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that the commercial fishery had recently at that time been about 

 12 to 13 percent and they wanted to allow for some growth in the 

 commercial fishery but not too much so they picked 20 percent as 

 a plateau and once that trigger was met then there would be a 

 need to put a cap on the commercial fishery so that it didn't exceed 

 that. 



If it were an allocation then presumably it would work the other 

 way, too. You would restrict their recreational fishery if the com- 

 mercial fishery was ever below 20 percent and nobody ever in- 

 tended to do that. 



Mr. Saxton. Let me ask you a hypothetical question. If manage- 

 ment plans are established and implemented and enforced by the 

 states and the state wishes to say, "Well, we think it should be 70/ 

 30" and let's say it is Massachusetts that decides that it ought to 

 be 70/30 and the fishermen from Massachusetts come into offshore 

 New Jersey waters to catch bluefish and take them back and land 

 them in Massachusetts, what kind of an effect does that have on 

 the bluefish population? What does that do to New Jersey's man- 

 agement plan that may be 85/15? 



Mr. DUNNIGAN. I think that typically what we do to our states 

 is we focus on conservation. Our basic opinion on allocation issues 

 is that those ought to be decided within the state if possible and 

 if a state could show to us that whatever alternate program they 

 had would achieve the same conservation equivalency, is what we 

 call it, the Commission would allow the state to adopt that pro- 

 gram to implement in its waters. 



Mr. Saxton. Now switching gears for just a minute, another ex- 

 ample'of where this would raise a concern to me, obviously we are 

 all concerned and watching very carefully with a happy face the 

 striped bass situation. 



We all know that North Carolinians would love to go out and 

 catch a commercial catch of stripers in the winter when they lay 

 off the coast of North Carolina. If NMFS disappears from the 

 striped bass management planning process, does that mean that 

 North Carolina then would be able to go on and develop their own 

 management plan and take commercial catches of stripers? 



Mr. DUNNIGAN. Currently North Carolina does fish commercially 

 on that over wintering population off between Cape Henry and 

 Cape Hatteras. They have an allocation and I am guessing but I 

 think it is somewhere around 400,000 pounds. 



Mr. Saxton. What do they want? 



Mr. DUNNIGAN. I think they ought to be happy with the way 

 things are right now. That commercial allocation quadrupled this 

 year and it will probably go up next year. So I don't know that 

 there is any particular problem with that fishery. We have some 

 other problems with striped bass in North Carolina but I think if 

 the question of the E.E.Z. moratorium and, of course, none of those 

 fish are supposed to be caught in the E.E.Z. because the E.E.Z. is 

 closed so if the E.E.Z. moratorium were taken out, that shouldn't 

 have any effect on the fishery. 



Mr. Saxton. Now North Carolina wants to open the E.E.Z. to 

 commercial fishing from what I understand, is that right, on strip- 

 ers? 



