right of innocent passage. (2) The remainder of the oceans of the world were high seas and open to passage by all without hindrance or payment of tribute to anyone. (3) The resources of the high seas were the property of no one until caught, and became the property of the one who first reduced them to his possession.

While there was not complete uniformity among the family of nations in their views on the breadth of the territorial sea, only Soviet Russia claimed as much as 12 miles and besides the 3-mile countries there were a few that claimed 6 miles. All were in agreement that the belt of territorial sea should at least be narrow, and the rest of the ocean free to all.

BIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Prior to the 20th century the resources of the sea, generally and specifically, were considered to be inexhaustible. If anyone considered otherwise it was at least little mentioned and no proof to the contrary was adduced. True, the great fisheries of Northern Europe waxed and waned and caused the initiation, abandonment or shifting of towns of considerable size as they did so, as well as the shifting of important trade routes and international political forces. But these shifts in the yield of food from the sea were taken as the manifestation of an inscrutable Providence and there could not be seen to be any relationship between the abundance of cod or herring in the sea and the activities of man in harvesting those resources.

During the last half of the 19th century, however, the seed of the great American conservation move had been planted and was thriving. The passenger pigeon whose vast flocks had darkened the Midwest sun at midday had disappeared to a bird. The buffalo whose herds of incalculable numbers had made the whole midcontinent tremble with the thunder of their hooves had shrunk to a few animals in haunts isolated from man. Obviously man could by his activities influence the abundance of wild animals. The result was the growth of the wildlife conservation move which was conducted with almost religious fervor during the term of the first Roosevelt, and which still thrives.

During the latter quarter of the 19th century the great Norwegian scientist, Sars, began to seriously investigate the causes of fluctuating abundance of food from the sea, and his findings stimulated the growth of the marine sciences not only in his country and in the other maritime nations of Europe, but also in America. As early as the first decade of the 20th century the Russian, Baranov, had set out the mathematical theory of how and under what conditions and with what effect a fishery could affect the abundance of fish in the sea.

During the same period of time there had been growing up a maritime conservation problem of such dimension that it could not escape notice. The fur seals of the world were being hunted out of existence. In the Southern Hemisphere they were either eliminated or hunted down to commercially valueless remnants rather quickly. The process was being repeated in the North Pacific with insistence and efficiency by sealers from the United States, England, Russia, and Japan. The competition among the sealers was savage as the herds shrunk and not only was the resource vanishing but the four nations involved

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were brought almost to sword's points by the competition to garner the last fur sealskin.

The American conservation move, the new thinking from the embryo oceanographic sciences and the plain diplomatic necessity of preventing murder at sea and possible war led in 1911 to the signing of a treaty among the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia for the conservation of the fur seals of the North Pacific Ocean.

There were three sets of fur seal islands, one under the dominion of each of Japan, Russia, and the United States. The treaty provided that there would be no more hunting of fur seal at sea by the nationals of any of the four countries. Hunting would be confined only to the breeding islands and the management of the resource in each rookery would be the responsibility of the nation having dominion of the land. To assure a fair division of the profits Great Britain (who had no fur seal islands but a large fishery) was assured a portion of the annual harvest of skins from the American and Japanese islands and the Japanese, whose islands were not thought to be very productive, were given a share of the skins to be harvested from the American islands. This treaty worked. From the diplomatic side it brought an abrupt halt to the acrimonious controversies over these questions which had disturbed the relations of the four countries for decades. From the conservation side the results were tremendous. The fur seal herds of the Pribilof Islands jumped in less than 20 years from a few thousand animals to a plateau-level of over 2 million animals despite the fact that seventy-thousand-odd skins were being harvested annually ashore.

Three concepts appeared to be proved beyond a doubt by this undertaking: (1) A marine resource could be driven to the point of extermination by the harvesting activities of man alone. (2) Scientific research could elucidate a management plan whereby an ocean resource could be built up from the point of extermination until it would yield a crop of important size year after year into eternity. (3) Four important maritime powers could agree to jointly put into effect such a management plan and by so doing not only assure bounteous continued harvests from the resource to themselves and their posterity but by so doing erase a serious point of friction between themselves to their mutual diplomatic and economic profit.

All three of these concepts were brand new in the first quarter of this century and their success has yielded important benefits generally to mankind which have been felt increasingly during the second quarter of the century, and which have a basic bearing on the issues now before us.

THE HALIBUT COMMISSION

The Fur Seal Convention dealt with mammals. Mankind had dealt with the same management principles on mammals for many thousands of years in his domesticated herds of cattle, sheep, goats, etc. If you cropped off more than the annual increase the herd shrunk: if you cropped off less than the annual increase the herd grew in size and produced the possibility of an even larger annual crop and herd size until the herd reached the limits that the pastureland available to you would support. This latter was what had been done with the fur seal and the results were understandable, if marine. But would the

same principle apply to fish or were they still the inexhaustible resources of the sea whose fluctuations in abundance were the result of a bounteous or penurious Providence and beyond the effect of man?

A test of this question was in the making even before the success of the fur seal undertaking was assured. The shortage of food in World War I and immediately succeeding years, the new availability of refrigerated rail transportation from Seattle, Vancouver, and Prince Rupert in Canada to the Midwest and east coast markets, and the coming of the diesel engine to fishing boats all coincided to give an immense and sudden growth to the halibut fishery of the Northwest Pacific.

Almost before a man could nod his head every known or discoverable halibut bank from northern California to Bering Sea was being fished heavily, and before he could nod his head again the productivity of halibut in the whole immense area of sea, and particularly on what had been the richest banks, was falling off in an alarming manner. The reasons were unknown.

The halibut fishery was prosecuted almost entirely on the high seas. All of the important banks were beyond 3 miles from land. It was engaged in by fishermen from the United States and Canada alone The dropoff in production stimulated the industry of the two countries to urge their Governments to engage jointly in discovering what the problem was, seek means to solve it, and then implement those means. A treaty was initialed by the two Governments in 1924 establishing the International Fisheries Commission-jointly and equally financed and run. The Commission hired a research staff. By 1930 the staff had demonstrated to the satisfaction of itself, the fishing industry of the 2 countries, and the 2 Governments that these things were true: (1) The halibut of the North Pacific were split up into natural stocks that did not mingle much with each other. (2) All of the stocks were being fished so heavily that their productivity had suffered simply because the size of each stock had been fished down until the annual crop it would produce was below par. (3) The variations in abundance caused by natural changes in the sea were not significant in this total shrinkage in the abundance of halibut in the sea. (4) Therefore the only way to increase the abundance of halibut in the sea, and by so doing increase the size of the annual crop which could be caught, was to slack off on the fishing. (5) But this had to be done in separate ways for the separate stocks did not intermingle enough for a uniform treatment to be uniformly beneficial over the whole area.

On the basis of these data and he urging of their respective fishermen the two Governments renegotiated the halibut treaty and gave to the International Commission the power of regulation over the halibut fishermen of both countries on the high seas.

The Commission then had an important decision to make. Was it responsible only for the welfare of the resource or was it also responsible for the welfare of the industry? If the former, it could stop the fishery completely and let the halibut stocks replenish themselves as fast as nature could do the job, and presumably in a few years. By so doing it would kill the fishery economically. If the latter, it could restrict the permissible crop to just a little short of the annual increase of the stocks. In this way a small amount of the increase

would be added to capital stock each year, and the fishery, while heavily hampered, would not die out.

The Commission chose the latter, formed an advisory committee from the fishermen of both countries to inform it how to apply its regulations with the least economic damage to the industry, and proceeded to impose the heaviest restrictions on catch consonant with keeping the industry alive.

Twenty years have now gone by and the immense success of the Commission's work is apparent to all. The permitted catch has been increased a little year by year as the stocks recovered until the annual crop now is as large, or a little larger, than it was at the peak of overexploitation. But now the abundance of halibut on the banks is so high that this high production can be carried on year after year without end, so long as the regulations keep the cropping from cutting into the productive pontential of the stocks.

The practical effect of this Commission's research and management policies has demonstrated that a stock of fish in the open sea can be of finite size, that a fishery can get so intense that it will lower the productivity as well as abundance of the stock, and that the stock's productivity and abundance can be restored by diminishing the fishing intensity. The repercussions of this demonstration on the theory and practice of ocean cropping have been substantial.

One important side effect of the Commission's work was the finding that while overfishing was wasteful, in that it eventually cut the size of the annual crop that could be harvested, underfishing was equally wasteful because the excess reproduction produced by the stock each year more than was needed by nature to keep the stock at the level of maximum sustainable production either could be harvested and used by man or it would die off naturally and be absorbed back into the vast reservoir of the sea where it was of no use to man. This finding is of basic importance to the problem now before us.

Another important side effect of the Commission's work was the finding that two nations could successfully manage fishing that lay in the high seas far from ashore, and sometimes a thousand miles or more from home ports, by putting the activity of their citizens under a joint regulatory board, that the regulations could be cheaply and efficiently enforced ashore chiefly by control of landings at the ports, and that all of this could be done without serious economic damage to the existing fishery or consequential political repercussions either domestically or internationally.

Those findings have led rather directly to the formation under treaty of the International Salmon Fisheries Commission, again between Canada and the United States in the Northeast Pacific; the International Whaling Commission through which 22 signatory nations manage the whale fisheries in all of the oceans and seas of the world; the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries through which 10 countries of Europe and North America are undertaking the management not only of the Grand Bank fisheries, but the whole of the high-seas fisheries from New England to Greenland; the International Commission for the Scientific Investigation of Tuna between Mexico and the United States; the InterAmerican Tropical Tuna Commission among Costa Rica, Panama and the United States to cover the great tuna fisheries of the eastern

tropical Pacific lying between California and Peru; and the Overfishing Compact among the Gulf States; and the Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission among the Pacific States.

THE ABSTENTION PRINCIPLE

A third effect flowed out of the work of the Halibut Commission and the nexus of State and Federal ocean research and high-seas management that developed in the Northeast Pacific both simultaneously and in its wake, both in Canada and the United States.

If a varied group of fishermen fishing on the same fish in the same area are restricted in a joint and equal fashion by their governments, or uniformly by an international commission to which their governments have delegated power to regulate their activity, there is no economic injustice as among themselves because the economic weight. of the regulations falls with reasonable equality on all their shoulders alike. They have a joint interest in the venture for if they exercise forbearance (or have that exercise thrust upon them) and fish more lightly now, their savings of fish accumulate in the bank of the fish stock and up to a point the more savings they invest in that bank, the more interest it will yield in the form of larger annual crops from the resource.

But what happens now if a strange fisherman from another country comes into the area. It has not been his forbearance that has built up the stock of fish to such a profitable level. His government has not contributed to the expense of research or management that has gone into the undertaking. As likely as not the new fisherman ie moving into the area because he has overfished his own area to the point of unprofitableness and is intent on doing the same in the nev

area.

The regulated fisherman now feels himself to be in the position of a customer of a savings bank who has for years been depositing to an account, and suddenly finds that a stranger can draw funds out of the account without let or hindrance. His immediate response is either to draw all his savings out of the account at once or to take steps to prevent the stranger from drawing on his account.

In fishing terms this means that he asks his government to stop the foreign fisherman from entering his highly regulated fishery or to take off the regulations and let him fish up the stock to the point where it will not be profitable for the new fisherman to come a long distance and compete with him.

This precise situation arose in the Northeast Pacific in 1937 and 1938. It rose independently but almost simultaneously from two quarters.

The Japanese Government had secured salmon-fishing concessions in Siberia fro mthe young Soviet Government after the Russian Revolution. During the 1920's these concessions were rapidly and efficiently developed in two manners. Licenses were given to some Japanese firms to establish canneries and fisheries ashore near the river mouths. Licenses were granted to other Japanese firms to equip "mother ships" which could supply catcher boats, process the fish aboard ship, and follow the fish in the ocean. Inevitably the two systems came in conflict as they both developed in size, intensity