51 



away this year because cod was taken either at the wrong site or 

 caught in the wrong trawl fishery. 



We recommend that a provision be established in the act which 

 would require utilization of all species which are legal to retain and 

 are covered under the management plan. This would halt the mas- 

 sive amount of waste that occurs as a result of good business. 



The prohibited species bycatch, on the other hand, is required to 

 be discarded. The amount of halibut and crab that are thrown 

 away each year is disconcerting and there has been a push by some 

 members of the industry and others to require retention of prohib- 

 ited species when taken incidentally. 



We oppose this for several reasons. The members of the industry 

 that are pushing for retention of prohibited species are the very 

 ones who are dumping large amounts of fish that they could legally 

 keep and process. We strongly believe that prior to allowing reten- 

 tion of prohibited species, that needless wastage that is now occur- 

 ring must be stopped. 



The second primary reason we are opposed to this is that the 

 caps which are set for upper limits of incidentally caught prohib- 

 ited species are too high. They are higher than they were for for- 

 eign fishing fleets at the time prior to the Magnuson Act. Until 

 that happens, we oppose the retention of — until the reduction of 

 caps occurs, we oppose the retention of prohibited species. 



We feel very strongly in support of the observer programs that 

 are currently in place. We understand the necessity to raise funds 

 for that, but in the raising of any funds of any sort of user fees, 

 we would like the language very tight and we would like the funds 

 that are raised to be designated to be spent in the areas where the 

 funds were raised. 



Finally, with regard to council system, it is our opinion that the 

 council's very important and serves the needs of the community 

 and can't be duplicated in Washington. It is of concern to us the 

 Commerce Department recently has begun to modify council deci- 

 sions, and this is a sore subject with us. Two recent actions by 

 Commerce have greatly changed the nature of council system's de- 

 cisions. One took place off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and 

 now recently the 



Help me here, Chris, what is the — it escapes me. 



The pelagic trawl definition, the pelagic trawl definition has been 

 modified. Council system invests a great deal of time and energy 

 in developing their programs, and when these council decisions fi- 

 nally are forwarded to the Secretary — and it seems to us appro- 

 priate that if the Secretary does not find the action the council took 

 appropriate, that the decision should be returned to the council for 

 further review and action. 



We do not particularly feel comfortable with the Secretary actu- 

 ally making policy himself back there. That is the leading major 

 portions for change in the structure of the council decisions. For ex- 

 ample, in the pelagic trawl definition, the Secretary has just ex- 

 panded the amount of crab that could be caught from 1 crab to 20 

 crab, and we feel that this significantly impacts the effectiveness 

 of the decision and really guts it, and we feel that it is inappropri- 

 ate for Commerce to do this. 



