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SEN. JOAN DUKES HjWBI^BBjM ""■ HEOT RlJKEN 



OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 



COASTAL CAUCUS 



Clatsop, Th-lamook, Lincoln, lanc, Douglas. Coos and Curhv counties 



The Honorable Thomas J. Manton, Chair 

 House Subcommittee on Fisheries 

 203 Cannon House Office Building 

 Washington, D.C. 20515 



Dear Representative Manton: 



The members here undersigned of the Oregon Coastal Caucus, a bipartisan body with members 

 from both chambers of the Oregon Legislative Assembly, wish to convey their support for the 

 reauthorization, with amendments, of the Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act. 

 Over the course of its 1 7-year history the Act has worked admirably to balance often competing 

 interests witfiin the Nation's fishing industry and to balance the interests of the fishing industry 

 against the need for the protection and conservation of the Nation's fishery resources. The Act is a 

 vita! piece of legislation that has set a worldwide standard for the management and conservation of 

 fishery resources, and it deserves the support of the House Subcommittee on Fisheries Management 

 and of the Congress. 



Despite its admirable characteristics, however, the Act has some problems which we hope the 

 Committee will see fit to address during its hearings. When enacted, the measure sovght to give the 

 principle responsibility for determining the use, conservation and management of the Nation's 

 fishery resources to eight regional councils with the understanding that these councils could best 

 weigh the biological, ecological, economic and social consequences of their management decisions 

 because of their proximity to the sources of needed information. In recent years, however, decision- 

 makers at the agency and department level, removed from the consequences of their actions, have 

 had a disproportionate hand in fishery allocation decisions, overturning the recommendations of 

 the Pacific Fishery Management Council — one of the two such councils that determine Oregon's 

 share of the ocean fishery — and substituting their own judgment for the council's carefully rea- 

 soned and scientifically credible findings. 



This occurred most recently with the Council's recommendations for the harvest of Pacific whiting 

 and the allocation of the ocean harvest of salmon. In both instances, the Department of Com- 

 merce, with little justification and in a wholly capricious manner, rewrote the PFMC's careful 

 determinations to suit its own understanding of the proper allocation policy for coastal fisheries. 

 The whiting allocafion decision, rendered some 16 hours after the whiting fishery had officially 

 opened, threw the Oregon coast region into chaos, with small harvesters and shore-based processors 

 forced to compete one-on-one, on a first-come, first-served basis with large, efficient factory trawlers 

 capable of scooping up large quantities of marginal-quality whiting. During the early stages of the 

 harvest, at a time when the Conmierce department decreed that both fleets would have theoreti- 

 cally equal access to the resource, the overmatched shore-based harvesters watched as factory 

 trawlers caught more than 4,000 metric tons of whiting per day to their own 36 tons per day. 



Reply to Sean Brennan. Coastal Caucus slat) aide. State Capitol Roon S-205. Salem, OR 973 1 Ptione (503) 378-8027 



