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have been working with Senator Murkowski. We were impacted 

 quite hard by high seas interception. 



Senator Wirth. This had the biggest impact, drift nets? 



Mr. Amend. I think it is a very, very large impact. There is a 

 number of factors; we had a very cold winter in 1985 that impacted 

 our return in 1987. We had a lot of freeze off that year. There are 

 environmental factors also. I do not think you can correctly point 

 your fmger to one specific thing. 



Senator Wirth. And tell me what other fish, where the salmon 

 fit in with other fish caught in the fishing industry and what is the 

 volume or the economics of it? How do you generally measure? 



Mr. Amend. I think salmon far and away is the largest compo- 

 nent of the seafood industry but we have a large industry in our 

 black cod fishery, bottom fish. Senator Murkowski, would you draw 

 him a long line please? [General laughter.] 



Senator Murkowski. It is sable fish. 



Mr. Amend. It is a bottom fish. We had a crab fishery and a 

 shrimp fishery and a halibut fishery. We have got crawfish work- 

 ing and also bottom fish. We have got a fairly large herring fishery 

 to comment on just a few. There are quite a few fisheries. 



Senator Wirth. Thank you. 



Senator Murkowski. I just want to make a very brief addition to 

 make sure my colleagues understand. These fish appear in fresh- 

 water streams along the coast of southeastern Alaska and Canada 

 as well as western Alaska and their lifestyle, they migrate out in 

 the North Pacific and they intermix with Asian stocks, which are 

 both Soviet Union and Japanese and it is kind of a rearing pond. 

 They are out there growing up and we manage our fisheries on the 

 basis of escape. In other words we do not let our standard fish out 

 unless we have certain escapements in our streams to ensure the 

 cycle repeats itself but if you have sophisticated fleets in the high 

 seas such as the Taiwanese and the Koreans and some of the Japa- 

 nese — and we have got evidence that several hundred boats are out 

 there with squid nets in salmon-producing areas you will find that 

 some of these nets are as long as 30 miles, and it is the ability to 

 manage the resource because you do not know what they are 

 taking. 



I have not had permission to board these boats until a short time 

 ago. They take the salmon and they sell them, move them off the 

 vessels on the high seas and they take them to Singapore and Hong 

 Kong and then they market them over in France and Europe. If we 

 do not control high seas interception management of the resource 

 is very difficult and I commend this panel particularly — what I got 

 was an effort to continue a balanced multiple use plan with par- 

 ticular emphasis, of course, on fisheries. We have a very serious 

 international problem in this regard just because we do not control 

 these fish on the high seas. We have such things as sovereignty of 

 nations on the high seas and it is a real diplomatic nightmare. 

 Most of the nations have laws that prohibit fishing on the high 

 seas but unless they fish and sell over the side because they are 

 afraid to take those fish home because they know they would be 

 prosecuted, it is sort of like a laundering operation, or similar to 

 drugs, a lot of money so they are going to take the risk and thus 

 they are annihilating the fisheries. I think we lost about a hundred 



