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Screen Candidates Carefully: Appointees to the councils carry a very important re- 

 sponsibility, and should be of the highest caliber. The Secretary has the authority 

 to reject recommended appointees, and a screening process to judge the ability of 

 the candidates to meet this responsibility. We suggest Congress encourage the Sec- 

 retary to use these tools more vigorously. 



Ensure Qualified Nominees: While the Secretary has the ultimate responsibility 

 to ensure that the appointees are qualified for the job, the state governors should 

 also be encouraged to exercise good judgment in the nominees they submit. Council 

 membership should be regarded as something more than a political plum for cam- 

 paign contributors. In addition, over the years an informal quota system has devel- 

 oped and now some council seats are viewed as "belonging*^ to a certain gear type 

 or geographic area. Because governors have been reluctant to deviate from this, some 

 council nominees have been completely unsuited to the job. Unless the Secretary re- 

 jects the list, s/he must choose the best of a bad lot. Our fisheries deserve better 

 than this. 



MANAGEMENT TOOLS 



The commercial fishing industry is one of the largest private employers in the na- 

 tion, not only providing food but also contributing to our country's balance of trade. 

 Our fisheries, when managed properly, are a renewable resource that will provide 

 benefits to the country for generations to come. This cannot be achieved, however, 

 without adequate management tools. We have several suggestions to offer that we 

 believe will enhance our fishery management ability. 



Time Limit For Regulatory Amendments: As a result of a previous reauthoriza- 

 tion, the Act now includes a time limit for agency action on amendments to fishery 

 management plans. There has, however, been an unfortunate byproduct of this re- 

 quirement: council decisions other than plan amendments receive secondary atten- 

 tion by NMFS because there is no mandated deadline. Because of the need to allo- 

 cate scarce staff time and resources NMFS has been forced to delay implementation 

 of regulatory amendments even though they would further the conservation and 

 management goals of the Act. We would like the Act modified to place regulatory 

 amendments on the same schedule as plan amendments. 



Extend Emergency Rules: Under current statute an emergency rule can be in ef- 

 fect for no more than ninety days, with an extension of no more than an additional 

 ninety days. While in theory this appears to be enough time for a council to deter- 

 mine a permanent solution and for NMFS to implement it, in actual practice the 

 period is too brief. We support a time limit for emergency rules of one hundred 

 eighty days, and an extension of the same length if the council and NMFS are mak- 

 ing substantial progress in achieving a settlement of the problem. 



Fishing Fees: The most obvious tool that the fishery management process lacks 

 is funding. Without adequate funds it is difficult to know whether we are being con- 

 servative or profligate in our management of fish stocks. Good ideas or important 

 council decisions may languish until additional money can be located. We realize 

 that public funding is becoming increasingly scarce, so we are willing to support the 

 assessment of fees under certain conditions. One is that the money must be spent 

 on federal fisheries programs in the region in which the fees are collected. Another 

 is that these revenues be used to supplement, not replace, existing funds. A third 

 is that guidelines be imposed on the use of this income to be sure that immediate 

 research and management needs will receive priority. 



Designate A Separate Fund Collection Entity: It is important to keep in mind that, 

 due to our federal budgeting process, NMFS has some degree of financial control 

 over the councils. Although this control is not obvious, it does exist and has tended 

 to distract NMFS from the work it was created to do — that of research and enforce- 

 ment. We therefore see it as especially important that NMFS not be the agency that 

 collects any fishing fees that are assessed. We suggest that the councils be allowed 

 to designate some other authority for this purpose. 



CONSERVATION MEASURES 



Of course the whole point of having this — or in fact any — management system is 

 to assure the health of the fish stocks, which in turn leads to the health of the fish- 

 ing industry. One of the keys to this is adequate data, which is unfortunately sorely 

 lacking for many fisheries. 



The North Pacific Council now has in place the most comprehensive observer pro- 

 gram in the country, and it is generating enormous quantities of data — so much, in 

 fact, that NMFS hasn't yet had the staff time to analyze much of it. The industry 

 has volunteered to assess ourselves a mandatory fee to pay for the costs of this pro- 

 gram, including data analysis. Last year Congress amended the Magnuson Act to 



