23 



Once that scoping document comes back and there is a consensus 

 as to the topics that should be covered in the management plan, 

 then a draft management plan is prepared and in the process of 

 doing that both in preceding the scoping document and preceding 

 the development of a draft management plan there is an advisory 

 panel for that particular fishery that is made up of fishermen from 

 all sectors, recreational and commercial, charter boat as well so we 

 have that input coming in. 



Once the draft management plan is approved by the Council then 

 it goes out for another public hearing to receive comment again and 

 we have the hearings up and down the coast in all of the represent- 

 ative states and then it goes into the Secretary or into the National 

 Marine Fisheries Service for final approval and eventually then to 

 the Federal Register and again another period of public comment 

 is available at that particular point in time and during all of the 

 Council meetings there is public comment taken during the delib- 

 erations of the Council as well. 



Mr. DUNNIGAN. Mr. Pallone, I think that this has been a difficult 

 issue for the Commission to work with over the last couple of 

 years. I think that the continuing perception that the Atlantic 

 States Marine Fisheries Commission's process is hard for the pub- 

 lic to get into is mainly based on some historical factors that frank- 

 ly had some validity in the past. The Commission has been work- 

 ing very hard over the last two years to try to improve its outreach 

 and improve its processes for bringing fishermen in to help the 

 states make their decisions on how cooperatively to manage these 

 resources. 



The process that we follow today is very similar to what you see 

 at the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council or the South-At- 

 lantic Fishery Management Counsel. We modeled our program 

 after theirs. We now have advisory panels consisting of fishermen 

 for virtually every fishery that we have under management. 



The chairmen of those advisory panels constitute an overall advi- 

 sory committee for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commis- 

 sion. We have tried to place emphasis on getting those advisors to 

 sit down with the managers and listen to the scientific information 

 together, try to come to a mutual understanding of what needs to 

 be done with the Fishery and we think it has been fairly successful. 



If you look at amendment five to the Striped Bass Fishery Man- 

 agement Plan, many of the most important management measures 

 that are contained in there came right out of our advisory process 

 and we are in the middle right now of adopting amendment three 

 to our Weakfish Fishery Management Plan and we are finding the 

 same thing. 



We had our advisors sitting down with our board three weeks 

 ago in Norfolk and we will be doing it again on April 16 in Wash- 

 ington, D.C., and hopefully tie that up. 



So we have been placing a lot of emphasis on getting our advi- 

 sors to meet with our fishermen. We have the same multi-staged 

 process of going out to the public for public hearings. 



On bluefish, we are doing all of this together. At that meeting 

 in Norfolk the Council and the Commission both had their bluefish 

 advisors there. They had their oversight committee. We had our 

 management board. Our public hearings have been held jointly. 



