INTERNATIONAL STRADDLING FISHERIES 



STOCKS 



WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1993 



House of Representatives, 

 Subcommittee on Fisheries Management, 

 Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, 



Washington, DC. 



The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:30 p.m., in room 

 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Thomas J. Manton 

 [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 



Present: Representatives Manton, Hughes, Unsoeld, Lancaster, 

 Hamburg, Studds and Young. 



Staff Present: Jeffrey Pike, Jim Mathews, Greg Lambert, Lori 

 Rosa, Jean Flemma, Rod Moore, Julie Roberts, Dave Whaley, Ed 

 Lee, Margherita Woods and John Rayfield. 



Mr. Manton. Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to get started. 

 If we can get all of our folks up to the table — thank you. 



STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS J. MANTON, A U.S. REPRESENTA- 

 TIVE FROM NEW YORK, AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

 FISHERIES MANAGEMENT 



Mr. Manton. Good afternoon everybody. Welcome. 



Today, the Subcommittee examines straddling fish stocks— -so 

 called because they move between the high seas and the Exclusive 

 Economic Zone, EEZ, in effect, straddling the EEZ boundary. 



It is abundantly clear to me that a major problem of fisheries 

 management, if not the major problem, is the inability of any one 

 government to adequately conserve and manage fisheries. Histori- 

 cally, fish conservation was left to the individual States. In 1976, 

 with the passage of the Magnuson Act, the Federal Government as- 

 sumed an important role in protecting fisheries resources. Just this 

 year, the House passed H.R. 2134, the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries 

 Cooperative Management Act of 1993, which recognized the need 

 for cooperation among the States in order to ensure a consistent 

 and unified approach to the management of Atlantic Coast fisher- 

 ies. 



Today, we begin an examination of the need for cooperation 

 among nations. Currently, there are a number of international or- 

 ganizations, such as the International Commission for the Conser- 

 vation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), that facilitate international coop- 

 eration in the management and conservation of fisheries. However, 

 nations do not easily arrive at agreements on managing fisheries 

 nor are nations necessarily consistent in their support for interna- 



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