Formation of ICNAF – events leading up to the 1949 conference 

The first regulatory convention that pertained to the North Atlantic was the 1943 Draft Convention relating to the Policing of Fisheries and Measures for the Protection of Immature Fish (Halliday and Pinhorn 1996, Sen 1997). However, Canada and USA shared doubts that North American interests would be well served by a North Atlantic-wide organization dominated by European states. That convention never came into force in the northwest Atlantic.