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similar system to monitor fishing effort in the federal fisheries 

 in these regions. These systems track approximately 17,000 

 vessels licensed to fish commercially in Alaska. The current 

 state and federal fishery registration system includes permits and 

 vessel registration for each species fished, by gear-type, by 

 area, by season. Fishery participation by vessel, species, gear, 

 area, and season is verified through landing/sales documentation, 

 harvest monitoring, surveillance, and fishery data entry. 

 Additional monitoring is provided by shoreside and onboard 

 observers . 



Creating a new and overlapping system would be a waste of limited 

 federal funds, and clearly duplicative and unnecessary. Federal 

 funds should instead be directed at developing a registration 

 system only for those state and/or federal fisheries for which 

 comprehensive fishing effort data is not available. 



5. Monitoring Incidental Lethal Takes 



the draft bill will also create redundancy as a result of the 

 requirement for mandatory levels of marine mammal observer 

 coverage. The State believes there should not be a legislatively 

 set level of marine mammal observer coverage. Mandatory levels of 

 observer coverage discussed in the draft bill might encompass 

 thousands of vessels nationwide, and in many instances could be 

 duplicative or unnecessary. For example, in the North Pacific, 

 existing crab and groundfish observers could accomplish the dual 



