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5. Strict and mandatory enforcement and penalties to ensure 

 compliance with all portions of the Act, and its regulations, 

 relating to issues such as registration, monitoring of catch 

 and quotas . 



The past five years of the exemption program were intended as a 

 period of data gathering on marine mammals and fisheries 

 interactions. The data which have been gathered are daunting in 

 their abundance and discouraging in their trends. Over the past 5 

 years the number of boats registering with the program has 

 continued to decline, although the total number of boats estimated 

 to be fishing has not declined significantly and, in fact, new 

 fisheries have begun. Although registered fishermen are required 

 to submit logbooks of marine mammal interactions, the number of 

 submissions is declining and lags far behind the number of 

 registered boats. Data contained in log books are erroneous. 

 Where fisheries were monitored by on-board observers, the 

 discrepancy between takes reported by fishermen and observers was 

 as high as 2,100%, with a mean discrepancy of 600.%.. Despite this 

 knowledge, NMFS has not enforced its own regulations -sufficiently 

 to encourage compliance. In fact, there seems to be an increasing 

 degree of non-compliance in many areas as the exemption program 

 continues. 



The NMFS needs to have authority to mandate observers aboard all 

 vessels and to mandate periodic and frequent submissions of 

 logbooks by all fisheries (perhaps quarterly) . It should enforce 

 these requirements to the fullest extent of the law. Consideration 

 should be given to a "traffic ticket" type of enforcement for minor 

 violations such as failure to fill out the logbook daily. Vessels 

 which fail to register should be prohibited from fishing with large 

 mandatory penalties meted out for failure to comply. A monitoring 

 program which will track lethal takes, and an enforcement program 

 to ensure compliance with regulations and quotas, are critical 

 parts of making any protective regime equitable and operable, and 

 should be in place as an initial phase of the program. 



For these reasons, we believe that the MMPA should be 

 amended to provide for strict and mandatory enforcement and 

 penalities to ensure compliance with all portion of the Act, 

 and its regulations, which pertain to such issues as 

 registration, and monitoring of catch and quotas. 



