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chasing too few fish. But that is not the whole story. The real 

 answer is in a management system that refused to recognize, or at 

 least to act on, that basic reality. Instead it pursued an 

 inshore/offshore allocation scheme designed to prevent 

 "preemption" of one sector by another, which in fact actually 

 created the very preemption it purported to eliminate — albeit 

 in the opposite direction. With shoreside allocations 

 significantly exceeding the historical levels of shoreside 

 processing, the necessary consequence of dividing a finite and 

 scarce pie was to preempt the existing at-sea processors. In the 

 meantime, shoreside processors were introducing new vessels of 

 unprecedented capacity and building processing facilities thereby 

 further exacerbating the real problem of overcapitalization. 



It is not, however, "sour grapes" that have brought me here 

 today. Rather, my concerns are what we can learn from this 

 experience to improve fisheries management in the future so that 

 we have (1) a resource to harvest, (2) a fair and equitable 

 system to determine who shares in that bounty and (3) some 

 measure of predictability for capital investment. Economic 

 allocation through ITQs or limited entry mechanisms of one kind 

 or another will necessarily be adopted in the future. Neither 

 the resource nor the industry can afford to do otherwise. As 

 billions of dollars of fishery resources are divided up the 

 temptations will be great and, quite frankly, the system we have 

 now is not up to the job. The public will demand greater 

 accountability, as well they should. 



