138 



strictly monitored incidental harvest of 1500 MT. The 1992 

 at-sea discard was 341 MT. This figure represents 22% of that 

 incidental take allowed the coastal fleet for 1993. 



* The entire at-sea catch and discard of groundfish other than 

 whiting for 1992. was 4,765 MT. This figure represents 7% of 

 all quota managed species which totaled 61,566 MT. 7% equals 

 10,502,633 Iba of non-utilized and wasted resource by the 

 factory trawl fleet, and at the expense of the traditional 

 coastal groundfish industry who depend on those fish. 



It should be noted that the shore-side whiting fleet retained and 

 landed it's incidental groundfish catch. While the numbers were 

 considerably smaller than the at-sea fleet, the shore-side incidental 

 catch was utilized and provided economic benefit to the coastal 

 coiranunities and the nation as a whole. 



As this allocation decision shifts more whiting harvest away from 

 traditional whiting harvesters and toward factory trawlers, displaced 

 traditional whiting vessels will be forced to participate in other 

 already over capitalized fisheries. The increased effort in other 

 fisheries, the lost acess to whiting, and the lost utillization of 

 at-sea discards all combine to further compound the negative effects 

 of this allocation decision. 



It is important that the committee understand that all participants 

 of the coastal groundfish fishery will unfairly subsidize the factory 

 trawler fleet in order to provide them a single species whiting 

 fishery. This is one of the reasons why the PFMC choose to manage 

 the whiting fishery as part of the entire groundfish fishery and 

 developed the allocation framework it did. 



Throughout the allocation debate AFTA has argued strongly that it's 

 members made investments and built vessels in the spirit and promise 

 of the Magnuson Act to "Americanize" our nation's fisheries. They 

 claim that their presence alone "Americanized" the fishery and gives 

 them priority access to the whiting resource. The truth is that many 

 of us made investments and built vessels in the same spirit and 

 promise made by the Magnuson Act. In fact the "Americanization" of 

 the whiting harvest came years ago with the advent of the whiting 

 joint venture fishery in 1978. This fishery, recognized as a 

 domestic fishery, provided harvest opportunities to U.S. 

 catcher-vessels delivering whiting to foreign processors for twelve 

 years before the first factory trawler participated in the fishery. 



