38 



That can be applied to anything from garden boxes to massive 

 agriculture. Those bags that you see are made of saw dust and 

 wood waste. They are worth five times as much at retail by simply 

 putting in AV2 pounds of whiting carcass produced products. 



There are several other fertilizers that are also specialty supple- 

 mental rations for poultry and cattle that can be made. The great- 

 est potential of all lies for a product that is produced by compost- 

 ing where you use seed grass straw or you use wood ash, or you use 

 other unburnable forest product detritus. You combine that with 

 whiting carcasses, or in some instances, whiting entrails, to 

 produce products that are superior fertilizers. 



Also — and here comes the big one — the best use for this stuff is 

 for remedial soil treatment of heavily toxified soils to remove hy- 

 drocarbons and other toxic waste. 



It goes without saying that every pound that is brought ashore is 

 going to get processed. This is the wave of the future, total utiliza- 

 tion. I would start arguing from now on that the economic analysts 

 in Washington had better pay some attention to things like this. 



Insofar as the professional capability of these folks, I read in the 

 Secretary's justification that "Don't worry about impact of dis- 

 placed whiting trawlers on the rest of the fisheries. They are man- 

 agement quotas. They can't catch any more fish." 



Those people show ignorance of the fisheries. We fish for species 

 assemblages. When a quota is reached, that doesn't mean you stop 

 fishing that species assemblage. It means that you simply throw 

 that animal overboard whose quota has been met, thereby contrib- 

 uting to one of the most severe problems we've got in groundfish 

 management. 



Now, the kind of person who says things like that, I won't accept 

 as a qualified and professional analyst of the fisheries. I honestly 

 believe that John Burns, the president of OSU, once told me that 

 you got to be a successful oceanographer when you didn't have to 

 go to sea anymore. Some of the same analysis applies to the Na- 

 tional Marine Fisheries Service. The farther away you get from 

 fish, the higher your chances are. 



But total utilization, that's where we should be going. That's 

 where I think that we should start to focus our sights. We should 

 also start focusing our sights on how much losses the Nation is 

 bearing from discards and waste from the out-sea component. The 

 NMFS economists never put a dollar value on this. They should. 

 That gets deducted from what they produce. 



Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



[Mr. Fisher's statement may be found in the appendix.] 



Chairman Wyden. Thank you. 



Mr. Duncan. 



TESTIMONY OF DAVID DUNCAN, TRAWLER OWNER/OPERATOR, 

 AND MEMBER, PACIFIC FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL 



Mr. Duncan. Mr. Chairman, I don't know how much I can add 

 after that other than to say like others I am also concerned about 

 the process. 



Mr. Fisher. Be rational. 



