47 



nized that fishing-caused mortality is not the only contributor to declines in marine 

 mammal populations. Our recommendations include direction to the agency to as- 

 sess other sources of mortality, and to work with other appropriate federal agencies 

 to reduce mortality from causes other than commercial fisning. 



3. Comments on Other Proposals 



As stated above, the Joint Proposal incorporates many of the elements of the 

 NMFS Proposed Regime to Govern Incidental Takes of Marine Mammals in Com- 

 mercial Fishing. Rather than reiterate these common themes, the following brief 

 comments, from a conservation perspective, summarize a few of the most important 

 reasons why our proposal differs from the agency's recommendations. 



First, the agency's proposed timeline for implementation would not reduce inci- 

 dental takes below the Potential Biological Removal (PBR) level until 5-7 years after 

 implementation. In contrast, the ioint proposal calls for immediate reductions, with 

 a maximum of three years to achieve significantly declining rates of incidental le- 

 thal take below the calculated removal level. 



Secondly, although the agency proposal states that it maintains the goal of reduc- 

 ing incidental take to insignificant levels approaching zero, it contains no specific 

 mechanism to achieve this goal. 



Third, the agency proposal would allow intentional killing of marine mammals, 

 including depleted, threatened and endangered species. 



Finally, the proposed NMFS regime is, fundamentally, a quota-based system that 

 is likely to generate more industry attention on competing for quotas of marine 

 mammal mortality than on changing fishing behavior to reduce fishing caused mor- 

 tality.. 



In response to recommendations from animal protection groups for a more strin- 



fent approach to controlling incidental take, we ask the question: what additional 

 enefit will we achieve and at what cost? While we agree with many of the premises 

 upon which these groups have based their proposal, we believe that the concerns 

 are by and large addressed in the Joint Proposal. Therefore, the following comments 

 go only to the issues where the two approaches differ significantly. 



First, universal fishing vessel registration does not target effort the key factor 

 necessary to determine the real effects of fishing on marine mammals. Although the 

 concept has initial appeal, it still does not address the fundamental questions of who 

 is fisning, where, wnen, and how. One vessel may be used in several fisheries at 

 different times of the year, or in both state and, federal fisheries, or not at all in 

 a given year. Even with a universal registration, assessing effort wiU require cor- 

 relation of the one vessel's registration with all the fisheries in which it participates 

 and how that effort is defined. Otherwise, registration contributes nothing to an ac- 

 curate assessment of incidental take. The Interim Exemption Program dem- 

 onstrated that, with the exception of federal and state fisheries that are either 

 under permit or licensing programs, this correlation is not possible without extraor- 

 dinary commitments of time and resources. 



The Joint Proposal addresses the question of effort by providing for use of federal, 

 state, and tribal fishing permits. Where those permits do not exist or are not made 

 accessible to the agency, we propose requiring a marine mammal permit. In our 

 view, this gets at the issue of effort assessment without unnecessary duplication and 

 cost. The purpose of requiring effort assessment under the MMPA should be focused 

 on reliable monitoring of fisheries to assess their impacts on marine mammals. If 

 the point of a universal registration is to find out how many people are fishing re- 

 garcUess of their interactions with marine mammals, it should be faced squarely 

 during the Magnuson Act reauthorization. If the point of universal registration is 

 to collect fees, then that issue should be addressed head on, not wrapped in statis- 

 tical rhetoric. 



With regard to the call for mandatory levels of observer coverage, we wonder first, 

 what will it cost and whether it realistically can be financially supported, and sec- 

 ond, what is the incremental benefit? The 1988 amendments specified levels of ob- 

 server coverage, and the mandate was impossible for the agency to meet, not only 

 because of limited money, but also because some fisheries have thousands of vessels. 

 While it is clear from the results of the Exemption Program that self-reporting 

 underestimates by far observed interactions, we should provide the agency the flexi- 

 bility to deploy observers according to its professional judgment about what provides 

 a level of coverage sufiicient to verify and extrapolate the reported date. That level 

 may be 100 percent — an option that could be precluded by setting a statutory re- 

 quirement. 



If there is a distinction to be drawn between animal protection and conservation 

 group approaches to incidental take, it is that in our community, we are ready to 

 recognize that incidental take is just that: an accident that occurs incident to fishing 



