Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. FASCELL. If so, where?

Mr. McKERNAN. The Halibut Convention, the North Pacific Fisheries Commission. My colleague, Mr. Terry, reminds me just in general we have eight of them, and they are quite similar in this respect.

Mr. FASCELL. Did I understand correctly that this legislation covers only the North Pacific fisheries and the North Atlantic?

Mr. McKERNAN. Correct.

Mr. FASCELL. Thank you.

Mr. McKERNAN. Mr. Fascell, you will recall title III, which allows us to temporarily designate U.S. representatives, would apply to other commissions as well, not only to these two.

Mr. FASCELL. That is what I am trying to find out, whether the implementing legislation before us would allow us to either negotiate. approve or affirm similar arrangements in the other conventions.

Mr. McKERNAN. In terms of most of the details, no. In terms of title III, yes, because title III allows us to temporarily appoint an alternate commissioner to any of our commissions.

Mr. FASCELL. So that particular section would apply to any fishing convention in which the United States is a signatory?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. FASCELL. But as far as the inspection aspects of the enforcement, it applies only to the two conventions that are specifically covered in this bill?

Mr. McKERNAN. The inspection aspect only applies to the Northwest Atlantic.

Mr. FASCELL. Inspection does not apply to the North Pacific so that area is not involved in this except insofar as section 3 applies. Is that correct?

Mr. McKERNAN. I am reminded that the North Pacific already has international inspection in it, so it was not necessary to add it here. Mr. FASCELL. International inspection along the same lines as contemplated by this legislation.

Mr. SULLIVAN. The principle is the same. The details are somewhat different.

Mr. FASCELL. But it does include the right to board and inspect? Mr. SULLIVAN, Yes.

Mr. GROSS. Including Russia?

Mr. SULLIVAN. No, not including Russia. The North Pacific Fur Seal Convention does include Russia. The Fisheries Convention does not, however.

Mr. GROSS. You are going to detail for us in the record all the other fishing conventions which have provisions which are similar to or bear upon the issues that we are confronting in this legislation. Is that correct?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. FASCELL. We will need a basis of comparison to see what we have done, what the precedents are, what the differences are in mechanics, and if some new principle is involved that we have not met before.

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. FASCELL. I believe that is all the questions I have, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. FRASER. Mr. Gross?

Mr. GROSS. Mr. McKernan, a couple of questions. Isn't this about the first on-site inspection that the Russians have agreed to?

Mr. McKERNAN. No, they have agreed to this in the Fur Seal Convention for many years, I think from 1945. But in general, the Soviets have been very reluctant to have such on-site inspection, and they have been reluctant in the fishing areas as well. It is only in very recent years that they have come around in the Northwest Atlantic, and the Northeast Atlantic, where there is a similar convention involving those nations of North Europe fishing in the North Sea and the Northeastern Atlantic. It is only in very recent years that they have come around to this kind of inspection system.

Mr. GROSS. What happens to the results of the inspection, are they made public?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes, they are reported to the Commission each year, and to each government.

Mr. GROSS. Could I write and get the results of the inspection for each year?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

Mr. GROSS. In detail, the number of ships inspected, the identity of the vessels, and the reports on what they found?

Mr. McKERNAN. Pardon me. I want to make sure and give you a precise answer, Mr. Gross.

That is correct. The inspection report goes to the flag government. The summary of the inspections and numbers of violations and so forth, I think, are summarized and would be available to anyone. Mr. GROSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FRASER. Mr. Frelinghuysen?

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I am not sure, still, what value international inspection has. I would like to know more about what kind of violations are going on that can't really be effectively controlled. Mr. Fulham referred to them. Surely there needs to be more adequate conservation of these various species, which presumably is one of the reasons for the decision to proceed with international inspection.

You indicated as I recall, a little earlier, that this was not as strong a measure as the United States would like to have seen.

In other words, are we really providing much in the way of teeth with this kind of inspection? Could you elaborate both regarding what the frictions are, the violations that can't be corrected, and what might be accomplished by this type of inspection?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.

The easiest kind of inspection, the easiest kind of regulation that would be dealt with with this sort of an inspection system would be one dealing with the kind of gear or amount of gear, for example, mesh size and that sort of thing. It would permit the inspector to get on board and see what kind of mesh size was being used.

The Soviets have objected to what they call "below deck inspection," inspections below the deck. We have advocated full inspections so that if a load of fish is emptied from the net and taken to a processing room down below decks, one could examine whether or not prohibited species or, for example, small fish might be found which would normally not be taken by large mesh gear. The Soviets have said, "no, the regu

lation goes to the size of mesh, not to the size of fish or species of fish, but to the size of mesh. Therefore, we will only allow you to inspect for those things where we do have regulations."

Now, we would like to have this system much more comprehensive, and here is one of the problems we have at the moment, essentially in your area of the Atlantic Coast. There has been an argument as to whether or not the Soviets are violating the regulations of the convention in continuing to fish for yellowtail flounder after the quota has been filled. In addition to this, we have an agreement with them outside of the Commission, that they simply will leave the yellowtail flounder alone because it is in low abundance. Our coastal fishermen are dependent upon it, and they have agreed they will not fish for yellowtail flounder. Our fishermen don't think they are living up to this agreement. A good inspection system would either find them fishing yellowtail flounder or it would satisfy our fishermen that they are not. If we could go down below the deck, if we saw one yellowtail flounder among a thousand, this would not be significant.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Is this approach going to be inadequate to take care of this problem?

Mr. McKERNAN. It is going to be inadequate to take care of all the problems that we think are there, but it is going to be good in relation to some of the problems.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. How about the yellowtail flounder problem? Mr. MCKERNAN. It won't be adequate. At the last meeting, we had a special meeting with the Soviets and we told them, "Our people don't believe you." We have been dealing with these people a long time. They are professionals, and I must say they are good. We simply said, "our fishermen see you fishing where they are fishing, we catch yellowtail flounder and you say you are not catching them. We have to take a look at this."

They said, "All right, if you contact our fleet commander, if you take some of our people on your boats, we will take some of your people on our boats, and we will set up an experiment." We are in the process of doing that now.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is apart from the rest of it?

Mr. McKERNAN. This is apart from the general inspection system that is going into effect on July 1.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Hasn't there been a problem with Denmark, with respect to the Atlantic salmon?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes, Atlantic salmon would not be affected by this. The United States takes the position that the country where the salmon spawn should, for all practical purposes, harvest those particular fish. We often-times have hatcheries and put in large sums of money, local and Federal, and even private money into artificial propagation of salmon. These salmon go to the ocean to pasture and fishermen, being energetic people, have found the pasturage off the south coast and west coast of Greenland. The Danish fishermen, being good high seas fishermen, have taken advantage of this and are catching substantial quantities of these mixed stocks of Atlantic salmon. We are trying to stop them from doing that, and they are resisting it. This year we failed-we got a compromise from them that was not acceptable to us,

and the United States voted against it. Canada and the other salmon producing nations, most of the other salmon producing nations, voted for it. We felt it was not adequate-it did not adequately take care of our problem, and we voted against it.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. What kind of a compromise was it?

Mr. McKERNAN. It limited the fishing by the Danes and Norwegians to the 1969 level, and we wanted at least a 25-percent reduction from that level.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The volume of fish caught?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes. Now, that volume is not so very large, but it is large enough, we think, to affect particularly the large salmon. Atlantic salmon come in two sizes in the fishery, what are called grilse, the prematurely matured fish that are of the small size, and the very large fish that are 20 pounds and so on.

It is these large fish that the high seas fishery takes in considerable quantities, and what we think they should not take. We don't think it is conservative to fish salmon in the high seas, because you can't tell which stock, which race you are catching. Thus you can't regulate the escapement and the catch. This is our major objection, one of our major objections. We also think that we put in the money and the investment, and we ought to get the return.

Mr. FRASER. There is a jurisdictional problem here between two committees. We have a letter from the chairman, or we have been made. aware of a letter from the chairman of the Merchant Marine Committee in which they indicate that that committee has handled many of these legislative acts.

Would it be a serious matter if we were to strike out of this bill your reference to the North Pacific fisheries-I guess that would be title II—and if we were to limit the application of title III only to the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries?

Would that create any difficulty for you?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. Chairman, the sole purpose of including title II in this bill is that when we were preparing the amendments to the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Act, we discovered that some of those amendments were applicable to provisions of that Act which are incorporated by reference in the North Pacific Fisheries Act, and that some of those amendments were not pertinent to the North Pacific. This would have meant that we would have had to write an amendment that says that the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Act is amended by doing thus and so, except when it applies to the North Pacific Fisheries Act it is not amended, which we felt was very poor legislative practice.

Mr. FRASER. Just on a technical question, the incorporation by reference in the Northern Pacific Act is 1954. The one we are dealing with had been in existence for four years.

Mr. SULLIVAN. That is right. There is a section in the North Pacific Fisheries Act which says that some sections of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries are incorporated here in haec verba.

Mr. FRASER. I think that a subsequent change in those sections in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Act would not alter

Mr. SULLIVAN. The language is not in the North Pacific Fisheries Act. It is only the reference.

Mr. FRASER. An amendment to the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Act, an amendment to those sections having come after the 1954 enactment, would not change, or have any effect?

Am I wrong about that?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. Chairman, I believe the problem is that the language only exists in one place, and that is in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Act.

Mr. FRASER. When you incorporate by language, you incorporate it then, the then language, and that is the way it is. If we come along and change that language for purposes of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Act, it does not seem to me that would have an effect on the old language which was incorporated by reference into the Pacific Act. This is a technical question.

Mr. McKERNAN. That is a legal question. We would be delighted to work with the staffs of the two committees to make certain that we cause as little difficulty as possible and still accomplish the basic purposes.

Mr. FRASER. In any event, what you are saying, I guess, and I don't know that we should get into questions that lawyers will have to answer, but if we can find a way to draft a bill so that we don't have to deal with the North Pacific Fisheries Act, there is no problem from your point of view?

Mr. McKERNAN. No problem.

Mr. FRASER. With respect to title III which deals with alternate commissioners, if we were to limit that provision to the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Act, no problem would occur, even though you might like to have it extended to the others?

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It seems to me they might well need supplemental action by the other committee to keep up and cope with the effort that was made in title II and title III with respect to language that does not fall within the jurisdiction of this subcommittee.

In other words, you might need to take two steps because of the jurisdictional problem in Congress to accomplish the objectives sought in this one bill.

In other words, I would suppose that this would only be a partial answer then if we took out of this bill some of the language with respect to alternate commissioners for any of the commissioners.

I would assume this was of some consequence to you, so you would not have considered that we did everything you have been asking if we took out at least that language.

Mr. McKERNAN. Title III, the one providing for alternate commissioners, is even more important to some of the other commissions. Mr. FRASER. I understand, but the letter from Chairman Garmatz indicates they are prepared to act on a separate legislative approach, as they are able to get to it. Would you do as Mr. Frelinghuysen suggests, pursue those matters with that committee?

I guess the main point would be that if we don't treat those questions in so far as they apply to other conventions, or acts, you would still get your principal benefit out of title I in a limited application of title III?

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes.