The last element, information on the interrelations 
among specics, is felt to be one of the major short- 
comings of past research efforts which tended to 
focus on individual species. It is also felt to be critical 
to the types of management decisions that have to be 
made by the Regional Councils to implement the 
200-mile law. 
In addition to improving the accuracy and coverage 
of stock assessment data, there is also a requirement 
of the 200-mile law for expanded socioeconomic data. 
This is sO in part because the determination of a 
stock’s optimum yield, the stated objective of any 
management plan, turns on certain economic and 
social factors. Included among these are considera- 
tions of costs and returns, pricing, and regional -em- 
ployment. Also required will be information on the 
economics of foreign fleets operating in U.S. waters. 
Additional information needed about foreign fishing 
activity is the extent of investment by overseas in- 
terests in U.S. vessels and packing plants and the 
effect of these investments. 
One aspect of current fishery management that 
needs to be studied is the trend, and the reasons be- 
hind it, for U.S. vessels being registered in foreign 
nations. From fiscal years 1971 through January 1977, 
a total of 1,200 U.S. fishing vessels were transferred to 
foreign owners or foreign flags.°° 
OTA identified seven areas of economic informa- 
tion for which NMFS was collecting inadequate data. 
® Tbid., p. 82. 
The proposed remedy was a 10-year, $3 million-per- 
year effort directed at assembling accurate informa- 
tion on the following topic areas: vessel inventories, 
vessel construction costs, costs and earnings data, de- 
mand analysis data (from household surveys). em- 
ployment data, fishery development, and recreational 
fishing impacts. 
A recent review of social-science research in the 
marine field as a whole, including fisheries, but cover- 
ing the entire range of marine matters, found much 
activity from the Federal standpoint centered in the 
NOAA Sea Grant program. Specifically, a committee 
within the Interagency Committee on Marine Science 
and Engineering reported in December 1976 that 
there were 304 marine-related social science studies 
between 1970 and 1975; 270 of them were by Sea 
Grant. Total cost for the 5 years was $10.9 million; 
See Grant contributed $7.2 million of this total. 
In a report of its fishery activities, the Office of Sea 
Grant found 12.7 percent of its total project funding 
in 1977 went to fishery research—144 projects at $5.2 
million. By category, the research projects, generally 
conducted at universities, were: resource development 
(23 percent), economics/legal (13 percent), environ- 
mental (13 percent), and technology (8 percent). Ed- 
ucation and training consumed 3 percent of the fund- 
ing, and the NOAA marine advisory service 41 
percent.®® 
6 Paper by Naida Yolen. “The National Sea Grant Program 
in Fisheries.” National Sea Grant Office, NOAA, Washington, 
D.C., January 1978. 
Fishery Management and Enforcement 
The task in fishery management is that of allo- 
cating the common property resource, fish, among a 
number of claimants. This obviously calls for inter- 
vention by government into the fishing process. 
This was explained clearly in the Senate Commerce 
Committee report accompanying the 200-mile legis- 
lation in 1975: % 
“Resource management is essentially a se- 
ries of allocations—allocations among pres- 
ent users, allocations between present and 
future users, allocations between public and 
private interests. There are simply not 
enough fish to go around and the line must 
be drawn somewhere. . . . It is a fact of life 
that not everyone who wishes will be allowed 
to fish for a given stock of fish.” 
It is a surprise to no one that implementing the 
Fishery Conservation and Management Act has 
®' U.S. Senate, Committee on Commerce. Report 94-416, ‘“‘“Mag- 
nuson Fisheries Management and Conservation Act,’ Washing- 
ton, D.C., Government Printing Office, October 7, 1967, p. 30. 
proven controversial. The difficulty of allocating the 
optimum yield per species among, first, domestic fish- 
ing people, and then among foreign nations, is con- 
siderable. 
The purpose of Federal marine fishery manage- 
ment, which today means implementation of the Fish- 
ery Conservation and Management Acct, is the attain- 
ment of what is termed the “optimum yield” of each 
fishery. The term means the amount of fish that will 
provide the greatest overall benefit to the United 
States with particular reference to food production 
and recreational opportunities, and is prescribed as 
such on the basis of maximum biological sustainable 
yield from such fishery, as modified by any relevant 
economic, social, political, or ecological factor. 
As spelled out in the 200-mile law, management 
measures Tmust-amang-aTREe Tangs be based on the 
best scientific information available, be indiscrimina- 
tory between residents of different States, and where- 
ever possible, manage a stock of fish throughout-its 
full range, even if it crosses jurisdictional lines. 
One management technique which is particularly 
controversial is limited entry into particular fisheries 
lil-37 
