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the rest of the programs and the economy parts as well. If you force 

 someone to pay to have those fish processed, that is enough of an 

 economic disincentive without any additional fine being imple- 

 mented, and the processing company would let you know for sure 

 how much it costs them to process that. 



Senator Stevens. Well, we have laws on shore that prohibit 

 waste of game, you cannot waste game that you harvest. It would 

 be — you are talking about a similar concept offshore? 



Ms. Stewart. Yes. 



Senator Stevens. If you catch fish, it must be utilized. Currently 

 the law allows discards in many instances; right? 



Ms. Stewart. Yes, and the only reason that discard would be ac- 

 ceptable is if you can discard something back into the ocean that 

 is alive and likely to survive. And you can in some cases, whether 

 it is halibut, for instance, on longlines, in a way that that fish can 

 go back and it can be live and be caught some other time probably, 

 so, yeah, that would be it. 



It is like the wanton waste laws for game. It is never going to 

 be perfectly enforced, but the financial disincentive of paying even 

 to have it processed as a meal rather than as an edible product, 

 because some of these fish are not going to be edible products, is 

 prohibitive. 



And I think in addition to publishing PIN numbers so that peo- 

 ple know who the problem boats are, those boats are causing them 

 problems that is going to close down the whole fishery, letting them 

 speak much more forthcoming, I am in favor of having the vessel 

 name published 



Ms. Blackburn. Yes. 



Ms. Stewart [continuing]. So that there is an industry — 



Senator Stevens. I think the committee would agree with that. 

 Trevor McCabe just told me, last week Congress approved an ex- 

 perimental fishing permit for a small nonprofit group, the Terra 

 Marine Group, to retain bycatch salmon and distribute it to food 

 banks in order to work up a cost analysis of that approach. 



Ms. Stewart. Yes. 



Senator Stevens. But let me ask you this. If we put the burden 

 to use all fish that is harvested on the harvester, would that not 

 bring about changes in the gear and fishing practices? I mean, ra- 

 tionally, a fisherman is going to change his or her habits; right? 



Ms. Stewart. Exactly, the gear and fishing patterns. 



Senator Stevens. The same thing happened to tuna, it happened 

 to people that have been intercepting the stellar sea lions. The 

 whole concept is to change fishing practices so you do not have the 

 problem; right? 



Mr. O'Leary. Exactly. And that is something I want to address 

 from my more narrow perspective than Chris or Beth's, and that 

 is that in certain fisheries, for example, we feel the cod fishery, we 

 were able in the Bering Sea in particular, not so much in the gulf 

 but in the Bering Sea, our particular gear type harvests a volume 

 of the resource at a fraction of the bycatch caught with trawl gear. 



And people have different perspectives on this, but we really feel 

 strongly that the best bycatch is no bycatch. Then you are not 

 harming anything, you are not catching and releasing and you are 

 not catching as much. And we feel strongly that we should move 



