention to the areas of greatest 

 need and greatest potential, is a major deterrent to 

 new initiative. One need only pose a question of 

 the Congressional and industry reaction to severe 

 curtailment of a Bureau program in region A in 

 order to provide funds and personnel for a 

 promising new opportunity in region B to appre- 

 ciate the difficulty involved. Again, the key 

 problem is the inability to conceive or adhere to a 

 National policy while under heavy pressure to 

 operate on the basis of local objectives. 



As indicated briefly above, any assessment of 

 the programs of BCF must be made in Ught of the 

 tremendous influence of the tacit decision to allow 

 the States to exercise jurisdiction over marine 

 fishery matters within the three mile limit (and, 

 for practical purposes, beyond that by exercising 

 control over landings). The resulting welter of 

 conflicting, parochial, and special interest legisla- 

 tion that encumbers both fishery development 

 and fishery management activities is a primary 

 reason for the discouraging performance of the 

 American fishing industry in recent decades. Yet it 

 is apparent that the Federal fishery agency, what- 

 ever its objectives and competence, is hopelessly 

 handicapped in trying to undertake major pro- 

 grams that cut across State lines and— inevitably— 

 offer rewards or impose burdens not equally 

 distributed among the States involved. 



Finally, the substantial rate of increase in BCF 

 funding since 1950 started from an extremely low 

 base. It can hardly be expected to show major 

 effects as yet on landings or economic conditions 

 in the fishery, given the long lead time between 

 the initiation of resource evaluation and manage- 

 ment programs and their impact on actual industry 

 operations. 



The reasons cited for failure of the Federal 

 fishery effort to keep the U.S. flag fishery in step 

 with world developments in the period following 

 World War II are, to a considerable extent, beyond 

 the control of BCF. They are due in part to 

 pressures originating outside the Bureau, both 

 economic and political, and in part to failure on 

 the part of other branches of government, execu- 

 tive and legislative alike, to provide clear expres- 

 sion of the National interest in fisheries and 

 specific objectives and guidelines to achieve it. 



Other difficulties, however, appear to be of the 

 Bureau's own doing to a greater extent. One of 

 these is an apparent imbalance in the distribution 

 of funds and personnel among the various BCF 

 functions. In particular, the panel finds it discour- 

 aging that the state of knowledge of exploited and 

 latent fish stocks on and adjacent to U.S. Conti- 

 nental Shelf waters is so deficient that BCF itself 

 has called for a major increase in exploratory 

 effort to provide private enterprise with sufficient 

 detail to encourage expansion of American flag 

 fishing activity. After many years of biological 

 research and some exploratory effort, we are still 

 unable to provide adequate and reliable informa- 



VII-46 



