139 



Tha coastal trawl fleet truly repreGents American small buainaes. 

 Our investment wasn't encouraged or shared by foreign trading 

 partners or fueled by foreign capital. Our vessels weren't built or 

 converted in foreign shipyards. Our businesses are often family 

 owned and an integral part of the coastal communities in which wo 

 live. Through no fault of our own we hava lost traditional whiting 

 harvest opportunities to factory trawlers who have refused to 

 purchase whiting from traditional whiting catcher veseals under the 

 guise of "Americanization". Further more, their capacity and 

 mobility has proven to preempt the shore-base operations and take 

 enormous amounts of fish in a very short peroid of time. Offering 

 little to the coastal communities and leaving economic chaos in their 

 wake after a few short weeks of fishing. 



Even though the Magnuson Act is not clear on this issue of priority, 

 I cannot believe that it was the intent of the act, or the intent of 

 Congress to have encouraged investment by small business to harvest 

 this public resource, and then have it replaced or preempted simply 

 because those small businesses are not vertically integrated. 



The impact on ray operation from this year's allocation is 

 substantial. Whiting represented nearly fifty percent of our income 

 last year. This year I estimate only twenty-five to thirty percent 

 of our income will be whiting. The other fisheries I will need to 

 turn to are already fully utilized. I have made a large investment 

 in my vessel in order to bring this product ashore. Business 

 planning is nearly impossible because of the uncertainty surrounding 

 this allocation. Shore-base market opportunities for whiting are 

 difficult to secure because of this uncertainty. If there is any 

 thing this committee can do to provide some certainty to this 

 allocation process we would all be grateful. 



