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III. PRESENT SITUATION : 



Uncertainty and confusion are the dominant conditions in the 

 industry. We have faced many problems before. This time it is fair 

 to say we do not know where we are going. 



National Marine Fisheries Service has prepared an impact analysis 

 of proposed rules which measures the distress in dismal detail. This 

 is a view of where we are headed. 



A measure of uncertainty and confusion is found in the 18 legal and 

 administrative proceedings concerning porpoises in which the indus- 

 try is or has been engaged in the last year. These are by no means 

 ended. One of the most recent was a series of hearings before an 

 administrative law judge in which about 3,300 pages of testimony 

 were taken. 



These proceedings are now a way of life and sap the vitality of the 

 industry. No industry can long survive in an atmosphere of uncer- 

 tainty where ability to operate is subject to month to month review 

 and determination. 



It is no longer a matter of how progressive, efficient, and competi- 

 tive we are. It is a matter of how convincing we are in these manifold 

 proceedings. Fishing strategy is determined by the courts. By these 

 means the fishery is essentially deprived of the use of skills and 

 knowledge of the sea and its resources which built an industry. 



IV. RESEARCH AND QUOTAS: 



Tuna people are not strangers to marine scientists, marine science, 

 or estimates of populations. 



Before there were any investigations of or much interest in tuna 

 resources and their abundance, the industry urged formation of the 

 Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission to undertake such work. 

 In late 1948 I appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Com- 

 mittee at the time it approved the basic treaty with Costa Rica to 

 form the Commission. 



Tn 1940, the Commission began its work. 



In 1966, 17 years later, the Commission decided that it had suffi- 

 cient knowledge of yellowfin tuna populations within an area called 

 the Commission's Yellowfin Regulatory Area — C.Y.R.A. — and that 

 information required a catch quota of 79.300 tons for 1966. We were 

 told that a catch in excess of 79,300 tons would begin the ruin of the 

 fishery. 



In the 10 years since 1966, the amount of the quota has progres- 

 sively increased. In October at its annual meeting in Nicaragua, the 

 Commission established a quota with an upper limit for 1977 of 

 210,000 tons for C.Y.R.A. area smaller than that in 1966. We now 

 have a smaller area and a quota 165 percent greater. 



It is evident that there is a small data base for porpoise population 

 estimates. Data inadequacies were deplored at the La Jolla workshop 

 in 1976. The proposed 1977 quota of 29,918 porpoises- — with a greater 

 number allotted for foreign fishing—is based on a virtually certain 

 estimate of optimum sustainable population. Tn laymen's terms I am 

 advised that this means there is about one chance in an astronomical 

 1.600 of anything adverse happening to the porpoise stocks. 



