22 



However, other nations, it seems, continue to take more than their 

 fair share regarding the imposing of controls. 



I guess my question, to use the vernacular, should we play dirty 

 as well or should we try to continue to impose controls resulting in 

 many instances in what appears to be inequity to our own fisher- 

 men while other fishermen from noncomplying countries walk off 

 with the gold? 



Ms. luDiCELLO. Thank you. Mr. Coble, since we seem to be the 

 ones most advocating a U.S. leadership position, I would like to 

 take a crack at that. I think where the conservation community is 

 coming from, is not that the U.S. leadership in conservation should 

 be to roll over and play dead while other countries catch all the 

 tuna and we stand by and say, oops, that is too bad, but I think Mr. 

 Lancaster raised an interesting question when he asked whether 

 this was an issue of signatories not in compliance, nonsignatories 

 going out the way they wanted to do and catching the fish. 



The United States does have some means to be a leader that 

 aren't simply further restrictions on our own fishermen. One of the 

 ways the United States could be a leader would be to insist on fish- 

 ery independent sources of data. 

 Mr. Coble. Could you pull the mike a little closer to you? 

 Ms. luDiCELLO. Certainly. Everyone has criticized the ICCAT 

 data, whether it be the fishermen, the environmentalists, that it is 

 too positive, too negative, too pessimistic, too optimistic. I think the 

 United States could push some of the other countries in terms of 

 better data acquisitions, stock assessments, fishery independent 

 sources of acquiring data. 



Another thing we could do is bring significant pressure to bear 

 on those countries who are members of ICCAT and yet buy mil- 

 lions of tons of fish from nonsignatory countries, thereby providing 

 the incentive for overfishing that occurs outside the regulatory 

 regime. We do have the Packwood-Pelly Fishermen's Protective 

 Act. We have never used those kinds of sanctions in this context 

 and they might be useful. Those are just three possibilities. 

 Thank you. 



Mr. Coble. Anybody else want to be heard? 



Mr. BoGAN. Yes. Mr. Congressman Coble, and I understand com- 

 pletely when you said, quote, unquote, "play dirty", because it is in 

 the vernacular. However, we don't need to, even in the vernacular 

 sense, in that one thing we can immediately do to address a promi- 

 nent disadvantage we have is to have our scientists recognize that 

 we are not, and we can consider Magnuson or any other act, we are 

 not to put ourselves at a disadvantage, and that includes by way of 

 our statistical presentations through ICCAT. 



If the scientists are against or somehow timid about accepting 

 additional scientific data which might change our data base or 

 somehow skew our models, then we are not advocating for our best 

 position. And I don't think that anyone would argue that we 

 should have somehow abrogate that duty to our citizenry. What 

 can be done instead is, for example, right now, an immediate way 

 to address that is right now, have our folks reconvene CRS, do 

 things to try to address data that has come in and try to improve 

 our position with the scientists of other nations, therefore maybe 



