37 



Greenland that takes U.S. -origin Atlantic salmon off the coast of 

 Greenland, and we really need to work with them to find supple- 

 mental income alternatives for the amount of money that they 

 make in that fishery. 



We were able to get them to agree not to fish on Atlantic salmon 

 for 1994 and 1995 with an option to renew that for the next 3 

 years. We will continue to see if we can put that together. Some- 

 body told me today that there is a fairly substantial increase in re- 

 turns to the Connecticut River this year, so maybe it is already 

 paying off. There are a couple of these illegal fishing operations in 

 the North Atlantic again that we are tracking that are targeting 

 Atlantic salmon. 



Since Canada has moved its Atlantic salmon fisheries off of the 

 ocean, and they are fishing just in rivers, they are not intercepting 

 any U.S. -origin fish, so tne only directed fishery has been this 

 small fishery in Greenland, and our objective is to find a way in 

 working with them to basically keep them out of that fishery. 



Senator Kerry. Through a buyout? 



Ambassador Colson. Buyout, some mechanism of that sort. 



Senator Kerry. Grentlemen, I really want to express my appre- 

 ciation to you. I have pushed you hard on this. I know Secretary 

 Wirth shares a desire to move in this direction, and if you folks are 

 underfunded or there are problems there, I really would like you 

 to let us know, particularly on the enforcement side. I know Sen- 

 ator Stevens and I and others will try to address enforcement, be- 

 cause it does us no good to achieve these agreements and then sim- 

 ply let them be undercut by our lack of enforcement capacity. 



Senator Stevens. May I have one last comment here, or ques- 

 tion, really? 



Senator Kerry. Absolutely. 



Senator Stevens. I know you mentioned that the Sea of 

 Okhotsk — we call it the Peanut Hole — and it has been held up here 

 since last year; have you been able to find out what the objection 

 is? I think it is because of NAFO provisions rather than the Peanut 

 Hole area. What is holding us up? Have you all changed your mind 

 about that bill, the overall bill, the Studds bill? 



Ambassador Colson. Senator, the administration would be quite 

 happy to see both the NAFO bill and the Peanut Hole bill passed. 

 I think what happened is when you passed the Peanut Hole bill 

 and sent it over to the House, they attached the NAFO bill to it 

 and sent it back over here, and there were still some objections 

 over here to the NAFO bill, so that you did not move on that pack- 

 age. And that is all up to you about how you link things and delink 

 things here in the Congress. But the administration is supporting 

 both of those bills. 



Senator Stevens. I do not have any dog in the fight over the 

 NAFO bill, but I obviously have one in the other one. I would like 

 to see them both move, but I do not know what is holding them 

 up. Maybe I will have to talk to my firiend here about that. But I 

 would like to see that done. 



That bill would prohibit U.S. fishermen from fishing the high 

 seas area of the Sea of Okhotsk. 



Ambassador Colson. Into the Peanut Hole, unless we are in a 

 cooperative agreement with the Russians. 



