FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1950, VOLUME I


   Within the past five years the Department has engaged in diplo-
 matic activity ranging in seriousness from attempting to persuade the
 subject nation from attacking these principles to protesting the illegal
 and unwarranted seizure of United States commerce on the high seas
 or the shooting down of United States planes in the air column above
 the high seas with the -following nations:'Argentina, Chile, Peru,
 Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El
 Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, 'Canada, Iceland, Norway, Denmark,
 Portugal,-Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Korea, China, and the
 USSR.
   In the same period of time elements of the Department's position on
this subject has been attacked-by Congressmen from, or the govern-
ments of, most or all of the littoral states of the Union but particu-
larly ,from those facing on the Gulf. of Mexico and the-Pacific- Ocean.
  .The issue in, most of the above-cited diplomatic and political activ-
ity has been. attacks on the principle of freedom of access to the free-
moving resources of the high seas, and it is to this subject that the
remainder of this memorandum is addressed.
  Each of the littoral nations which have placed themselves in oppo-
sition to this principle have done so for one of the two following
purposes, or for both: (a) to reserve the resources of the high seas
adjacent to its coasts exclusively to itself even if this resulted in great
wastage so far as the rest of mankind is concerned through the in-
ability of that nation to harvest those resources adequately, or (b) to
raise revenue by taxing the fishermen of other nations who had the
ability to harvest these resources.
  Each of our own littoral States w-hich have. placed themselves in
oppositionto ths principle have doneso for one of the two following
purposes, or for both: (a)ito simplify as much as possible the in-
evitably complex task of formulating and 'applying conservation
regulations to fisheries conducted on the high seas, and (b) to reserve
to the -fishermen, who by self-denial through conservation regulations
have restored and maintained certain fisheryresources in the high
seas at a level of maximum sustained production, he fruits of that
self-denial in those particular mature fisheries.
  The -fisheries of the United States principally affected by these con-
tentions -include (a) those for cod, haddock, rosefish, herring, mackerel,
and related fisheries out of New England, (b) those for shrimp out
of the Gulf Coast and Southern Atlantic Coast States, (c) those for
tuna, sardine, mackerel, and related fisheries out of California,' Oregon,
and Hawaii, and (d) those for salmon, halibut, herring, crab, and
related fisheries out of Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. These fish-
eries provide annually more than four-fifths of the total food yield
taken by the- United States -from- the sea-and it is-these fisheries which


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