84 



1990, Mr. Chairman, Congress enacted the North Pacific Research 

 Plan, the last time we reauthorized the Magnuson Act. Your com- 

 mittee, I think, strongly championed that North Pacific Research 

 Plan. 



The council adopted a plan in June 1992. Now, that took 2 years, 

 which was too long to get that plan put together. But there were 

 a lot of details that had to be worked out. The National Marine 

 Fishery Service had a lot of concerns about it, as did fish and 

 game. The council adopted that plan in June 1992. 



Presently the National Marine Fishery Service is going through 

 the third set of internal, draft regulations for that plan after they 

 helped write it. Under an optimistic scenario, with the Secretary 

 reviewing the draft regulations promptly we have a 60-day review 

 period, and then we have 45 days, and so on. The bottom line is 

 that this plan will not be adopted under an optimistic scenario 

 until July 1995 to January 1996. 



The Chairman. Hmm. 



Mr. Benton. This plan would do a lot with helping us observe 

 these fisheries, and better tell what is happening out there. 



The Chairman. Right. 



Mr. Benton. One thing that we have done, because of the CDQ 

 program, is to get the National Marine Fishery Service to finally 

 own up to the fact that they are not able to effectively determine 

 what the catch is, and what the discard is, and what is really going 

 on out there in the ocean. So, they come up with a proposal to re- 

 quire total weight measurement or volumetric measurement of 

 catch, plus two observers per vessel. 



The CDQ groups saw a substantial economic loss from this, but 

 they stood calm and said, "We agree with this and we will do it." 

 The State firmly backed them. The council firmly backed them. We 

 have adopted that kind of process, and they are going to lead the 

 way. Now, a number of these are on factory trawl vessels. The 

 CDQ operations are showing that they can meet this requirement, 

 and do it in an economic fashion. The next step is to get this on 

 all the other vessels out there so we can actually see what is going 

 on. But this is one good first step. 



I think that additional statutory language is definitely war- 

 ranted. Like I pointed — those numbers I pointed out to you were 

 from the processor reports. We have seen great discrepancies in the 

 amounts of bycatch and discards that are being reported between 

 observed and unobserved vessels. 



I do not have the numbers in front of me, but it is something on 

 the order of — in the pollock fishery in the Bering Sea a little over 

 47,000 metric tons were reported by processors. Federal observers 

 reported 113,000 metric tons. That is a 37-percent difference. So, 

 we have to get better observation on those vessels, no question 

 about it. 



The Chairman. On these plans Senator Stevens and I know from 

 criminal law that if I am charged I have got to be tried in 90 days. 

 We found with the airline industry, we put a 60-day termination 

 on a study and report, and it has already happened. It seems to 

 me that with the councils, one big misgiving is that they are slower 

 than the Congress. 



Mr. Benton. Yes. 



