99 



Mr. Coburn. That — it just sort of makes my heart beat a little 

 faster. Yeah. 



The Chairman. Yes. 



Mr. Coburn. All right. I am through talking. 



The Chairman. Yes, thank you a lot. Mr. Rauwolf, you wanted 

 to make an observation. 



Mr. Rauwolf. Yes, I think if the council adopted the policy that 

 we suggest that harvest priority be assigned to the cleanest gears 

 and the cleanest fishing technique, I think that vessels will volun- 

 tarily pay for observers to come aboard in order to prove that their 

 gear or their technique, that they are cleaning up their act so they 

 will be assigned more harvest the following year. I think this is the 

 whole idea behind the suggestion that we have. 



And I think the vessel would be happy to pay for the bill of hav- 

 ing that observer aboard. 



The Chairman. Do you favor the community development quota 

 being employed? 



Mr. Rauwolf. I cannot speak for my group on that. I can get 

 back to you on that. 



The CHAmMAN. Well, how about the individual transferable 

 quotas? 



Mr. Rauwolf. I do not favor IFQ's. 



The Chairman. You do not favor the IFQ's? 



Mr. Rauwolf. No. 



The Chairman. Now, I have gotten confused. Both Ms. Lande 

 and you oppose IFQ's because — as Ms. Lande says, let us allocate 

 the gear and not the quota. And yet I understood that by allocating 

 the quota we are trying to institute some kind of conservation. 



Mr. Rauwolf. Our proposal is not to say that one gear is better 

 than the other, because there are clean fishermen out there that 

 are trawlers. There are probably 25 percent of them that use tech- 

 niques of clean fishing. And there are probably 75 percent that are 

 dirty fishermen out there, that are dragging up a lot of fish and 

 dumping them over the side. 



There are techniques to use within specific gear groups that do 

 work. And there are skippers that know how to handle these prop- 

 erly aboard these ships. Some do and some do not. Some could care 

 less. But as far as IFQ's go, you are not going to solve the problem 

 of bycatch by IFQ's. You are just going to allow specific vessels to 

 fish longer periods of time for that particular fishery. And they are, 

 during that period of time, naturally going to keep onboard the fish 

 that is the highest money fish. And if, for instance, some crewmen 

 on board a vessel sticks a gaff hook in the side of a 60-pound hali- 

 but, and it is going to cut down the price down to 30 percent of that 

 halibut, that halibut is going to go back over the side, and they are 

 going to fish for one until they get that one. 



And another reason that I am against IFQ's is because eventu- 

 ally you are going to take a fleet of 6,000 fishermen throughout 

 Alaska's communities and you are going to reduce them to 600 fish- 

 ermen because these smaller fishing group are going to be bought 

 up, and their quotas are going to be taken over by larger fisher- 

 men. And they are — it is going to be devastating to the fishing com- 

 munity — communities throughout the State. 



