arrest, but should be required to turn over the 

 allegedly offending vessel and persons to the State 

 of their nationality for prosecution and punish- 

 ment. In time, the States Parties may come to 

 agree upon an international enforcement code and 

 the establishment of an appropriate tribunal to try 

 alleged violations of the code and punish violators. 

 But we think this time is yet far off. 



(b) Any State Party should be authorized to 

 investigate alleged violations, to seize any vessel 

 and arrest any person there is reason to beUeve 

 committed a violation, to try the alleged violation 

 and to punish the violators. 



(c) If the above recommendations are thought 

 to be too derogatory of national sovereignty, or too 

 costly to be put into effect, at least any State 

 Party should be authorized to investigate alleged 

 violations, to seize any vessel and arrest any person 

 there is reason to believe committed a violation, 

 even though only the State Party to which the 

 offending vessel and persons belong is authorized 

 to try the alleged violation and punish the viola- 

 tors. 



(2.) To assure a uniform enforcement poUcy, 

 (a) each fishery commission should be authorized 

 to specify the range (minimum and maximum) of 

 the fines for different types of violations which 

 should be imposed by the State Party empowered 

 to punish violations; and (b) the State Party 

 imposing the fines should be required to turn the 

 proceeds over to the fishery commission to be 

 used for agreed-upon purposes. 



(3.) The United States Coast Guard should be 

 provided with adequate means to discharge the 

 obligations of the United States with respect to 

 enforcing the provisions of the fishery conventions 

 to which it belongs, as well as the implementing 

 commission regulations. 



e. Dispute Settlement Dispute-settlement proce- 

 dures should be agreed upon which will make the 

 decisions of an impartial tribunal obligatory upon 

 the States Parties to the dispute. The Convention 

 on Fishing and Conservation of the Living Re- 

 sources of the High Seas provides an excellent 

 precedent in this respect but, unfortunately, one 

 which has not yet been widely accepted. 



The United States is not, in principle, opposed 

 to the compulsory arbitration of fishing disputes. 

 In February 1967, the United States proposed to 

 Chile, Ecuador and Peru that their dispute about 



the extent of the fishing rights of these South 

 American countries should be submitted to arbi- 

 tration or to the International Court of Justice.®"* 

 The CEP countries rejected the proposal. We take 

 this opportunity, therefore, again to call attention 

 to the anomaly that the United States has not yet 

 ratified the Optional Protocol Concerning the 

 Compulsory Settlement of Disputes arising out of 

 the interpretation or apphcation of any article of 

 any of the Conventions on the Law of the Sea. We 

 repeat our recommendation that the United States 

 should ratify the Optional Protocol. 



2. Additional Functions for FAQ Committee on 

 Fisheries 



An international organization should be en- 

 trusted with the tasks of (a) evaluating the 

 operations of all existing regional fishery conven- 

 tions and recommending measures to improve the 

 work of each, as well as to coordinate the activities 

 of all; and (b) recommending the establishment of 

 new, international fishery conventions. 



At present, the most appropriate United 

 Nations organization to entrust with these tasks 

 would appear to be the FAO Committee on 

 Fisheries, even though, as indicated in Appendix 

 B, the Soviet Union is not a member of FAO. 



The estabUshment of new conventions should 

 not await the overfishing or threatened depletion 

 of particular fish stocks. The commissions created 

 by these conventions should be given authority to 

 recommend measures to maximize the utilization 

 of fishing resources, consistent with their adequate 

 conservation, and to aid the developing countries 

 in promoting their fisheries and in training scien- 

 tific and technical personnel for this purpose. As 

 development proceeds, these commissions should 

 anticipate problems and recommend the necessary 

 regulatory measures to assure the conserving and 

 economically efficient utilization of the living 

 resources of the seas. 



It is not essential that all the new commissions 

 be created under the aegis of FAO. The Organiza- 

 tion of American States may prove to be the most 

 suitable agency to set up and supervise regional 

 fishery conventions in Latin America. Similar 

 regional organizations may be more appropriate in 

 other areas. But it is important to charge some 



Hearings, supra note 39, at 59. 



VIII-67 



