40 



"You're not catx:hing anything?" 'There's nothing there." I think we 

 have to reaHze here today. 



Senator Kerry. How do we get more precise? 



Ms. Erickson. We have to have more truthfulness. The Grovern- 

 ment is going to have to gain the confidence of the fishermen, and 

 the only way they're going to do that is the double talk and the 

 double standards are going to have to stop. 



The council has basically used Canadian rules. They've tried to 

 retrofit it to the American fishery. It hasn't worked. But they want- 

 ed to keep their jobs. Washington was pushing for a decision, it's 

 down to their job versus the fishermen's job, and the person seems 

 to pick themselves. 



When you say we have fishermen on the council, we have many 

 exfishermen on the council, they are not vested. I believe we do 

 need people vested. We do need good decisions and good exchange 

 of things at the council level so we can get together almost as a 

 jury. But they have to have the facts. The council has not had good 

 scientific data. We're moving too slowly. We're moving inappropri- 

 ately. 



Senator Kerry. How do we get the trust relationship given the 

 level of mistrust that exists? How do we do that rapidly? 



Ms. Erickson. I think the first way is by not scaring fishermen 

 that you're going to stop it. We have Mr. Simonitsch nere today. 



I might have missed something, I understand he's a trap fisher- 

 man, therefore here we have a good example. Fishermen against 

 fishermen is what the Government has done. If we get the draggers 

 and trawlers, perhaps the trawl doesn't hurt the bottom. 



Let's look at Connecticut, they stopped the trawl fishers. The bot- 

 tom is sour, there's no lobsters. They've cleaned up the bottom, and 

 the lobsters have come back. 



You see a premise that hasn't really been researched and doesn't 

 have the facts, does not reach a good conclusion. 



We have to go back. We have to get the good facts. We have to 

 start to be a superpower and not beg and plead with Canada and 

 mirror Canada. 



They've had all the rules. We just put in amendment 5. Their 

 fishery is flat. Our scallop fishery, we've ruined the people, we've 

 ruined the resource here. 



We're coming off the council. That's the problem with the 

 scalloping here today. We haven't even seen repercussions of 

 amendment 5. So, we have to start with our own rules, not just fol- 

 low Canada. 



And when we do follow Canada, we pick what we think will stop 

 the people from fishing. We've been pounding fishermen counting 

 fish. We haven't had a fishery science. We haven't addressed habi- 

 tat. We've taken the easy route. Everybody's going to make an easy 

 paycheck. We have people who call themselves sport fishermen on 

 head boats, we have a couple of them on the council. They're get- 

 ting their money from commercial fishing. 



We need a whole revamp of the system of the way we're running 

 the fishery. It isn't a simple problem. It isn't just overfishing. The 

 overfishing definition came from the scientific data that we've used. 



I've been going to meetings for 10 years. The problem couldn't be 

 settled here today. We need a week. 



