STATEMENT OF WILLIAM M. TERRY, ACTING DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS OFFICER, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

Mr. TERRY. No, Cape May.

Mr. FRASER. Then in the west it is bounded by the land areas?

Mr. TERRY. On the west by the longitude of the eastern tip of Long Island.

Mr. FRASER. That would be true for the whole area?

Mr. TERRY. Yes, and the coastline from there on.

Mr. McKERNAN. Then it might be useful to have the technical description put in the record, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FRASER. Yes, I think we ought to put it in. (The document referred to follows:)

Article I

1. The area to which this Convention applies, hereinafter referred to as "the Convention area", shall be all waters, except territorial waters, bounded by a line beginning at a point on the coast of Rhode Island in 71°40′ west longitude; thence due south to 39°00' north latitude; thence due east to 42°00' west long; thence due north to 50°00′ north lat; thence due west to 44°00' west long; thence due north to the coast of Greeland; thence along the west coast of Greeland to 78°10' north lat; thence southward to a point in 75°00′ north lat and 73°30′ west long; thence along a rhumb line to a point in 69°00′ north lat and 59°00′ west long; thence due south to 61°00′ north lat; thence due west to 64°30′ west long; thence due south to the coast of Labrador; thence in a southerly direction along the coast of Labrador to the southern terminus of its boundary with Quebec; thence in a westerly direction along the coast of Quebec, and in an easterly and southerly direction along the coast of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton Island to Cabot Strait; thence along the coasts of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island to the point of beginning.

Mr. FRASER. The staff has the convention which outlines the boundaries.

This 1950 act created this Commission which is kind of the administrative authority to make the multilateral agreement work? Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. FRASER. Does that Commission have a staff of its own?

Mr. MCKERNAN. Yes, it has a small administrative staff. It has no scientific staff. The scientific work of the Commission is done by committees of scientists from each of the member countries.

Mr. FRASER. Where is the staff headquartered?

Mr. McKERNAN. Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Mr. FRASER. How large a staff is that, the administrative staff? Mr. McKERNAN. Six people. Three professionals and three secretarial staff.

Mr. FRASER. What kinds of marine life are embraced within the scope of the agreement?

Mr. MCKERNAN. Primarily, the great ground fisheries of the Northwest Atlantic, such fish as cod, haddock, many species of flounders, herring, Atlantic Ocean perch or redfish, some of the whiting and hakes, with a total catch of between 3 and 4 million tons per year. It is one of the great fishing areas in the world, indeed.

Mr. FRASER. Does it include species of marine life other than fish? Mr. MCKERNAN. Yes. It includes shellfish and in fact includes seals, the harp and the hood seals. These are some of the seals that have received considerable discussion in the press recently. These are the seals that have been harvested, primarily by Norway, Denmark, and Canada.

Mr. FRASER. Are these the young seals that are harvested within a few weeks of their birth?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. FRASER. There was television coverage of what appeared to be a very cruel way of harvesting them.

Mr. McKERNAN. With these particular seals the fur is very valuable at this very early stage, and this is when it is harvested. The Commission itself has been doing a great deal of scientific work on it, and conservation measures are now being applied to hunters of all the nations. In talking to the Canadians, who have a very primary interest in this, and particularly Dr. A. W. H. Needler, the former Deputy Minister, at this last meeting which took place a week or two ago, he indicated that he felt the herd was at quite a healthy size in terms of the total Canadian interest, and that it was their hope to limit the harvest to the sustainable yield; that is, the yield which would continue to keep the herd at about its present level of abundance.

Thus the harvest each year would only be of the growth in the herd. Mr. FRASER. What kinds of action does the Commission take from time to time in order to carry out its responsibilities under the act? What is the nature of their activities?

Mr. McKERNAN. The way the Commission works, Mr. Chairman, is that the scientific research committee, composed of eminent scientists of these nations from Europe, the United States, the Soviet Union. and now Japan, meet and consider the scientific data that has been collected by the scientists of the nations, usually in coordinated research projects, and they decide whether or not a specific fish population needs further regulation and control.

If they so decide, they recommend to the Commission action for conserving the resources. That action is brought before the various Panels, subdivisions of the Commission, acted on in those Panels, and then by the Commission. Then those recommendations go to governments and are implemented by governments. There are a number of conservation regulations in effect, and they have been moderately successful so far.

Mr. FRASER. Would you describe the nature of those regulations? Mr. McKERNAN. For many years, there has been a minimum size which could be used in the nets called a mesh regulation. What this mesh regulation did was limit the size of the average fish caught by these large trawl nets that fish along the bottom. It had the effect of straining out the small ones, allowed them to survive and grow so that the yield per individual recruiting itself into the population was increased. Instead of getting a 1-year-old haddock or cod, you might get a 2- or 3- or 4-year-old, depending on the size of the mesh. In more recent years, at the urging of the United States, regulations have been applied to the total catch of certain species, such as haddock, and the yellowtail flounder which is found in the mid-Atlantic and the southern New England region in great abundance.

At this meeting we urged very strongly that conservation measures be applied to herring. We could not reach agreement on that subject and were unwilling to take the kind of a compromise acceptable to other nations. We have set up a special meeting to deal only with this herring question in January of next year, before the next season. We felt the stocks were in worse shape than some of the other nations did. Mr. FRASER. One of your functions, then, is setting a limit on the aggregate take?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. FRASER. What are the enforcement regulations?

Mr. McKERNAN. The various nations notify the Executive Secretary of the Commission, and a running account is kept of the catches of the various fleets. When about 80 percent of the total catch has been caught, a closure is announced. After that a minimum incidental catch is allowed each vessel, and that is roughly 10 percent of the subsequent catches of each vessel. This is calculated so that when the season closes, and with the incidental catch for the remainder of the season in effect, the catch will total throughout the year the level set for the quota. Mr. FRASER. But this relies on enforcements through the individual member governments?

Mr. McKERNAN. In the past this has relied for enforcement on each member government. From July 1 of this year, as mentioned in my statement, there will be joint enforcement, providing this legislation passes Congress, allowing us to inspect the observance of the regulations on each of the member nation's vessels, and will allow their officials to board U.S. vessels in the convention waters to inspect our vessels for appropriate enforcement of the regulations. Dependence on such national enforcement has been the trouble, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FRASER. The U.S. fishing vessel, if it returns to port and has not been inspected, what does the owner do?

Does he report to somebody in port about the catch?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. FRASER. And who does he report to?

Mr. MCKERNAN. There are various ways for in-port enforcement. The National Marine Fisheries Service has observers and people who sample the catches in the port and, in many cases they interview and get the catch reports directly from the fishermen. If they don't do that, they go to the dealer who buys the fish and look at his fish slips and get their information on the catch that way. Oftentimes it is through cooperation with the State officials involved. These records are then forwarded to the Commission.

Mr. FRASER. Does the owner have an obligation himself to report? Mr. McKERNAN. Yes, to the National Marine Fisheries Service, Mr. Terry informed me.

Mr. FRASER. Is there an office there?

Mr. TERRY. Yes, we have a regional office in Gloucester with agents around the region. The vessel must submit a written form indicating what he has caught, by species and quantity. The trips are usually not more than about 10 days, and many are shorter than this. We get a current accounting of what is caught, and we report this to the Commission at 10-day intervals.

Mr. FRASER. You have described two kinds of regulations so far, one dealing with the mesh of the nets, and the second with the aggregate catch with respect to certain species.

What other kinds of regulations are there?

Mr. McKERNAN. We have closed areas in effect. For example, with respect of the haddock stocks of Georges Bank we have provided for closed areas where the fish aggregate to spawn and are particularly vulnerable to these large bottom nets. We close these areas during the spawning season. This year, for example, recommendations came out

of the Commission which extended that closure for 1 additional month of the year. These closures, along with other measures, have been and are helpful in rebuilding the stocks if they are depleted and maintaining them where they are not depleted.

Mr. FRASER. Then are there other kinds of regulations?

Mr. McKERNAN. There are other kinds possible.

Mr. FRASER. I want to get an overview of the regulations.

Mr. MCKERNAN. These are the kinds of regulations that have been in effect thus far in the Commission, one to deal with mesh size, one to deal with the total quota, and one to deal with closed areas. These are, I believe, the three general kinds of regulations that have been in effect, but they are not the absolute limit to what might be introduced.

For example, the Commission has been involved in studying the desirability of allocating the catch, having a total quota of, say, 50,000 tons, and allocating that to the individual nations involved perhaps on the basis of historic interest in the fishery, or perhaps with a preference for the coastal State, and on some other bases as well.

Mr. FRASER. Is the 3-mile limit observed, or what limit is observed with respect to the fishing rights of other nations along Canadian and United States boundaries?

Mr. McKERNAN. Twelve miles is the boundary observed by both Canada and the United States. In our case it is a 3 mile territorial sea, and a 9 mile contiguous fishery zone. Canada has asserted a 12 mile territorial sea.

Mr. FRASER. I will stop for questions by anybody.

Mr. Gross?

Mr. GROSS. I would like to ask a question before you leave the subject of inspection. I notice that ships carrying inspectors shall fly a special flag or pennant approved by the Commission indicating that the inspector is carrying out international inspection duties.

I have fished in Minnesota and I never knew of a game warden equipped with a bullhorn or flying a flag to indicate he was waiting at the dock to look over my catch.

Why in this case should inspectors fly a special flag or pennant and the ship be designated as an inspection ship?

Mr. MCKERNAN. There are some suspicions that some nations might harrass the fishermen of other nations, and in order to preventMr. GROSS. They could still do that, couldn't they?

Mr. McKERNAN. It would not be as easy if there had been a prior designation that the person coming aboard was in fact an inspector and not just some fisherman who wanted to come aboard some competitor's fishing vessel and inspect it. In fact, if a person wants to come aboard a vessel on the high seas, there is some expense in time and effort for the vessel to stop, to haul in its gear and to be available for the vessel to come along side.

Mr. GROSS. Wouldn't he have any credentials in his pocket to prove his identity?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes, he has credentials, but it also serves the purpose of having uniformity. That is, all inspectors and all nations will treat each other pretty much the same.

Mr. GROSS. It seems to me it woud be more effective as in the case of traffic officers riding in unmarked cars.

Mr. BINGHAM. Would the gentleman yield?