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• The foreign depletions of stocks created tremendous pressure on ICNAF, 

 which, in turn, exerted pressure on the assessment community to pri- 

 marily study species of no value to the domestic fisherman whatsoever. 



Thus, whatever expertise working fishermen had concerning species 

 abundance and behavior was either avoided or ignored by the assessment 

 community. Certainly the indicators that fishermen use to harvest species 

 are different than those chosen by assessment personnel to assess stocks. 

 Fishermen rapidly refused to cooperate with the assessment community; 

 tensions developed; and today the relationship between the personnel who 

 depend on stocks for a living and those who assess those stocks is, at best, 

 an adversary relationship. Fishermen feel, with much justification, that 

 they are responsible for the legislation extending fisheries jurisdiction; 

 they are concerned that their expertise and knowledge is not sought or 

 utilized by those who undertake assessments. 



Fishermen feel that assessments should serve them; that NMFS exists be- 

 cause the United States has a fishing industry and that assessments should 

 respect their needs. While they recognize that much of the recent lack of 

 communication is due to them, and that assessments must attempt to develop 

 estimates of possible yields in a cost-effective manner, they remain con- 

 cerned that studies have not been developed to investigate issues they feel 

 to be important. These issues fall into two categories: information re- 

 garding biological relationships; and information relating man's activity 

 with respect to stock abundance. These shall be treated in turn. 



Biological Relationships 



1. Fishermen have argued for years that foreign inroads into such species 



as herring and mackerel have had important effects on the yield potential 



