obligated to carry out severally or jointly the 

 conservation measures which they have agreed to 

 take. They are also required to report on enforce- 

 ment conditions periodically, through the Com- 

 mission, to the abstaining Party and to give the 

 abstaining Party an opportunity to observe the 

 conduct of enforcement. 



Under the enforcement procedures of the exist- 

 ing fishery conventions, the inducement of any 

 State Party to comply with the Convention's 

 provisions and the commission's implementing 

 regulations is considerable weakened by doubts as 

 to the enforcement poUcy of the other States 

 Parties. 



In the United States, the Coast Guard is 

 entrusted with the task of enforcing the fishery 

 conventions to which the United States is a party. 

 It is generally agreed that the Coast Guard does 

 not have enough vessels to perform this task 

 adequately. 



On the whole, however, it may be that the 

 panel has exaggerated the seriousness of the 

 enforcement problem. Once the nations adherring 

 to a fishery convention agree to adopt conserva- 

 tion measures of importance, it is to the advantage 

 of each to comply. Nevertheless, stronger enforce- 

 ment provisions might reduce mutual suspicions of 

 non-compUance which encourage fishermen of all 

 nations to disregard regulations whenever they 

 think they can do so with impunity. 



6. Limited Coverage 



To achieve their conservation objectives, it is 

 essential that the conservation measures adopted 

 under fishery conventions shall be appUcable in all 

 the waters where the resource in question is to be 

 found. Many of the existing Conventions do not 

 provide this necessary coverage. Often, for ex- 

 ample, they exclude the territorial seas from their 

 coverage. The International Convention for the 

 Conservation of Atlantic Tunas specifically in- 

 cludes the territorial seas and it may reflect the 

 current trend of international thought on the 

 question. 



It should be noted in this connection that the 

 1958 United Nations Conference on the Law of 

 the Sea adopted a resolution recommending to the 

 coastal States that, 



in the cases where a stock or stocks of fish or 

 other living marine resources inhabit both the 



fishing areas under their jurisdiction and areas of 

 the adjacent high seas, they should cooperate with 

 such international conservation organizations as 

 may be responsible for the development and 

 application of conservation measures in the ad- 

 jacent high seas, in the adoption and enforcement, 

 as far as practicable, of the necessary conservation 

 measures on fishing areas under their jurisdic- 

 tion.^^ 



The coverage of the fishery conventions is 

 inadequate in another crucial way. Taken together, 

 they apply to only a small part of the actual and 

 an even smaller part of the potential catch from 

 the world's fisheries. At present, too, no inter- 

 national organization has been explicitly entrusted 

 with the task of taking a world-wide view and 

 making reconmiendations that will result in the 

 creation of a world-wide system of regional fishery 

 conventions able to anticipate difficulties and to 

 assure the conserving and economically efficient 

 utilization of the living resources of the high seas. 



B. Expanding Claims of Exclusive Access to Fish- 

 eries 



Varying claims with respect to the breadth of 

 the territorial sea and the exclusive fisheries zone 

 invite international disputes and threaten inter- 

 national conflict. As of Jan. 1, 1968, for example, 

 Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador and Panama 

 claimed territorial seas of 200 miles; Guinea, a 

 territorial sea of 130 miles. Chile, Peru and 

 Nicaragua claimed exclusive fisheries zones of 200 

 miles; India, an exclusive fisheries zone of 100 

 miles and Korea, of from 20 to 200 miles. Korea, 

 Nicaragua and Pakistan claimed sovereignty over 

 the superjacent waters of their continental shelves. 



The hst of acrimonious international disputes 

 resulting from these expanding claims is long 

 indeed. Some of the most important have involved 

 the United JCingdom and Iceland; Soviet Union 

 and Japan; the United States and Chile; Ecuador 

 and Peru; Chile and Peru; Thailand and Cambodia; 

 Thailand and Burma; South Korea and Japan; 

 Japan and Indonesia; Japan and Australia; Japan 

 and New Zealand; Mexico and Guatemala; Cuba 

 and Argentina; Soviet Union and Argentina; 



^^ Resolution on Cooperation in Conservation Meas- 

 ures, U.N. Doc. A/Conf. 13/L. 56, in Geneva Conference 

 Records II, at 144 (1958). 



VIII-55 



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