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brings me to the issue of user fee. The — currently the industry does 

 help pay for the observer program, but there is still — for example, 

 this river of origin of this king salmon, it is all caught, it is thrown 

 overboard, nobody knows where it is going. 



There are some old studies, 10 years old, and this is going on. 

 If there was greater user fees on the companies that are making 

 millions of dollars out there, we would be able to figure out where 

 that salmon is going, we would be able to figure out how to avoid 

 this salmon or this herring or other bycatch, and then the offshore 

 fleet could catch the fish they are supposed to catch, pollock and 

 cod, and they would let the other fish go, the salmon and herring, 

 back to the river so the fishermen here on the Yukon and 

 Kuskokwim, all over, can get the fish they are supposed to catch 

 and everybody is happy. 



I know fishermen do not like taxes, but people are participating 

 in a public resource. Federal waters, it is a public resource. Now, 

 granted everybody pays taxes so therefore they can use some of 

 that public resource, but they are getting into great economic bene- 

 fit, that they can certainly afford to pay a user fee of some sort so 

 they can fund the research so they can continue to fish for 100, 200 

 years from now. 



Since we do not have that research, it is all going to come crash- 

 ing down, all the boats will go back to Seattle, all the boats will 

 rust away, and the people here will be left paying the price. 



The Chairman. With respect to a user fee, if I wanted to put one 

 into law this afternoon, how would it read, how much? 



Mr. Albrecht. I do not know what kind of a percentage it would 

 have to be. I think the thing to do is figure out how much research 

 needs to be done, a good comprehensive research program, long- 

 term research, and put that in as either, you know, a percentage 

 of the gross, a percentage of the net or an annual fee, where cur- 

 rently there are fees paid, the observer program's paid, but the ob- 

 server program — again, there needs to be more observers on the 

 boats. 



They can only — there is only one observer, they can only sample 

 part of the catch. You know, you cannot get some college kid work- 

 ing 24 hours a day, looking at every load of fish that comes in. 

 There should be more observers, better information, better report- 

 ing, better enforcement. 



The Chairman. Well, you write it and let us have it in the com- 

 mittee at your convenience. I want to see how you propose to do 

 it. I understand the problem and it is a difficult one. 



If Ronald Reagan taught us one thing, it was never to say the 

 word "tax." But if there was one other thing he told us, everything 

 has got to have a user fee. We put a fee on Coast Guard. We just 

 put a fee on the FCC; we got one on the SEC. Really, if you move, 

 plans to impose a user fee you are now coming out of Washington, 

 because we are running the biggest deficits in the history of man. 



I want to know how you write that in a reasonable fashion, 

 which will get the research done. I think the fisheries can stand 

 a user fee, but what is reasonable, again, is another question. 



Mr. Albrecht. I think if the fishermen — it is like a deficit reduc- 

 tion bill. If the fishermen know that money goes straight to the Na- 



