85 



We have got new problems coming in New England that are 



foing to be very costly, and I think extremely necessary. I hope to 

 old some hearings on those, too, again this year Mr. Chairman. 

 But what do you all suggest? Did anyone in these meetings suggest 

 where the money's going to come from to pay for this cost of up to 

 $20 million a year? Mr. Gilman. 



Mr. Oilman. We started in the negotiation, the very first meet- 

 ing, with the premise that we had to nave a reality check and that 

 any management regime would be subject to appropriation because 

 the group as a whole would not agree to user fees across the board 

 for the fishing industry. From the very beginning we tried to struc- 

 ture a proposal that was subject to appropriations, assuming that 

 we were trying to hold on to baseline appropriations, which is ap- 

 proximately $10 million. 



The proposal that we submitted will spend $10 million, it will 

 spend $2 million, it will spend $200 million. It is a substantive pro- 

 posal subject to appropriations. We may have only enough money 

 to deal with the two most critical stocks at this time. We know 

 what the critical stocks are. We spent 5 years figuring out where 

 the hot spot areas are. If all we have is $10 million and somebody 

 has estimated that they can only get to Alaska harbor seals and 

 Gulf of Maine harbor porpoise with that $10 million, for the first 

 2 years, well, bv God, let's do it then. And let's solve the problem. 



It gets into tne issue of registration. We, of course, need a reg- 

 istration regime, on a stock- specific, region-specific basis. We 

 should attempt to merge existing data bases. If merger is not pos- 

 sible, we need to create a new data base. 



And of course we need observers. In some fisheries we may need 

 5 percent. In some fisheries we may need 50 percent, and in some 

 fisneries we may need 100 percent observer coverage. The funding 

 should be dedicated to those hotspot areas to fund the creation or 

 the merging of a stock-specific data base, fund an observer pro- 

 gram, and resolve a specific problem with the funding you have, 

 and then move on. 



Senator Stevens. Any other comments? 



Mr. Kaelin. I guess I would like to make one comment. In over 

 10 years of fishing in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank area 

 personally, there was one marine mammal encounter that I wit- 

 nessed. I did not work in the gillnet fleet. So, as far as user fees 

 go, people in my part of the world believe similar to what someone 

 mentioned earlier, that perhaps the environmental community has 

 more interest in funding this program than we do. If we could see 

 a way where we could equally create user fees on, not only fisher- 

 men, but people who want to protect marine mammals, then maybe 

 we could talk about user fees. 



But the point I am trying to make is there are really very few 

 fisheries interactions in New England that are a problem to any 

 marine mammal stocks. In fact, the harbor porpoise may not even 

 be in trouble, to the extent that a conservation team may be estab- 

 lished, given the information that NMFS has just published about 

 that stock. 



So, I think from our perspective, because there are really very 

 few problems in this area, we do not think user fees can be sup- 

 ported. 



