36 



[Witnesses sworn.] 



Chairman Wyden. Gentlemen, we will make your prepared re- 

 marks part of the hearing record. If you could each take about 5 

 minutes or so, that would be great. Let us begin with you, Mr. 

 Fisher. 



TESTIMONY OF R. BARRY FISHER, PRESIDENT, YANKEE 

 FISHERIES AND MIDWATER TRAWLERS COOPERATIVE 



Mr. Fisher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congressman Ko- 

 petski for going to the trouble of holding these meetings. 



I can't help but comment, after listening to Mr. Johnson and his 

 rendition of the facts, if I was every really guilty of stealing a 

 horse, I would sure want him to represent me. 



[Laughter.] 



Mr. Fisher. One of the troubles of being old is that you have a 

 memory. I would like to remind everybody that the Pacific Fisher- 

 ies Management Council, back in the early 1980's, came in with a 

 set of goals, objectives, and philosophies, demanded by NOAA, 

 upon which they were going to base their management plans. 



They consistently sent signals that they favored shore sites, that 

 they favored continuation of the whiting fishery, they favored 

 shore-site. In 1990, 1991, and 1992, they said the same things again. 

 This isn't a 1-year thing. 



I would also point out that what the council sent forward was a 

 framework allocation plan which would have provided a mecha- 

 nism to spare these kinds of bloodbaths based upon analysis. 



I would really wonder why Mr. Johnson concentrated on pollock 

 so much. We are talking about whiting. I do know from my now 

 friends, the processors, that practically all of our product was sold 

 long before this season started. 



The other thing that I really would ask you to consider is we 

 were allowed to sleep. About March 15th, Commerce put out a pro- 

 posed ruling of their own — and we believed them — which had 

 intact almost all that the council had asked for except for doing 

 away with the 30,000-ton reserve that would have a priority access 

 to shore-site. 



We figured this is where they were going. We were told this is 

 where they were going. Mr. Johnson — I've got some documents to 

 back this up — on approximately April 8th, I sent two letters to Dr. 

 Foster. I might have sent them by mistake to Florence — but you've 

 got letters in your files at NOAA that showed that I knew what 

 was going to come down. Several of us out here knew what was 

 going to come down as far back as April 8th. 



We knew that the factory trawlers were going to get 100,000 or 

 better tons. We warned Mike Kopetski about this. We warned our 

 citizens of this. We got that from leaks. You say that at that time 

 NMFS was still making up its mind. It just doesn't wash. It abso- 

 lutely does not wash. The factory trawlers knew a week to 10 days 

 ahead of time what the rule was going to be. We did not. 



I would also ask you if you were doing these economic analyses 

 that came out this way, why didn't you let the council know? When 

 we went back there in January, we were told the plan was proceed- 



