93 



Testimony of Joe Easley 

 Administrator - Oregon Trawl Commission 



for 



Committee on Small Business 



Subcommittee on Regulation, 



Business Opportunities, and Technology 



Ron Wyden, Oregon - Chairman 



Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Joe Easley 

 and I am the administrator of the Oregon Trawl Commission. The 

 Trawl Commission is a commodity commission under the Oregon 

 Department of Agriculture. It has as members all the trawl vessels 

 that land their catch in the state of Oregon. The Trawl Commission 

 is supported by an ad valorem tax on the value of the trawl 

 landings . 



These vessels landed a little over 230 million pounds of 

 groundfish and shrimp in the State of Oregon in 1992, 108 million 

 pounds was whiting. These landings produced a Statewide Personal 

 Income Impact of $161.9 million in the State of Oregon, whiting 

 produced $32.4 million of that economic impact. Trawlers produced 

 89% of the landings and 54% of the Statewide Personal Income Impact 

 in the State of Oregon. 



The whiting landings were 49,000 metric tons in the State of 

 Oregon, with several thousand tons landed in Washington and 

 California. With 42,000 metric tons being allocated by the 

 Department of Commerce to shore side landings this year, it is not 

 hard to figure out that the State of Oregon will have a lot less to 

 work with than the close to 100,000 metric tons they would have had 

 under the Pacific Fishery Management Council's allocation. Hans 

 Radtke an economist has told us that the difference between what 

 Commerce allocated on shore and what the Council has allocated will 

 mean $35 million to the Oregon economy. The Council's allocation 

 was a long term allocation, based on a sliding formula, that gives 

 more to the shore side in low abundance years and more to the 

 offshore sector in high abundance years. 



The offshore sector caught and discarded about 8% of some 



