58 



WESTERN 



PACIFIC 



REGIONAL 



FISHERY 



MANAGEMENT 



COUNCIL 



Testimony of Edwin A. Ebisui, Jr., Chair 

 Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council 



Hearing before the 



Senate Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Ocean and Fisheries, 



and Senate Committee on Indian Affairs 



1 June 1995 



Thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Western Pacific 

 Regional Fishery Management Council, and the draft amendments to the 

 Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act. As written, the revised bill 

 would amend the Act to authorize community-based fishery demonstration 

 projects, and address the issue of preferential access to fishery resources by the 

 indigenous people of our region by placing language in the Act that would direct 

 our Council to consider indigenous fishing practices in preparing fishery 

 management plans. 



The proposed amendments would expand and enhance the principals upon 

 which the Act was founded, as well as the mechanism created by it. The Regional 

 Fishery Management Council system was an experiment begun by the Act in 

 1976. The results of the experiment are far from complete, and the preliminary 

 results contain a mixture of management successes and failures. Most of the 

 successes, however, can be directly attributed to that most important aspect of the 

 Council system, that is regionalism . Only recently has the US legislative process 

 begun to codify mechanisms that accurately measure the social and economic 

 costs of the federal decision-making process. While always well-intended, the 

 prescribed formula used by most federal and state legislatures and agencies usually 

 falls short in identifying the impacts on the smallest units of society, individuals 

 and their communities. We need to include individuals and communities in the 

 decision-making process, and rely on them to take the management lead or to 



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