istrative aspects of the problem. The Standing 

 Comnuttee met early in 1968, again during the 

 June 1968 ICNAF meeting, and it is continuing its 

 studies." The 1968 ICNAF meeting did not 

 devote much time to this problem, but asked its 

 Standing Committee to meet again in January 

 1969.^* 



At the 1968 annual meeting, the United States 

 proposed the establishment of a national catch 

 quota system as an appropriate solution of the 

 critical problem facing ICNAF.' ^ 



Accordingly, the panel recommends that the 

 United States seek agreement in ICNAF to col- 

 laborate with NEAFC in fixing a single annual 

 overall catch limit— expressed in terms of live 

 (round fresh) weight— for the cod and haddock 

 fisheries of the North Atlantic, including the 

 whole ICNAF area and Region 1 of the NEAFC 

 area (East Greenland, Iceland, and the Northeast 

 Arctic). This single overall catch limit should, in 

 turn, be divided into annual national catch quotas. 

 Each participating nation should be assigned a 

 single quota covering both cod and haddock. 



The overall catch limit would have to be 

 adjusted regularly to take account of such factors 

 as year— class fluctuations of the stocks, recovery 

 of the stocks due to conservation measures and 

 errors in setting prior limits. 



Every participating nation should be authorized 

 to transfer all or part of its quota to any other 

 nation. 



The Convention for the Northwest Atlantic 

 Fisheries will have to be amended to authorize the 

 Commission to take the recommended measures 

 which are not now within the province of its 

 authority. 



2. Is the Recommendation Feasible? 



The overall catch limit would be designed to 

 maintain the maximum sustainable yield of the 

 cod and haddock fisheries in the areas in question 

 year after year. The statistics now collected by 

 ICNAF and by ICES for NEAFC are expressed in 

 terms of live (round fresh) weight. A majority of 



the ICNAF Working Group on Joint Biological and 

 Economic Assessment of Conservation Actions 

 concluded that although "it is desirable to have 

 much better knowledge of the state of the stocks 

 and of year-class fluctuations,. . . . enough infor- 

 mation is available to permit meaningful estimates 

 of annual overall catch quotas being made."*" 

 United States scientists now make accurate fore- 

 casts of Georges Bank haddock stock two years in 

 advance.*' 



The allocation of national catch quotas is not a 

 problem of either biology, economics, law or logic 

 and it is difficult to formulate principles on which 

 such allocation should be based. Obviously, it will 

 have to take account of the relative shares of the. 

 nations participating in the fisheries during some 

 base period, but it would be unrealistic to expect 

 that past percentages can simply be frozen or even 

 reduced uniformly. The fisheries in question have 

 not witnessed a stable pattern of past activity by 

 all participants. The Soviet Union has been ex- 

 panding its operations rapidly in the last two 

 decades, and Canada, freed of previous shackles on 

 the use of efficient trawlers, feels competent to 

 expand in order to take what it regards as its 

 proper share. These nations, and several others, are 

 likely to press hard for larger quotas than could be 

 derived from historical participation or, alterna- 

 tively, to delay the proposed quota system until 

 relative positions to their liking are securely 

 estabhshed. 



Clearly then, factors other than historical par- 

 ticipation will have to be considered. These 

 factors will have to include the position of coastal 

 fishermen with no easy access to alternative fishing 

 grounds, as well as the claims of new entrants into 

 the fisheries, whether new members of ICNAF or 

 non-member countries. In short, the allocation of 



See Report of the First Meeting of the Standing 

 Committee on Regulatory Measures, London, 30 Jan.-l 

 Feb. 1968, ICNAF Comm. Doc. 68/6. 



58 



Information supplied by Department of State. 



Report of the Working Group, supra note 46, at 7. 

 Commenting on this matter in 1967, ICNAF's Research 

 and Statistic Committee stated: 



Comprehensive data on the abundance of prerecruit 

 age-groups are needed to permit the adjustment of 

 quotas. . . A review of the data currently being collected 

 in national research programs indicated that these data are 

 available for one or more years prior to the age of 

 recruitment for the haddock stocks and for some of the 

 important cod stocks in the ICNAF area, although it was 

 recognized that in the event of a catch quota system being 

 introduced in this area, increased research effort would 

 have to be devoted to the estimation of pre-recruit 

 year-class strength. ICNAF Redbook 1967, Pt. 1, at 13. 



Information supplied by Department of State. 



VIH-59 



