The Japan-United States Salmon Conflict

• Main Author: Johnson, Ralph W.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: UW Law Digital Commons 1967
• Subjects: International Convention for the High Seas Fisheries of the North Pacific Ocean; salmon; Natural Resources Law; Bering Sea; Canada; Pacific
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol43/iss1/2; https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1765&context=wlr

The United States, Canada, and Japan signed the International Convention for the High Seas Fisheries of the North Pacific Ocean [hereinafter cited as Tripartite Treaty] on May 9, 1952, 11 days after the effective date of the Japanese Peace Treaty. This fisheries Treaty became effective June 12, 1953. It initiated the "abstention" principle whereby Japan agreed to abstain from fishing stocks of North American spawned salmon when the Commission, created in the treaty, was satisfied that the United States and Canada were taking the "maximum sustainable yield"' of those stocks, when it was demonstrated that United States and Canadian fishermen were being regulated by law toward the production of the maximum sustainable yield, and when continuing scientific studies were being carried on to assure such full utilization. In application of this concept the Japanese, in the annex to the treaty, specifically agreed to abstain from fishing for North American spawned salmon east of a line in the Bering Sea located for the most part at longitude 175º W.