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fishery. Clearly another several hundred thousand tons were caught 

 and destroyed. Although assessment theory holds that the eventual 

 tripling of yield on Georges reduced the biomass by up to 45 percent, 

 it may be that the 'clear-cutting' nature of the fishery had equally 

 important effects. 



While the trophic model described earlier may include the energy 

 value of discards in its matrix, no specific work in this area has 

 been designed. 



9 The fishmeal "loophole" : There presently exists no method of determining 

 the species composition of fishmeal. Fishmeal is composed not only of 

 offal from commercial species, but of whole fish that are of no value as 

 fillets or frozen blocks. Assuming that reduced production from Sub- 

 area 5 increases the value of all species found, and assuming further 

 that the value of any fish will increase in the future, it may well be 

 that fishmeal production will become valuable in itself even though the 

 species in that meal have value as fillets. This raises an enforcement 

 problem: once the fish are reduced to meal, and unless they are seen on 

 the deck before being reduced, there presently exists no method of 

 determining whether, in fact, reported figures are accurate. 



Members of the domestic industry feel that efforts should be made to 

 either observe all catches (observers) or design a method of deter- 

 mining fishmeal composition by species. 



Although this is not strictly a biological problem, until such infor- 

 mation can be developed, accurate landing figures for Georges Bank (or 

 any offshore region) will be subject to error. 



Biological Issue Needs 



The assessment community faces a difficult and demanding task. De- 

 velopment of predictive models to fully understand the interactions within 

 the marine community requires initial assumptions, judgments, and choices of 

 possible study options. As outlined throughout this report, the complexities 

 of this science ecljpse nearly any other resource management issue. 



Such complexities force the choice of projects that will serve to pro- 

 vide the key indicators upon which management decisions are to be made. 

 Confronted with offshore fisheries that stand threatened by overfishing, 

 assessments must have utility in two areas: 



