- (ERRITORIAL SEA ©. 891

can be expanded as this nation’s need. for protein food and animal oils
expands with our growing population.

Practically speaking, the livelthood of every salt-water fisherman
of the United States will be critically affected by the outcome of these
contentions. Accordingly, every Senator and Representative having
such fishermen in his or her constituency is abnormally sensitive to
the Department’s activity, or lack thereof, in this field of its work.
Numerically, the. Congressmen who have indicated in the past three
years a.continuing, active interest in this subj ect amount to about
20 Senators and 50 ‘Representatives. . Lo a
- The international phase of this problem has been brought i into a
critical phase through the program instituted by the Mexican Gov-
ernment to obtain de facto control over fisheries developed by United
States citizens in the high seas off. the coast of Mexico both in the
Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. One of the tactics used by Mexico in
recent years to further such control is the seizure by Mexican gunboats
of United States fishing vessels operating as much as thirty miles off
the coast and the subsequent claim that those vedsels were fishing in
Mexican territorial waters without. proper permits. This has been
brought to a head by a seizure of this nature on April 93, 1950 of
- five United States shrimp vessels off: the coast of Mexico about 150
miles south of Brownsville, Texas. .

In choosing: the site of this most’ reéeut ‘inéident Mexico obtained
a » geographical situation which carried maximum embarrassment to
the United States position. The State of Texas contends that the
three-mile concept of a band of territorial waters does not apply to
the waters off its coast because the sovereign territory of the State of
Texas encompasses a band of margin sea three leagues (about. 1014
statutory miles) in width. Other Gulf Coast States have similar ex-
aggerated claims which ‘they ‘have supported | with more or less vigor
in the past, but always with respect to their own citizens or the citizens
of other States of the’Union, and not as a matter of foreign rélations.

This domestic squabble with respect to the breadth of the marginal
sea among the Gulf States is always on the verge of becoming en-
meshed in the even broader based domestic squabble among the States
and between the States and the Federal Government with respect: to
the ownership: of subsoil resources under the marginal sea and the
tidelands. OP ge | | oe

In consequence ‘the Department has been. forced into a position of
taking a very firm stand internationally in an area of the utmost
delicacy with respect. to domestic politics. of necessity the solution of
the international aspect of the matter must relate itself to the local
domestic situation because the international problem can probably
only be solved permanently through treaty between the United States