undesirable pressure, the proportion of different 

 types of gear in use could be made variable by 

 allowing the introduction of more efficient gear 

 with an appropriate retirement of existing licenses. 

 Thus, it would be possible to shift to different 

 kinds of gear whenever a cost advantage could be 

 achieved without increasing the overall fishing 

 capacity of the industry. 



The elements outlined above obviously would 

 not apply with equal facility to all domestic 

 fisheries of the United States. In particular, fish- 

 eries such as the groundfish operations in New 

 England, in which the individual vessel exploits a 

 wide variety of different species, would present 

 much more difficult problems. Nevertheless, the 

 basic principles are applicable to a fairly large 

 number of domestic fisheries, both intrastate and 

 interstate, in which physical productivity of the 

 stocks sets a measureable ceiling on catches. 



The Commission recommends strongly that 

 gear reduction programs of this general type be 

 instituted in fisheries where the prospective prob- 

 lems are minimal in order to establish the working 

 principles involved. Thereafter, it should be possi- 



ble, with wider industry education and acceptance, 

 to tackle the more difficult cases. 



The same general objectives and principles of 

 fishery management also apply to internationally 

 shared fisheries, but the complications become far 

 greater. Nations typically have diverse market 

 preferences, costs, and social value systems, and no 

 single "optimum fishery" can be defined that will 

 be ideal for all. The problem of sharing net 

 economic benefits among participants defies any 

 simple economic or scientific analysis, but should 

 be a matter for negotiation. And nations may, in 

 some cases, be more interested in employment and 

 foreign exchange considerations than in improving 

 the economic efficiency of the operation. 



Because of the extreme importance of establish- 

 ing a rational international regime for harvesting 

 living resources of the sea, and the interrelations 

 between this and other aspects of international 

 cooperation in marine activities, the subject is 

 treated in greater detail in the Report of the 

 International Panel. The reader is referred to 

 Chapter 6 of that report; it is endorsed by this 

 panel. 



XI. References 



Ahlstrom, Elbert H. 1968. "An Evaluation of the 

 Fishery Resources Available to California Fishermen." 

 Conference on the Future of the United States Fishing 

 Industry, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash- 

 ington (in press). 



Alverson, Dayton L. "Ocean Engineering: Its Appli- 

 cation to Harvest of Living Resources." Transactions 

 of the Joint Conference of the Marine Technology 

 Society and the American Society of Limnology and 

 Oceanography, 1965. 



Alverson, Dayton L. 1968. "Fisheries Resources in the 

 Northeastern Pacific Ocean." Conference on the 

 Future of the United States Fishing Industry, Uni- 

 versity of Washington, Seattle, Washington (in press). 



Alverson, Dayton L. and W. Pereyra. "Demersal Fish 

 Explorations in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean: An 

 Evaluation of Exploratory Fishing Methods and 

 Analytical Approaches to Stock Size and Yield Fore- 

 casts," 1968 (mimeo.). 



Anonymous. Report on Meeting of the IWP Working 

 Group on Marine Resource Appraisal, Food and 

 Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 

 Rome, Italy, Dec. 5-14, 1966. 



Anonymous. Report of Working Group on Joint Bio- 

 logical and Economic Assessment of Conservation 

 Actions, International Commission for the Northwest 

 Atlantic Fisheries, 1967 (mimeo.). 



Beuttner, H. J. "Commercial Fisheries of the Great Lakes, 

 1879-1963," in Fishery Statistics of the United States, 

 1963, U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and 

 WildUfe Service, Statistical Digest No. 57, Washington, 

 D.C. 1965, pp. 444-51. 



BrouUlard, Keith. Economic Review of the Great Lakes 

 Commercial Fisheries, 1940-1959, U.S. Department of 

 the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Circular 141, 

 Washington, D.C. 1963. 



BuUis, Harvey R. and James S. Carpenter. 1968. "Latent 

 Fishery Resources of the Central Western Atlantic 

 Region," Conference on the Future of the United 

 States Fishing Industry, University of Washington, 

 Seattle, Washington (in press). 



Chapman, W. M. "The Ocean of Human Need," Paper 

 presented at Gordon Research Conference, June 1966. 



Christy, Francis and A.D. Scott. The Common Wealth in 

 Ocean Fisheries, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 

 1965. 



Crutchfield, J. A. "The Marine Fisheries: A Problem in 

 International Cooperation," American Economic Re- 

 view, May 1964. 



Edwards, Robert L. 1968. "Fishery Resources of the 

 North Atlantic Area." Conference on the Future of 

 the United States Fishing Industry, University of 

 Washington, Seattle, Washington (in press). 



Finn, D. B. "Fish, the Great Potential Food Supply," 

 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United 

 Nations, Rome, Italy, 1960. 



Graham, Herbert W. 1968. "Trends in the Marine 

 Fisheries of the Continental Shelf of the Eastern 

 United States." Transactions of the American Fish- 

 eries Society, Vol. 97, No. 1. 



Graham, H. W. and R. L. Edwards. "The World Biomass 

 of Marine Fishes," Conference on Fish and Nutrition 

 Working Papers (1): Paper No. R/1.1 Fish in Nutri- 

 tion, Fishing News (Books) Limited, London, 1962, 

 pp. 3-8. 



Ketchen, K. S. 1968. "Trends in Marine Fisheries Along 

 the Pacific Coast of North America." Transactions of 

 the American Fisheries Society, Vol. 97, No. 1. 



Landsberg, H., Fischman, and Fisher, Resources in 

 America's Future: Patterns of Requirements and 

 Availabilities, 1960-2000, Baltimore: The Johns 

 Hopkins Press, 1963, 1,040 pp. 



VlI-69 



