a part of its responsibility. In the future, its role is to be that of an
agency whose main function will be programming and planning on an
economic basis to aid watermen and others engaged in the seafood
industry to earn a better living.

I conceive of its role in relationship to watermen as being somewhat
like that of the extension service and research agency of the University
of Maryland to farmers. And just as farmers have benefited from the
planning of these two University services., so also will the watermen from
the Tidewater Fisheries Commission.

In this work, I suggested—and the Commission, I understand, has
followed through on the suggestion—that the members of the Commis-
sion visit the various communities in the Tidewater areas to learn
directly from the watermen of the problems facing the industry. My
idea here was that the Commission must know what these problems are
before it is in a position to organize a constructive rehabilitation pro-
gram. It is my hope, too, that as a result of these visits, the program it
eventually presents to the General Assembly will be largely a program
evolved from the watermen themselves.

The new Commission, I understand, has initiated a bold and am-
bitious plan for shell planting, involving the recovery and use of the
many hundreds of millions of bushels of shells which lie at the bottom
of the Chesapeake Bay.

Another fine demonstration that the agency means business is to be
found in its action for a resurvey of the oyster bars of the Bay and its
tributaries. There has been no survey of the natural oyster rocks of the
Bay since 1912, and the charts used by the courts and the enforcement
officers are, and have been for many years, hopelessly out of date. There
has been much talk over a period of many years of the need for such a
survey, but no action had been taken until this new Commission stepped
in with a firm hand and ordered that it be made without delay.

I was gratified to learn that the Commission's overall program to
breathe new life into the seafood industry included a project to find new
markets for oysters and other seafood products as soon as the supply
becomes more abundant. It was also gratifying to learn that a public
relations campaign has been launched to capture the confidence and
good will of watermen and packers.

We all recognize that there are many problems in trying to build a
constructive program of rehabilitation. A short time ago, I heard a
prominent man in the seafood industry remark that the differences
between the watermen themselves could not be harmonized—that the

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