29 



but if they would stay put, it would help. But, unfortunately, they 

 don't always want to. 



Mr. Studds. Post the area. The gentleman from Alaska, the 

 second most sensitive member of the committee. 



Mr. Young. I won't open my statement with what I was going to 

 say. The gentleman from California— instead of moving some 

 north, we would like to move some south. In fact, we have a little 

 problem up there, and I know what you are talking about when it 

 comes to the sea urchin and all the shellfish. It has caused some 

 great concerns among some of my constituents up there. 



But, Mr. Osterback, I want to thank you for coming down. I 

 would like to ask you some questions primarily for the record, but 

 feel free to answer them any way you would like to do so. Primari- 

 ly, what have the fishermen in your area done on the marine 

 mammal fisheries issue during the last five years? 



Mr. Osterback. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I believe since about 1989 

 when fishermen in our area got put on the category I list, we came 

 down and had some discussions with different environmental 

 groups and our congressional people down here, and we went back 

 up, and we used our local media or whatever out there. We talked 

 to our fishermen, educated them that there were problems with 

 marine mammals in the area. At that time, it was Steller sea lions. 

 We encouraged people to have as little interaction as possible with 

 the marine mammals. I believe all lethal takes on marine mam- 

 mals that were not just accidents stopped. We invited observers on 

 our boats to go out and take a look at how our area actually did 

 operate in conjunction with the marine mammals. We have done 

 just about everything we can, I believe, in the last five years to 

 show that there is interaction between our gear types and the 

 marine mammals, but very little, if any, lethal take is done in fish- 

 ing. 



Mr. Young. What are the results? Have you seen or has your 

 group seen a change in the number of species in that area? 



Mr. Osterback. Personally, I have seen very little change as far 

 as Steller sea lions in the area that I fish. I fish basically on the 

 Pacific side of the peninsula so there is— and I am a purse seiner so 

 there is very little interaction between my type of gear and harbor 

 seals. I believe the harbor seal population is mainly on the north 

 side of the peninsula, and I haven't really noticed too much 

 change. There the populations are fairly high. I guess the ones that 

 are on the increase would be the sea otter. The pods of sea otters 

 are building quite rapidly out there, and the other population 

 would be killer whales. The population on killer whales either 

 move there from somewhere else or it has increased quite a bit be- 

 cause there is quite a bit of talk around the docks of the amount of 

 killer whales in the area. 



And as a matter of fact, I did bring down a little article that 

 came out of the paper on the "City Gets a Whale of a Show with 

 the Petersburg." Maybe if you want to keep it for the record, that 

 is fine. It says on the areas, I guess, in southeast Alaska where 

 they are starting to have a lot of interaction between the killer 

 whales and dolphins and seals and, I guess they are out teaching 

 their young how to hunt marine mammals so maybe that would be 

 a good article for some of you who are not familiar with it. 



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