59 



a situation that would create a great economic hardship to people 

 who have substantial investments in certain gear type, and I do 

 not think it would be appropriate necessarily — take a fishery, for 

 example, that I am particularly interested in, which is the cod fish- 

 ery in the Bering Sea. I, with five other fellows here in Kodiak, 

 own a factory longliner and we harvest codfish in the Bering Sea. 

 We compete for that coast cod fish with factory trawlers in the Ber- 

 ing Sea and some smaller shorebased trawlers. I would not attempt 

 to suggest that tomorrow or next week we all of a sudden say it 

 is illegal to harvest cod fish with trawl gear, but I believe that 

 some sort of phased-in program, when there is significant benefit 

 in terms of bycatch, some phased-in program where over a period 

 of years you slowly accrue to the particular gear type that performs 

 better and has less bycatch and provide enough of a change over, 

 a window of change over, I think that ultimately you are benefiting 

 the resource. And you are ultimately, in benefiting the resource, 

 you are going to benefit all participants in the industry, and you 

 provide those participants with an opportunity to switch gear types 

 as they can afford to, and I think it is an appropriate way to ad- 

 dress some of these bycatch issues. 



Senator Stevens. What does a longliner do with regard to the 

 size of the fish as compared to a factory trawler? 



Mr. O'Leary. OK. The longline gear tends to be more selective 

 based on the size of the hook. The larger the hook, smaller fish 

 cannot bite; therefore, if you use a large enough hook, you do not 

 catch the volume of juvenile fish that the factory trawler does in 

 a more indiscriminate nature. 



The Chairman. On this phased-in approach, has that been rec- 

 ommended or debated or discussed by the North Pacific council? 



Mr. O'Leary. Yes, it has. 



The Chairman. Why have they not reacted to your way of doing 

 it? 



Mr. O'Leary. Well, they did, and some would say that it was ba- 

 sically—given the vested interest within the industry at this point, 

 nobody wants to change the way they are doing business. And we 

 just had a gear preference program go through the council process, 

 and the longline segment of the industry was allocated 45 percent 

 of there source. We were hoping to be allocated significantly more 

 over a phased-in period of time, but factory trawl interests and 

 some shorebased trawl interests did not want to make that kind of 

 changeover and felt it was an economic hardship and lobbied 

 against it. 



The Chairman. But is the council level the appropriate level? 



Mr. O'Leary. That is the level that the council felt comfortable 

 with. 



The Chairman. Well, that has been very good testimony. Do you 

 have anything further? 



Senator Stevens. No. 



The Chairman. We thank you, each of you very much. You have 

 made a good contribution here this morning. We have a second 

 panel composed of Mr. Vincent Curry of the Pacific Seafood Proc- 

 essors, Kate Graham of the American High Seas Fisheries, and Mr. 

 \rni Thomson, the director of the Alaska Crab Coalition. My wife 

 would run for that job. Very good. As stated before, the statements 



