37 



for the depletion of domestic fishing stocks. You were also quoted, 

 and I quote, "fishermen themselves who for years under manage- 

 ment councils were given the responsibility to make decisions to 

 conserve have not been conserving. I believe it is widely known 

 that actual working fishermen have not been represented on man- 

 agement councils. Politically appointed representatives, some with 

 little or no experience in the fishing industry, seem to fill these po- 

 sitions. Many fishermen, not all, have requested conservation regu- 

 lations only to be ignored." 



Mr. Shelley, we asked to close the southern part for the scallops. 

 We were ignored. We begged to close an area, and Secretary 

 Brown, he was surprised at that, and Roily Schmitten said, 'T^oy, 

 didn't know that and that sounds good." 



Senator Kerry. Let me contradict you politely if I can, and let 

 me ask you to sit down if I can, because I do not want to turn this 

 into a two- to three-person exchange here. 



But the truth is that each council has voting members that in- 

 clude the regional fisheries director of NOAA. It has State fishery 

 managers, and it has from 4 to 12 individuals with fisheries exper- 

 tise. 



Now, I can go through very personally for you specific descrip- 

 tions of how individuals on those councils who represent a particu- 

 lar segment of the industry have always stood up and said you can- 

 not do this to us, we are not going to permit this to happen, if you 

 do this we cannot pay our mortgage, if you do this you will put us 

 out of business. 



So, in effect, where the Federal Government mandated that a 

 plan be put in place, no plan was forthcoming. A year would go by, 

 2 years would go by, 3 years would go by. A few years ago I re- 

 sponded in Washington by proposing changes to the Magnuson Act 

 to permit the Secretary of Commerce to step in where the councils 

 would not make a decision. Amendment 5 came to be in place ulti- 

 mately, because the Conservation Law Foundation sued in order to 

 get the council to make a decision. 



So, I stand by my statement. It is a true statement. 



Fishermen and others said we want the process to be democratic, 

 we want to make the decision. So, Senator Magnuson when he 

 wrote the act said "OK, we'll give you the decisionmaking power." 



The problem is that people who were given the decisionmaking 

 power fell prey to conflicts within the councils, and many decisions 

 were not made. This not true of all councils and not true all the 

 time, but often enough that we are today in crisis. 



Now, all I can say to you is that I am not here to make the crisis 

 worse. I am here to try to calmly and reasonably find a way to take 

 an impossible situation and try to find a rational way to move to- 

 ward the future. I want to protect and minimize the pain of fisher- 

 men. 



I am the one who worked with Senator Byrd so we could get $30 

 million here. I am the one who pushed for enactment of the North- 

 west Atlantic Fisheries Reinvestment Program to get people into 

 other areas. We are fighting hard. 



But, folks, if people are going to sit there and do what John 

 Bullard said a few moments ago, which is pretend that you can 



