44 



ery, summon the scientists before them and have an explanation 

 of how they collect their data, where they collect their data and 

 how their models are constructed. 



I support the use of anecdotal data. It is good in its place if it 

 is used judiciously. I think that any scientist that would tell Mr. 

 Bogan that what had happened didn't occur, then that scientist 

 would be in question because if he caught the fish, he caught the 

 fish. There is no doubt about it but if you are going to look into 

 what is the proper way to manage these fish and collect scientific 

 data, I hope you will talk to the scientists as well. 



Mr. Saxton. While you have the microphone, you talked about 

 overfishing. Would it be fair to say that overfishing not only occurs 

 on the fish stock that we are concerned about, in this case bluefish, 

 but also on menhaden and other bait fish? 



Mr. Radonski. Well, it can but the menhaden stocks are in as 

 good a shape as they have been for a long time. 



Mr. Saxton. Oh, is that right? 



Mr. Radonski. Yes. 



Mr. Saxton. Inshore? 



Mr. Radonski. Well, I can't comment on the distribution of them 

 because the practice of harvesting manhaden has changed quite a 

 bit recently. I think the people that are in the manhaden fishery 

 would have to answer that question where they catch them but 

 there are changes in abundance of cray species and one statement 

 that I would subscribe to very strongly that Ray made was that the 

 bluefish/striped bass relationship is not so much direct competition, 

 one fish eating the other, but the competition for a food source. 



I think that is very critical and it is one of the more difficult 

 things to demonstrate. You have to catch large numbers of each 

 species and do stomach analysis which is extremely labor intensive 

 and right now the Federal Government has not seen fit to give the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service the money to solve these ques- 

 tions. So I think we aren't going to get these answers until we 

 make the expenditures and I am not just speaking of bluefish. I am 

 talking about all fisheries. 



We are going to make our best management decisions based on 

 good sound data and we should be spending more time collecting 

 that data because making decisions for short-term benefit are going 

 to have long-term consequences in the rebuilding of all of our fish 

 stocks. 



Mr. Saxton. It seems to me that we have made and anybody 

 please comment, Frank, I am dominating things here and I don't 

 mean it to be that way, but it seems to me that we have made 

 three general conclusions. 



One is that there is fairly broad agreement that the bluefish 

 stock goes up and down and that it is cyclical over time. Number 

 two, there is still a significant biomass population of bluefish off- 

 shore and the third is that there has been a decline in the popu- 

 lation near shore. 



It seems to me if that is all the case, then there are a couple of 

 questions to ask. One, is the downturn in the population offshore 

 significant for us to worry about? That is a question that I don't 

 pretend to have the answer to and the second is why have they left 

 the shore. 



