REAUTHORIZATION OF THE MARINE 

 MAMMAL PROTECTION ACT 



WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1993 



U.S. Senate, 

 Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 



Washington, DC. 



The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:13 p.m. in room SD- 

 628, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. John F. Kerry presiding. 



Staff" members assigned to this hearing: Lila H. Helms and Pe- 

 nelope D. Dalton, professional staff* members; and John A. Moran, 

 minority staff" counsel. 



OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR KERRY 



Senator Kerry. The hearing will come to order. My apologies for 

 being a little late. 



We are back again for the reauthorization of the Marine Mam- 

 mal Protection Act. I think we come here, all groups interested in 

 this, with an understanding that since its implementation in 1972 

 it has really been pretty successful in protecting and conserving 

 marine mammal populations. 



We have reexamined this act in the past, and we have reauthor- 

 ized it in the past, so we review that process today with a certain 

 amount of history, and today we come more narrowly focused on 

 the need for amendments to the act in order to establish a new re- 

 gime to govern the incidental taking of marine mammals in com- 

 mercial fishing eff"orts. 



I am not going to go through the history of the act, except to say 

 that we would all agree that with respect to most species we have 

 learned a lot and have been pretty successful in our effort to pre- 

 serve and protect while remaining sensitive to some of the needs 

 of our fishing folks. 



In 1988, in an effort to respond to the concerns of fishermen, a 

 lot of the restrictions were lifted in the moratorium. Now we are 

 at the critical point where the interim exemption expires in a few 

 months, and the fishing folks could be stopped from fishing and the 

 fisheries could be closed altogether. 



Needless to say, we need to come up very quickly with an under- 

 standing of whetner the new regime proposed by NMFS is the way 

 to go, or whether the industry/conservation working group has an 

 alternative proposal governing interactions that may in fact be bet- 

 ter. The purpose of the hearing today is to examine both sides of 

 this issue and to try to get a sense of where we go. 



We are going to hear from the acting head of the National Ma- 

 rine Fisheries on the recommendations of NMFS with respect to 



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