8 



ment plan coordinator. So if need any technical support today, I 

 think John will be able to give it to us. 



Mr. Chairman, bluefish are a species that is found all over the 

 world and we, of course, are most interested in that species as it 

 exists along the Atlantic Coast. At present, the bluefish stocks in 

 the Atlantic Ocean appear to be in a period of serious decline. The 

 target fishing mortality rate of the fishery management plan seems 

 to have been exceeded in every year since 1986. 



The stock biomass has declined from 326,000 metric tons in 

 1982, the historic high, to 86,000 metric tons in 1993. We cannot 

 expect to have large recruitment and large spawning stock sizes on 

 a regular basis. But recruitment since 1989 has been below aver- 

 age. In the 1993 year class of four million fish was the poorest sur- 

 veyed during the last 20 years. 



The National Marine Fisheries Service fall survey in 1994 indi- 

 cated some improvement in recruitment for the 1994 year class, 

 but the overall picture is still disappointing; and not surprisingly 

 the decline in the size of the stock has been reflected in the lack 

 of success in commercial and recreational fisheries. 



This resource has been under cooperative management since 

 1989 and I would like to make a comment about the nature of the 

 cooperative process between the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries 

 Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council. 



Mr. Chairman, when this committee or its predecessor consid- 

 ered the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act 

 two years ago you made a great point for us to hear that you want- 

 ed to see greater levels of cooperation between the Atlantic States 

 Marine Fisheries Commission and our partners in the Federal Gov- 

 ernment; and we have been making every effort to continue to do 

 so. 



The Bluefish Fishery Management Plan was the first one that 

 was developed cooperatively by our two organizations and through- 

 out that, the staff of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council 

 has always taken the lead in putting the cooperative program to- 

 gether. 



As Mr. Matlock said, the current fishery management plan isn't 

 really an ASMFC plan or a Mid-Atlantic Council plan. It is a joint 

 document. Both organizations have adopted exactly the same lan- 

 guage and mutually implement on a continuing basis the manage- 

 ment measures that are contained in that document. 



We are now in a position where we have recognized jointly that 

 the current fishery management plan for bluefish is inadequate to 

 meet the needs of the fishermen and of the resource today. 



The problem is that this was adopted in 1989 and we have 

 learned an awful lot since then about how the resource operates 

 and about how fishermen operate and at the same time we have 

 seen the resource undergo a serious period of decline. 



As a result, the Commission and the Council decided about a 

 year and a half ago that we desperately need a new fishery man- 

 agement program for bluefish. Let me give you a couple reasons 

 why, some of which were alluded to by the Chairman in his open- 

 ing statement. 



The Bluefish Management Plan has some very blunt instruments 

 to be used to try to conserve and manage this fishery. In the rec- 



