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Mr. Manton. Without objection, the statement of our ranking 

 member, Don Young, will be made part of the record. 

 [The statement of Mr. Young follows:] 



Statement of Hon. Don Young, a U.S. Representative from Alaska, and 

 Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Fisheries Management 



Mr. Chairman, the issues concerning Atlantic tuna are an important topic for this 

 Subcommittee. I look forward to hearing from these witnesses who should be able to 

 provide us with additional information about these highly migratory stocks. 



Atlantic tuna are managed internationally by the International Commission for 

 the conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICC AT). The Atlantic Tuna Convention Act, 

 which must be reauthorized, is our implementing law for the Convention. Some of 

 the issues which need to be discussed include: how to deal with countries which har- 

 vest Atlantic tuna and are not members of ICCAT; how to deal with allocations be- 

 tween recreational and commercial tuna fishermen; and whether the changes made 

 in the Act in 1990 are working. 



While we in Alaska do not harvest Atlantic tuna, I am interested in working with 

 my colleagues from the East Coast who have an interest in this fishery. 



Mr. Manton. And now we will ask the panel to stand for some 

 questions. 



Dr. Foster, could you describe the rationale for putting the scien- 

 tific support for highly migratory species in the Southeast Center 

 of Miami versus the Northeast Center in Woods Hole, in the first 

 place? 



Dr. Foster. In the first place, my understanding, and you can 

 jump in, Dick, is, before the highly migratory species responsibility 

 was transferred to the Secretary, that is where the expertise re- 

 sided historically. We depend quite heavily on the science centers 

 and the regions. They have the resources and the expertise, and 

 that is why they are doing it for us. 



But they are not doing this alone. I mean, we are only one of the 

 strong voices in the science that underlies this entire process. The 

 United States is one member of the ICCAT working groups, the ad- 

 visory groups, and I can speak for the agency when I say that we 

 are always open to any kind of peer review, any kind of reconsider- 

 ation. 



In fact, we also agree that in some of these instances, we need to 

 go back and look at how we got to where we are and some of the 

 decisions that were made; we need to look at the data. We are 

 always looking for new ways to collect information. Dick, anything 

 you want to add? 



Mr. Stone. Well I might add just a little bit. Again, to reiterate 

 what Dr. Foster has stated, we do use scientists from the other cen- 

 ters to get involved in this as well as outside scientists in our peer 

 reviews. We certainly involve and call upon the Northeast Fisher- 

 ies Science Center personnel in the assessments that we do, as well 

 as scientists from outside of NMFS. We are constantly trying to get 

 input and peer review from other than just the Southeast Science 

 Fisheries Center. 



Mr. Manton. Mr. Hesse, you want to comment on it? 



Mr. Hesse. I think the testimony I made was rather clear about 

 that. As a fisherman, I feel that we have been really stymied by 

 our interactions with Miami scientists and that it appears they are 

 trying to defend a two-stock working hypothesis, even in the face of 

 scientists from other stations that now claim that maybe there was 



