contacted through telephone conversations supplemented 

 with correspondence. Many of the individuals on the west 

 coast, in Alaska and in Washington, D,C. were visited by 

 the contractor in the course of several weeks of traveling, 

 The contacted individuals were selected from council and 

 scientific and statistical committee membership lists, from 

 recommendations from the NMFS Office of Plan Review, and 

 from individuals known to the contractor in other contexts. 

 Contacts were selected to sample the viewpoints of each 

 council, of both scientific and managerial aspects of the 

 plans, and of academic, council and NMFS representatives. 



The third major task was a review of fishery manage- 

 ment plans. All of the plans which were available to the 

 public as of 1978, either in some draft stage or in final 

 form, were collected and examined for content. Four man- 

 agement plans, the final Northern Anchovy Plan of the Pacific 

 Council, the draft Bering Sea Groundfish Plan of the North 

 Pacific Council, the draft Squid Plan of the Mid-Atlantic 

 Council, and the draft Spiny Lobster Plan of the Western 

 Pacific Council were selected for more detailed review be- 

 cause they represented a range of management problems in- 

 cluding marine mammal issues, endangered species issues, 

 available data ranging from preliminary fisheries informa- 

 tion to fairly extensive ecosystem wide information, man- 

 agement of one or many species, varying dollar values, and 

 east and west coast conditions. The main criteria used to 

 evaluate these four plans were the procedures for selecting 

 optimum yield (OY) and the relationship of the designated 

 OY to MSY estimates, the treatments of possible impacts on 

 nontarget species , particularly marine mammals and endangered 

 species , and the treatment of ecological interactions both 

 affecting and affected by target species and the incorpora- 

 tion of such information in selection of OY levels . 



The last major task was consideration of possible mod- 

 ifications of existing management plans and practices to 

 meet the intents and requirements of the Acts more complete- 

 ly. On the basis of the assessment of the requirements of 

 the three Acts, the information provided by contacts, and 

 reviews of fishery management plans in relation to meeting 

 those requirements , consideration was given to actions which 

 could be taken by the councils , the NMFS and the Marine Mam- 

 mal Commission to better meet the intents and provisions of 

 the three Acts. Alternative management approaches feasible 

 with presently available data were considered. Some advances 



