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monitor the size or vital rates of any of the potentially 

 affected marine mammal stocks. Consequently, it is questionable 

 whether the Bill, as presently drafted, would provide an adequate 

 means for ensuring, in the long term, that incidental take in 

 commercial fisheries, by itself and in combination with other 

 human-activities, does. not cause any marine mammal species or 

 population stock to be reduced below its optimum sustainable 

 population level. 



The simplest and most efficient way to remedy this 

 shortcoming would be to (1) specify in the Bill that the 

 Secretary must maintain, and periodically (annually or 

 biennially) up-date, a list of those fisheries taking marine 

 mammals, frequently and occasionally, arid the number of vessels 

 or persons involved in each such fishery; and (2) provide the 

 Secretary authority to require (a) registration of all vessels 

 that engage in fisheries that have more than a remote possibility 

 of taking marine mammals, and (b) that owners of such vessels 

 maintain and provide records of fishing effort and other 

 information necessary to extrapolate marine mammal catch data 

 collected by observers to an accurate estimate of total catch by 

 fishery. 



On a related matter, the Commission thinks it would be ill- 

 advised to try to specify observer coverage, based upon the 

 status of the affected stocks, as presently is done in Section 

 118(f)(3) of the Bill ("Monitoring Incidental Lethal Takes"). In 

 some cases, it may be possible to get sufficient data to 

 accurately estimate the total level of incidental take in a 

 particular fishery by placing observers on substantially fewer 

 than 2 percent of the vessels engaged in the fishery. In other 

 cases, as much as 100 percent observer coverage may be necessary. 

 Funding may be limited and specifying observer coverage could 

 interfere with, rather than enhance, the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service's ability to use available funding to best 

 advantage. 



The Commission also is uncertain about the purpose and the 

 advisability of the requirement that the Secretary establish "a 

 list of supplementary observer providers" and allow vessel owners 

 to "employ a supplementary observer provider." In addition, it 

 is not clear why the section authorizing the Secretary to charge 

 a fee to cover observer costs apparently has been deleted. It 

 might be desirable, in some regions, to allow the Secretary to 

 contract with a non-governmental organization to train and place 

 observers, and to collate and analyze data collected by the 

 observers. Similarly, it might be desirable to allow the 

 Secretary to certify that observer programs developed voluntarily 

 by fishermen or fisheries' groups meet minimum training and other 

 standards. However, to ensure comparability and avoid possible 

 bias, the Secretary must retain responsibility for deciding such 

 things as the level of observer coverage necessary, how vessels 



