June 22, 1973
Page 20863
THE PLIGHT OF OUR FISHING INDUSTRY
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, each year, the Law of the Sea Institute at the University of Rhode Island sponsors a major conference at which prominent scholars, diplomats, and Government officials discuss the complex and vitally important effort to develop international agreements on man's use of the oceans.
At the concluding session of the 1973 conference last night, the distinguished senior Senator from Maine, Senator MUSKIE, was the principal speaker and delivered a forceful and eloquent appeal for interim actions to protect U.S. fisheries while we press forward to obtain a meaningful and effective international agreement.
The senior Senator from Maine has an intimate knowledge of the problems of New England fishermen and, in addition, he has a keen understanding of the problems involved in obtaining the international agreements which are essential to provide effective protection. for our fisheries and our fishermen.
As chairman of the subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment of the Senate. Foreign Relations Committee, I am particularly aware of Senator MUSKIE's deep concern over the plight of our fishing industry, and of his efforts to provide effective solutions.
The address delivered by Senator MUSKIE last night at the Law of the Sea Institute is an important contribution to the effort to preserve and protect the fishery industry and the fishery resources off our coasts, and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
REMARKS OF SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE TO THE LAW OF THE SEAS INSTITUTE KINGSTON, R.I.,
JUNE 21, 1973
I come from a state that lives by the sea. So it is a particular pleasure for me to be home in New England and to have the opportunity to talk to many of you who are dealing with the future of the world's seas.
To our ancestors on this continent, the sea was infinite – an infinite, if often dangerous, source of food and work; an infinite protection from foreign interference ... a barrier and shield for a new country and its people; an infinite disposal for the refuse of man in his headlong pursuit of industrial development. In this century the safe havens of our ocean frontiers have disappeared one by one before the onward rush of technology.
Hence, the oceans no longer isolate us from the politics of other nations. Contamination and depredation of the sea and its inhabitants have risen to terrifying proportions. The technology that brings closer to hand the economic wealth of the sea also presents the prospect of the same shortsighted pursuit of wealth that has left our land scarred, our water poisoned, and our air polluted.
George Santayana once said that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. To me this is the essence of the problems that confront us here in the United States and will confront all nations at the upcoming Law of the Seas Conference. The primary question is not whether the U.S. can reconcile its conflicting domestic pressures to pursue an equitable adjustment of international ocean problems. Nor is the question whether developing states can temper their understandably urgent quest for a share of the world's goods by claiming jurisdiction over the seas that others have so long controlled. The question is really whether the nations of the world have learned the lessons necessary to prevent the abuse of the seas from reaching the point some scientists predict will be our ultimate doom.
A hundred years ago, the British scientist Thomas Huxley wrote of this nation, "I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness or your material resources as such ... the great issue is what are you going to do with all these."
Huxley's statement has a great deal of relevance today vis-à-vis man's use of the ocean. At present, more than a hundred nations are involved in probably the most significant international negotiations ever conducted concerning the seas. An orderly and equitable ocean regime has become both more vital to nations and more difficult for them to agree upon. They are more dependent than ever before on access to critical areas of the ocean, on its ecological health, and on its mineral and food resources.
As ocean users multiply – and as competition among them intensifies – the classical political question of "who gets what" is thrust to the center of the debate over the future of the oceans. With wise answers to this question, international cooperation and justice can prevail in the ocean. With shortsighted answers, 70 % of the earth's surface could become an arena for serious international tension and conflict.
As everyone in this audience knows so well, highly nationalistic and parochial trends have become evident during preparations for next year's Conference. Pressures against international solutions are powerful and growing – in developed as well as developing nations. The present cod war between Iceland and Britain and the proliferation of all kinds of jurisdictional claims painfully underscore this reality and the inadequacy of present law. A "beggar my neighbor" world of ocean politics can no longer be considered a mere alarmist fantasy.
Despite these trends, I remain convinced that we can forestall that new colonial race in the oceans President Johnson warned about some years ago, and Dean Rusk spoke of before a Congressional committee more recently.
I remain convinced that international accommodation is possible in the ocean.
I remain convinced that a broadly agreed upon and comprehensive international ocean regime can serve both the world's interest and the national interest.
I remain convinced that the international community can bring stability and justice to the seas without compromising the security or the welfare of any nation with high stakes in the ocean.
Indeed, I believe that only with concerted action can our collective interests in the ocean be satisfied.
Concerted action will call for vision and statesmanship of the highest order. What outcomes are needed?
New international law to regulate the multiple and often conflicting uses of the sea;
New principles of national behavior and self-restraint to insure that sheer military might and technological prowess do not become the sole arbiters of ocean affairs;
New institutions and processes to enable all concerned nations to participate in decisions about the oceans;
New arrangements to facilitate scientific study and interpretation of the marine environment;
New policies toward ocean resources to insure rational and fair distribution of ocean wealth;
New initiatives to help the world's poor countries to benefit more fully from the potential of the ocean.
In sum, we must nurture a new sense of international community toward the ocean. With it must come an overarching conception of the common good, a capacity for handling our inevitable disputes peacefully, and a set of new political habits and reciprocity, good faith and mutual accountability for our activities in the ocean. These goals are no longer utopian hopes. They now are the imperatives of prudent diplomacy.
This helps explain why the upcoming Law of the Seas Conference is so important. For the Conference represents the opening of a new political process for working together on shared ocean problems. So awesomely complex an enterprise as the Conference cannot realistically expect to succeed in all major respects. Most governments, including the U.S., will likely have to settle for less than their maximum demands. Some tasks needing international attention will remain incomplete. Some outstanding issues will be settled ambiguously, if at all.
I am not urging that we slacken our efforts to achieve productive and timely results. Or that we move any less vigorously towards agreements which can halt the extension of competitive nationalism into the seas.
I am urging, however, that we anticipate what inevitably must be the equivalent of a continuing and permanent Law of the Seas Conference. History will not judge next year's session by some scoreboard tally of completed actions on a long agenda. What will count in the end will be whether today's statements leave the ocean as a lasting international resource and whether future Conferences will have a durable and flexible political framework for collective action.
Several Resolutions currently before the U.S. Congress endorse the objectives that were envisioned in President Nixon's statement on Ocean Policy in May 1970. These Resolutions – as well as the President's statement – are the culmination of several years of study within the American government, debate among government officials and private interest groups, and negotiations with other countries. The Resolutions envision:
(1) protection of the freedom of the high seas, beyond a twelve-mile territorial sea, for navigation, communication and scientific research;
(2) recognition that the protection of the ocean environment requires certain internationally agreed-upon duties of the international community as a whole;
(3) establishment of an international regime to regulate the development of deep seabed mineral resources;
(4) protection of our fisheries resources through coastal zone management of coastal and anadromous species and international management of migratory species.
These are notable and worthwhile goals for the United States to pursue. They reflect a genuine concern on the part of our government to establish the beginnings of effective international regulation in an area covering 70 % of the globe. And in Congress, I have supported and intend to continue to support legislative efforts designed to achieve these objectives.
We should all realize, though, that these are long-run goals that may take many years to achieve. The Law of the Seas Conference is not scheduled to convene in Chile until next May and it may be several years after the conclusion of the Conference before we have any international agreements governing the use of the seas.
In the short-run, we must be aware of and deal with very real problems that cannot be filed away while treaties are negotiated. Specifically, in this country, it is important for our government to formulate and pursue an interim oceans policy responsive to the needs of both the American people and the international community. Let me emphasize that this does not mean that the United States, in the short-run, should adopt short-sighted policies, such as the American Mining Congress bill currently before the Senate Interior Committee. That proposal calls for the mining of hard mineral resources of the deep seabed under government protection. The unilateral adoption of such a policy course by our government would likely trigger an international race to colonize the seas, jeopardize American credibility at the Law of the Seas Conference, and be prejudicial to the future conclusion of international accords on the oceans.
No, what I am talking about is the need for this country to adopt enlightened, interim policies that, on the one hand, are responsive to the needs of the American people, and on the other hand, will not prejudice the future conclusion of international agreements. Such an enlightened policy course will not be easy to formulate. Nor will it be easy to pursue.
Let me take the example of fishing, a subject which is of prime concern to the people of the State of Maine. In Maine, fishermen are currently losing the livelihood of generations because as a nation we have not responded adequately to global developments, allowing our fishing industry to sink to low estate in our national priorities. Within the last ten years, the fishing effort of foreign fleets off our coasts has increased several fold. At any given time today, hundreds of large foreign vessels can be sighted within 100 miles off our shores. In fact the world's fishing effort is now so much greater than even a decade ago that stocks can be decimated in a season or two, a rate much faster than our traditionally cumbersome, international negotiations can impose effective regulation upon them.
The experience in the Northwest Atlantic is illustrative of the gravity and immediacy of the situation. From 1952 through 1960, the U.S. fish catch from New England waters averaged about 700 million pounds a year, or 99% of the total catch from that area. In the early 1960's, the Russians, the Poles, the Germans, and other foreign fleets moved into these waters in large numbers. By 1969, the Soviet Fleet was taking 836 million pounds, or 50 % of the total catch from New England waters; while the U.S. catch had declined to about 418 million pounds, or about 25% of the area's total harvest.
The efforts of the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries to manage fisheries resources off the New England Coast, unfortunately, have failed miserably.
Enforcement of current ICNAF regulations is virtually nonexistent because the Coast Guard does not have the capability to adequately police the Northwest Atlantic. In addition, the Coast Guard is not permitted to search when boarding foreign ships; it has to rely on the information provided by foreigners as to their landings off the New England Coast, and has to contend with a multitude of local, state, regional, federal, and international jurisdictions often having conflicting objectives.
Clearly, if regulation is to have any meaning, we must strengthen our ability to deal with fishing problems. As one means of doing this, we need to improve our knowledge of our fish resources and the nature of the difficulties faced by our domestic fishing industry. Secondly, we have to have not only more effective but better coordinated regulation between various entities so that our fishermen can compete with foreigners fishing off our waters. And finally, we need better enforcement of existing regulations.
What do we have? We have a situation in which the agency that can provide us with additional knowledge of our fisheries resources is losing both money and status. We have a situation in which our domestic enforcement arm – the Coast Guard – cannot begin to police the area with available resources. And we do not have the kind of workable regulation that might overcome these handicaps.
When the National. Ocean and Atmospheric Administration was established in November 1970 as a direct result of the findings of the Stratton Commission, it was hoped – and intended – that this organization would become a strong focal point for ocean research programs. That need has not begun to be met. Yet three NOAA Marine laboratories, including one in Maine, will be closed down at the end of this month and other urgent programs will be curtailed for lack of funds. The Nixon Administration, on the one hand, is urging for this country a leading role in the international effort to preserve the ocean environment, and on the other hand it has severely slashed the funding of the agency concerned with the research that might tell us how best to do it.
At stake is not corporate profits, but much-needed research and people's jobs – not panaceas for a dying industry but means to restore it to health. Unfortunately, the Administration is providing neither the health measures nor the kind of constructive proposals needed to meet the difficulties faced by our domestic fishing industry.
I do not suggest there is nothing the industry and the states can do. Certainly the differing regulations in neighboring states and regions concerning the same stock is both unnecessary and remediable. Unfair advantage offered to one renders all measures ineffective and unenforceable. And certainly the government can provide means to help our domestic fishermen to adopt the vessels and the gear that will enable them to compete. Much as I suspect some of our fishermen would prefer that the competition simply fade away, becoming competitive is a more realistic view of the future.
Finally, and I am sure that this will be one of the conclusions of the Law of the Sea Conference regarding fisheries, all coastal states must have a recognized interest, not only in a fair share of the catch, but in seeing that our fish resources are not destroyed by visiting fleets that have only a passing interest, easily transferable to new and more promising grounds. In recent years the depletion of haddock stocks on Georges Bank in the northwest Atlantic has been so great as to cause a recommendation by the National Marine Fisheries Service that haddock fishing be suspended. And now, many experts are predicting similar fates for cod, sea scallops, lobster, and yellow tail flounder.
To the extent that fishing stocks continue to vanish, the pressures for unilateral action to extend our fishing limits to 200 miles or to the edge of the continental shelf will increase, and such action may well be the most effective way to produce the international approach to management of the oceans that we need. If in upcoming months international agreement on global fisheries problems appears increasingly unlikely in the short term, then unilateral steps may have to be implemented to insure the existence of a strong U.S. fishing industry.
Let me add that I am aware of the apparent illogic of advocating measures to benefit American fishermen, while condemning national measures that would benefit our mineral industry or indeed any number of other countries that have made unilateral claims in defense of this or that vital interest or special circumstance.
As far as I know, there is no shortage of critical minerals that compels us to scoop up manganese modules in the next six months or even in the next six years. There is, however, something to be said for the view of fishermen that international treaties will be of little value if by the time they are negotiated, certain species will have been severely, or, in some cases, totally depleted because of over-exploitation.
Additionally, there seems to be a distinction with a difference in situations in which interim measures might follow the path of predictable outcome. I believe there would be little argument that in some form, the preferential rights of coastal states over both the control and distribution of catch off their coasts will be substantially increased whether that increase is measured in distance, or by species, or by some combination of both. If in fact that is a fair prognostication, I think it should be possible to take immediate measures without prejudice either to negotiating positions or to the form in which such rights may ultimately be couched.
For these reasons and as one measure that would bring some light to bear on this situation, I have supported a Senate resolution calling for a national fisheries policy in this country. This Resolution, which was recently passed by the Senate, expresses congressional support for a U.S. oceans policy that will permit us to deal more effectively with excessive foreign fishing off our coasts, and that will facilitate better coordination among our states. This bill recommends the utilization of existing entities – the Atlantic States, Gulf States, and Pacific Marine Fisheries Commissions – to gather facts, ideas and suggestions needed to formulate policy and insure a strong commercial fishing industry in this country.
Another measure I have recently supported in Congress is legislation to have the lobster designated a creature of the continental shelf. This legislation would limit foreign lobster fishing off our coasts and help conserve existing lobster stocks, which are being depleted at an unusually rapid rate. In the bill, it is explicitly stated that this legislation, if enacted, would remain in force only until future international agreement is reached.
These initiatives, interim though they are, should help our fishing industry. But their effectiveness – no matter how well planned or prepared the steps – will depend ultimately on our ability to enforce the measures. With more than 15 foreign countries fishing off our shores for a wide variety of stocks, enforcement will be impossible unless the regulations are simple, straightforward and subject to easy surveillance. Even then, it will be essential that the Coast Guard be fully funded so that it will have the vessels and aircraft needed to ensure that the regulations are obeyed and that the heritage – as well as the livelihood – of our fishermen are protected.
I have chosen to speak at some length tonight about our fisheries problems only in part because I know that coastal fishing jurisdiction will be an important – and perhaps critical – element in the successful resolution of law of the seas problems. I also speak to this question because I recognize the kind of political pressure that can build from jobs and revenue lost and resources depleted while diplomats negotiate.
As someone who has spent a large part of his career concerned with the preservation of our land and water, I believe in the imperative of a regime for the oceans that will treat them as the one world they are – the legacy of all mankind. I do not think that this great objective is either inconsistent with or would be ill-served by sensible interim measures to alleviate immediate fisheries problems.
George Kennan once wrote, "a political society does not live to conduct foreign policy ... it conducts foreign policy in order to live." This aphorism should be kept in mind by our government today, if we are to ensure that the oceans will live and their riches will be justly shared and nurtured for future generations.