1 I was sitting here thinking as you were talking about the 



2 fisherman, that an environmental group, of which I'm a member, is 



3 fighting to try and retain some docking space in Glouscester for the 



4 fisherman. 



5 The Portland Fish Auction in serious financial trouble right now 



6 and is in danger of closing down. Boston has only a shadow of its 



7 former strength as a fishing port. 



8 Newport dockage has been mostly taken over by condos already, and 



9 there's only local lobster fishing left, and even in New Bedford, which 



10 is New England's premier fishing port, there are proposals--! know of a 



11 proposal for condo development on Homer's Wharf, one of the principal 



12 docking and fish processing wharfs. 



13 All the oil companies have to do is wait a while and there won't 



14 be any fisherman left in New England, and that one source of trouble 



15 will be gone. Then from your point of view or your points of view, we 



16 have two disasters. 



17 DR. AURAND: I don't go far enough back with this program to know 



18 the answer to this, and maybe either one of you or both of you could 



19 speculate on this. 



20 I would have thought, if I had not had anything to do with the 



21 program, that most of the controversy would have occurred, and in the 



22 very beginning there was drilling on Georges Bank, there were no 



23 catastrophes that I know of associated with it, and I would have thought 



24 that that would have reduced the tension, but it obviously has not. 



25 I was just wondering if either one of you would like to speculate 



26 on why--the fact that there was exploratory drilling that didn't cause 



27 any environmental damage, has been so unsuccessful in changing anything 



28 or, if you look at it from the outside, it looks like it's made it 



29 worse. 



30 The fact we were up here at all, historically, has not done any 



31 good. I was just curious if you have any feel for why that happened 



32 that way or an opinion even. 



33 MR. VILD: I don't know if I agree 100 percent that opposition is 



34 any stronger now than it was before or whether it's--it hasn't lessened. 



137 



