But this success has not come without growing pains. As harvest 

 capacity quickly exceeded sustainable harvest levels, fierce, high- 

 stakes allocation battles have erupted. In the North Pacific, the 

 winners get tens of millions of dollars worth of Federal resources 

 and build new harvest capacity to reap their rewards; the losers tie 

 their boats to the docks and search for other fisheries to keep their 

 businesses afloat. 



The enormity of such allocation decisions, whether it be pollock 

 in the North Pacific, whiting in the Pacific, or salmon from the 

 Klamath River, has brought increased scrutiny to the decisionmak- 

 ing process established under the Magnuson Act. The Department 

 of Justice and Inspector General have both investigated the coun- 

 cils and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Public confidence is 

 also waning. A recent headline in the Oregonian labeled one deci- 

 sion as a "corporate takeover". Another in the Anchorage Times 

 editorialized the whole council process as "ethically bankrupt". 



These issues, Mr. Chairman, must be addressed during reauthor- 

 ization of the Act. While I believe the councils' authority to origi- 

 nate management actions should be preserved, the Secretary's au- 

 thority and the question of appropriate checks and balances within 

 the process must be better defined if future management decisions 

 are to truly reflect the needs of the resources and the Nation. 



With strong direction and leadership from our committee, the in- 

 dustry can work toward consensus on these difficult issues. We 

 have seen this with the recent agreement on future whiting alloca- 

 tions and with the consensus position on Magnuson Act issues that 

 is evolving among representatives of the Washington-based indus- 

 try. 



Look forward to the panels and look forward to the interaction 

 between this committee and the Pacific Northwest. 



Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Chairman Studds. My colleague from New England, Congress- 

 man Tom Andrews of Maine. 



STATEMENT OF THE HON. THOMAS H. ANDREWS, A U.S. 

 REPRESENTATIVE FROM MAINE 



Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Probably the person that you need to hear from the least this 

 morning is myself, so I will keep my comments very, very brief. 



Let me just say that it is a tremendous pleasure to be here. I 

 want to thar«k each and every one of you for sending a quality con- 

 gressional delegation that you have sent to Washington, D.C., par- 

 ticularly Elizabeth Furse who has helped to make this all possible 

 today, Jolene Unsoeld an outstanding Member of Congress, and it 

 is a pleasure to work with them. 



I am from the original Portland, Portland, Maine, and the last 

 time I was in Portland, Oregon, was when I was nine-years-old. It 

 has changed quite a bit in the last ten years, I must say. But while 

 we may be on different coasts, we certainly have a lot in common. 

 Certainly our dependence upon and connection to our natural re- 

 sources, the importance that it has played in our economy and our 

 culture and our heritage and certainly the critical role that it will 



