17 



You sit there, and you think over the years that if you can finally 

 pay your mortgage off, that the money will all go in your pocket. 

 This year I've yet to catch 50,000 pounds offish. I've lost thousands 

 of dollars. And my crew has made so little, a crew that's been with 

 me, believe it or not, for 17 years, they may not come back next 

 year. 



So, I've chosen today to talk about solving the hard problem. 

 Senator, and that's getting fish back. I'm not blind to the social 

 problems and the unhappiness and the pain that exists in all our 

 families and in the industry, but that's another subject that I can 

 participate in later this morning. 



I'm saying, Senator, if you want to solve the New England 

 groundfish problem, we have to be prepared to close Georges Bank 

 for at least 3 years on both sides of the Hague Line. None of this 

 business like this year where we had area II closed and in June 

 the Canadians opened their side and were landing those yellow 

 tails and their trucks were coming down here with those fish. If 

 you're going to have conservation then we close Georges Bank here 

 and we close it in Canada. 



Second, I would say to assign mandatory observers to collect 

 data, which echoes some of the previous comments; to collect data 

 for 50 percent of the vessel's days at sea in exchange for fuel pay- 

 ments for those trips. This kind of information is vital. The case 

 has been made for improved assessments, management, better fish- 

 ing, et cetera with improved data. 



We need to provide fishery science education for commercial fish- 

 ermen to make them equal partners in the recovery process. We're 

 capable of learning what we have to learn. Farmers are bright peo- 

 ple, we've got bright guys in our crews also, but we need to under- 

 stand, we need to show these scientists that we can be an equal 

 partner and we don't need a Ph.D. This will assist management 

 and will give us greater respect for accumulating the data, and the 

 understanding in the galley is important, that acquiring data is no 

 baloney. 



I think we need to develop hatchery and release programs, ini- 

 tially for codfish, to further our understanding of the biology and 

 behavior of commercially important species and to rebuild their 

 numbers. This will build a scientific platform, and this will com- 

 plement the assessment workshops, this will complement the coun- 

 cils, and through enhancement we may actually increase the num- 

 ber offish. 



I think we need to build a world-class gear technology center to 

 determine the overall impact of various gear types on habitat and 

 fishing mortality. 



And I suggest to you. Senator, that if we had taken all the 

 money that's been spent by the draggers for cod ends, 5-inch, 6- 

 inch, will it be 7-inch next year, we could provide the downpayrnent 

 for that technology center. Some questions can be answered. Are 

 circle hooks good7 are gill nets bad, are doors and sea scallop 

 dredges plowing up the bottom? These are not difficult questions, 

 but we need to attack them to find the answer so that objective de- 

 cisions can be made instead of all this wheelhouse thinking and 

 tire kicking. 



