30 



Mr. Young. Alvin, if the laws of minion require quotas on tak- 

 ings of marine mammals, how do you think these quotas should be 

 allocated? 



Mr. OsTERBACK. Mr. Chairman, when I hear the word quotas, I 

 guess I relate it to caps. This is something that we have been dis- 

 cussing quite a bit here in the meetings that we have had with 

 NMFS and the environmental community and the other fishing 

 folks that have been there. I think when I hear the quotas, to me it 

 goes back to the NMFS proposal of the PBR's. I guess the caps 

 would then start. You would start the ratchet down, and that leads 

 to the zero mortality. To us, it scares us, I think, more than any- 

 thing — the fishing industry in my area just for the simple reason 

 that anytime you take a fisherman and a marine mammal and you 

 are both pursuing the same critter out in the ocean, that there is 

 going to be interactions, and sooner or later there will be an acci- 

 dent, and a mammal will be taken. So I believe when you talk 

 caps — to me when you are talking caps, you are talking — you are 

 going to ratchet down toward zero mortality, and that is something 

 that on incidental accidental takes is something that I don't think 

 can be achieved, and we are really afraid of that. 



Mr. Young. What about the NMFS proposal? Do you think there 

 should be changes? And were you consulted before it was drawn 

 up? 



Mr. OsTERBACK. Mr. Chairman, as far as the NMFS proposal, I 

 believe we did submit written testimony on it, and I think as I 

 have stated before, we have been in quite a few meetings with the 

 different folks here. I think that would kind of give you the impres- 

 sion that we are not in agreement with the NMFS proposal. We 

 have some problems with the PBR's and different types of things. 

 Kind of one of the things I believe that personally that I want to 

 see happen is under the NMFS proposal there is no room for a 

 mitigation team that deal with these different marine mammal 

 issues, whether they are critical or noncritical, however you want 

 to put it, but I think that there needs to be a mitigation team in 

 place that deals with the issues on a region-by-region basis, and I 

 don't think that is in there. 



Mr. Young. Mr. Chairman, I agree with Mr. Osterback when it 

 comes to the quotas. If you remember, we started this business 

 with the dolphin and the tunas 20 years ago, and we don't have a 

 tuna fleet left anymore so I know the concern that Mr. Osterback 

 has some merit. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Oster- 

 back. 



Mr. Studds. I thank the gentleman. The gentlewoman from 

 Oregon. 



Ms. FuRSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr. Thorn- 

 burgh. It is always nice to know that in any deliberative body there 

 are at least two Oregonians. I wanted to ask you a question par- 

 ticularly if I may about the seal population in Astoria at the mouth 

 of the Columbia River. Can you speculate whether that population 

 has grown as a result of displacement or dislocation, say, from en- 

 vironmental impact where they might historically have been? In 

 other words, can you give me a reason why you think that popula- 

 tion has grown so rapidly, and I have indeed seen that myself — the 

 huge populations there? But is it, do you think, because something 



