18 



We need to increase the National Marine Fisheries Service fund- 

 ing and staff back to where it was before the Reagan years, and 

 to ensure that NOAA distributes that money as you and Congress 

 want them to have it; that it does get down there to NMFS. 



I think, last, we need to establish sanctuary zones in which all 

 forms of bottom gear are prohibited. 



Managing reproductive habitat is fundamental to solving the 

 problem. None of us find anything unacceptable about the ban on 

 clearcutting timbers. That's so easy to understand. 



The Federal Government passed a law in 1985 to be finally effec- 

 tive January 1 to combat soil erosion. Would you believe, and I 

 come from four generations of farmers — the first one not to farm 

 and ranch in the Dakota States — would you believe that farmers 

 don't plow their fields out there anymore? When you don't plow, 90 

 percent of the erosion problem is eliminated. They have no till 

 planting now. That's the kind of gear technology that can be devel- 

 oped if the Grovernment gets behind us like they have agriculture. 



I'd like to take the pile of money spent on agriculture by State 

 and Federal agencies in New England, which is a non agricultural 

 region, and compare it to the pile of money that we get for fish- 

 eries, and I don't think you'd even be able to see our pile. I bet you 

 they spent $1 billion on that new tomato they developed this year, 

 and we have no comparable expenditure in seafood. 



So, to summarize, Senator, I'll put it down in about 10 words, we 

 cannot have a seafood industry for future generations without fish. 



STATEMENT OF PETER SHELLEY, SENIOR ATTORNEY, 

 CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION 



Mr. Shelley. Good morning, Senator. 



I suppose I should ditto and pass the mike, but I'll be brief. 



I am senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, 

 which has 7,000 members in New England, and the majority are 

 in Massachusetts, as well as the Marine Fish Conservation Net- 

 work, which is 70 groups representing about 5 million who are in- 

 volved with the reauthorization, speaking here today principally for 

 my CLF post. 



On the Magnuson Act reauthorization, the network is starting 

 from the Gilchrist bill as the place to start from. We think there's 

 some improvements. But H.R. 4404 is where we think the Senate 

 should at least pick up the debate. 



There are a number of key items. I will save them until later. 

 I think one of them certainly has to be looking at the council sys- 

 tem. 



We all know that the council system, particularly down here in 

 New Bedford people know that the council system doesn't even 

 work well to recognize, to reflect the economic interests of all the 

 fishing community, but in terms of the ability to execute Federal 

 policy for trust and stewardship responsibilities the council has no 

 representation of the general public interest at large that is capa- 

 ble of pursuing that interest. 



I think to focus my comments, I would say the No. 1 policy 

 demon in New England is the issue of controlling access to these 

 fisheries. I think that open access fisheries inevitably lead to the 

 symptoms we have been experiencing over the last number of 



