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ice research facility here in Kodiak, which Senator Stevens has 

 been very helpful in getting funding and corresponding with the 

 city of Kodiak, where we have the land for it to expand and get 

 them a building that is not falling apart. 



The Alaska region has been putting more people in Kodiak. 

 There are also facilities in Seward, Cordova, Ketchikan, Juneau. 

 You know, this State has plenty of facilities. 



The Chairman. And you have the expertise? 



Ms. Blackburn. Yes, sir. 



The Chairman. I know about the university because we have had 

 the witnesses before the committee down in Washington, but I just 

 wondered whether it was comprehensive enough. Senator Stevens. 



Senator Stevens. I would like to get to the question of creating 

 a disincentive on waste, and I have talked to some of you this 

 morning about this at breakfast, but it does seem to me that we 

 need to pursue some sort of economic burden on those who have 

 the largest amount of waste. 



Senator Hollings was talking to you about writing the lan- 

 guage — why do we not just write language that says that if you dis- 

 card or if you do not follow good conservation practices with regard 

 to your harvest, that you pay a penalty. 



I think that if these trawlers, whether they are factory trawlers 

 or nonfactory trawlers, were required to pay a penalty, they would 

 soon have tenders out there bringing these incidentally caught spe- 

 cies to processing facilities that would process them. It would in- 

 crease their cost, but they would avoid the penalty of a fee for dis- 

 card. Have you looked at the concept of placing a financial burden 

 on those who discard species because they are not the proper size 

 for processing? 



The Chairman. And I ask, if you would yield, too, how do you 

 measure that discard so that I know whether or not I am liable for 

 the penalty? Is somebody on a boat watching this, or what? 



Ms. Stewart. There is a proposal now in front of the North Pa- 

 cific council, Amendment 29, with the Bering Sea, and I have sub- 

 mitted a proposal to include the gulf, which would require the re- 

 tention of all salmon, and you get several benefits from that. One, 

 you get a real count of what the salmon bycatch is. Right now the 

 salmon bycatch is estimated based on sample sizes, so you do not 

 really know what you are catching. You have the ability to get sci- 

 entific samples, scale samples, and genetic material, the ability to 

 weigh those fish, measure those fish and check the gonads for ma- 

 turity, so you get scientific information that you are currently 

 using. 



The cost to the industry is they must pay for processing those 

 fish so the fish can go into the food bank, and what you have ac- 

 complished there is, if you are going to have to pay for processing 

 fish, it is going to cost money, that is a disincentive that you may 

 not have. Right now, some of our groundfish fisheries are pretty 

 marginal. The price of pollock has fallen lower than the price of 

 just about any fish out there, and Pacific cod prices have dropped. 

 You have got scientific information at almost no cost because it has 

 to be delivered shorebased and you are not competing with the 

 commercial salmon fishery because this is going to a food bank, it 

 is not going into the market stream. You can take that example for 



