38 



"Thank you again for your concern with a fishery that is impor- 

 tant to millions of consumers as well as the thousands of commer- 

 cial and recreational fishermen in New Jersey." 



Mr. Saxton. Thank you. We are once again going to be informal 

 and inasmuch as I started the last round of questioning, I will yield 

 to my colleague to start this round of questioning. 



Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask Tom, 

 you said in your testimony that the bag limit that we are living 

 with now was not originally proposed to address, and I don't know 

 if you said the decline in the fishery or the issue of overfishing, 

 what do you mean by that? What was the intent? 



Mr. FOTE. Well, I am going to refresh the Congressman's mem- 

 ory. When you had the Chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Council at 

 the time before this Committee, the Fisheries Committee, and they 

 asked him why you are putting a ten-fish bag limit on bluefish, he 

 said because you throw them in dipsy dumpers and you throw 

 them in the garbage and that is the only reason that you put that 

 ten-fish bag limit in place. It had nothing to do with conservation. 



Mr. Pallone. So it wasn't actually down at a time when the 

 stocks were declining. 



Mr. FOTE. No. When the plan was basically being implemented 

 there was great fear and Al Ristori is sitting in the audience here 

 and Al was responsible and so was Bill Feinberg. 



Mr. Radonski. I remember now. It is a long time ago but I re- 

 member. 



Mr. FOTE. But basically the bluefish management plan was basi- 

 cally designed that if a foreign market developed large processing 

 ships could not come into the fishery, basically destroy the stocks 

 and effect both the historical commercial and recreational sector 

 because the commercial fisheries insure gillnet fishery and large 

 processors could basically put the Kevin Warks out of business. 



That is what the bluefish management plan was designed to do 

 and when that plan originally went up, there was no bag limit but 

 when NMFS in its infinite wisdom said that unless you put a bag 

 limit we are not going to pass the plan and that is how we got a 

 bag limit on it. 



Mr. Pallone. And that is how many years ago now? 



Mr. Fote. The plan was passed in 1989. At the time and Ray 

 and I, I think, are both in total agreement that when they passed 

 the plan, I said it was the worst plan I ^ver saw. I still agree that 

 it was the worst plan. 



It really didn't address the problems. It didn't address the declin- 

 ing stock and it basically just looked good on paper. They said they 

 were going to do something on the stock before it started to decline. 

 Because we asked the question and you asked someone at the hear- 

 ing and Congressman Saxton -^was at the same hearing with Jim 

 McQue and Jim has passed away since, are there any problem with 

 the stocks and both of them said no. We are just doing this because 

 you are basically throwing them in dipsy dumpsters. That is water 

 under the bridge. 



There is a problem with the stocks. The stocks are not where 

 they were in the 1980's. The 1980's might have been an all time 

 high period. We might not be able ever to obtain that. What we 



