SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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48–663 CC l
1998
WEST COAST GROUNDFISH AND DUNGENESS CRAB CONSERVATION
HEARINGS
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FISHERIES CONSERVATION, WILDLIFE AND OCEANS
of the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
on
WEST COAST GROUNDFISH
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and
H.R. 3498
THE DUNGENESS CRAB CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT ACT
APRIL 30 AND MAY 7, 1998
Serial No. 105–99
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house
or
Committee address: http://www.house.gov/resources
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
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JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
KEN CALVERT, California
RICHARD W. POMBO, California
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming
HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho
LINDA SMITH, Washington
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN SHADEGG, Arizona
JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada
ROBERT F. SMITH, Oregon
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania
RICK HILL, Montana
BOB SCHAFFER, Colorado
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho
GEORGE MILLER, California
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
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BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota
DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California
CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELÓ, Puerto Rico
MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
SAM FARR, California
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ADAM SMITH, Washington
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
CHRIS JOHN, Louisiana
DONNA CHRISTIAN-GREEN, Virgin Islands
RON KIND, Wisconsin
LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
LLOYD A. JONES, Chief of Staff
ELIZABETH MEGGINSON, Chief Counsel
CHRISTINE KENNEDY, Chief Clerk/Administrator
JOHN LAWRENCE, Democratic Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey, Chairman
W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
SAM FARR, California
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
HARRY BURROUGHS, Staff Director
DAVID WHALEY, Legislative Staff
JEAN FLEMMA, Democratic Legislative Staff
C O N T E N T S
Hearing held on April 30, 1998
Statement of Members:
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Saxton, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey
Wyden, Hon. Ron, a Senator in Congress from the State of Oregon
Prepared statement of
Young, Hon. Don, a Representative in Congress from the State of Alaska, prepared statement of
Statement of Witnesses:
Anderson, Philip, Pacific Fishery Management Council
Prepared statement of
Garrison, Karen, Natural Resources Defense Council,
Prepared statement of
Gunnari, Gerald, Coos Bay Trawlers Association
Prepared statement of
Moore, Rod, Executive Director, West Coast Seafood Processors Association
Prepared statement of
Sampson, David, Oregon State University
Prepared statement of
Schmitten, Rolland, Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, U.S. Department of Commerce; accompanied by Richard D. Method, Jr., Division Director, National Marine Fisheries Service; William Robinson, Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries, Northwest Region, National Marine Fisheries Service
Prepared statement of
Communications submitted:
Blackburn, Chris, Director, Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, prepared statement of
Lund's Fisheries, Inc., Cape May, New Jersey, prepared statement of
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Hearing held on May 7, 1998
Statement of Members:
Saxton, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey
Pallone, Hon. Frank, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey
Prepared statement of
Young, Hon. Don, a Representative in Congress from the State of Alaska, prepared statement of
Statement of Witnesses:
Anderson, Philip, Pacific Fishery Management Council
Prepared statement of
Evans, David, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, National Marine Fisheries Service; accompanied by William Robinson, Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries, National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Region
Prepared statement of Mr. Evans
Fisher, Randy, Executive Director, Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission
Prepared statement of
Furman, Nick, Executive Director, Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission
Prepared statement of
Moore, Rod, Executive Director, West Coast Seafood Processors Association
Prepared statement of
Parravano, Pietro, President, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations
Prepared statement of
Thevik, Larry, Washington Dungeness Crab Fishermen's Association/Columbia River Crab Fishermen's Association
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Prepared statement of
Communications submitted:
Beasley, Dale, Commissioner, Columbia River Crab Fisherman's Association, prepared statement of
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON WEST COAST GROUNDFISH
THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 1998
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans, Committee on Resources, Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:11 a.m., in room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Jim Saxton (chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
STATEMENT OF HON. JIM SAXTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Mr. SAXTON. The Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans is meeting today to conduct an oversight hearing on the West Coast groundfish. The main thrust of the hearing is to explore the methodology used by the National Marine Fisheries Service to place new restrictions on harvesting of certain species of groundfish on the West Coast.
As with most issues associated with groundfish, this issue is complicated. Many of these groundfish, which are long-lived species with slow growth rates and a very low ratio of production to biomass, are important to both commercial and recreational sectors. Therefore, it is very important that stock assessments be accurate and timely.
A number of stock assessment methods have been used by the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine the status of specific stocks of groundfish. Historically, the National Marine Fisheries Service has gathered stock assessment data through several methods, including slope surveys, shelf surveys, pot surveys, and long-line surveys. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the relative benefits and disadvantages of each survey method, as well as other comments on the fishery.
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Now, I will move to the first panel for their opening statements. Mr. Schmitten, why don't you begin, and we appreciate very much your being here this morning, and that goes for the whole panel, of course.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Young follows:]
STATEMENT OF HON. DON YOUNG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ALASKA
Mr. Chairman, thank you for scheduling this hearing on west coast groundfish.
As you are well aware, in December of last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced the 1998 harvest levels for 13 species (or species groups) of groundfish that are managed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. The harvest levels for eight of the thirteen species were drastically cut from the 1997 levels—some as much as 60 percent.
While I have always advocated harvest levels that ensure a sustainable harvest, I am concerned by such a drastic reduction. If the stocks were in such bad shape that a harvest reduction was in order, why was it not predicted earlier? Was there a sudden change in ocean conditions that caused a huge decrease in the population in one year's time? If not, then what caused such a sudden, drastic cut in the acceptable harvest level?
This is yet another example of the fishery managers not having enough information on the health and status of the fishery resources to make timely, informed decisions. If we are to maintain sustainable populations of fishery resources, and if we are to maintain a viable fishing industry, we need to provide the fishery managers with adequate information.
We cannot continue to manage from one crisis to another. It certainly doesn't help the fishery resources to have widely varying harvest levels that allow high harvest levels one year and put the fishery in danger of collapsing the next year. It also certainly doesn't help the fishing industry who think they are harvesting at an acceptable level and suddenly find themselves on the beach and looking to the Federal Government for help.
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One of the problems with assessing the abundance of west coast groundfish has been that the trawl survey is only done once every three years. It is very difficult for fishery managers to predict trends in the populations without up-to-date information. Two or three year old information may not be adequate.
This Committee, and the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee before it, have been asking NOAA to develop a plan for fishery research for at least 7 years. After years of inaction, NOAA finally developed a plan for new fishery research vessels and asked this Congress to appropriate money for design work in fiscal year 1998. We responded positively to that request. Now, however, I find that the Administration's fiscal year 1999 budget submission contains no funds for these essential vessels. This is remarkable and incredibly disappointing.
The problem of inadequate fishery data is not unique to the west coast or the groundfish fishery. This is a problem in almost all of our fisheries. In fact, NOAA admitted how little data they have in the report to Congress on the status of fisheries of the United States. According to this report, we do not know the status of almost two-thirds of the species managed by the Federal Government. How can fishery managers make informed decisions without information?
We need to do something about this. I hope we will hear testimony today that will give NOAA officials some ideas for developing research plans which will give fishery managers better information so that better, more consistent management measures can be implemented.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
STATEMENT OF ROLLAND SCHMITTEN, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR FISHERIES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE; ACCOMPANIED BY RICHARD D. METHOT, JR., DIVISION DIRECTOR, NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE; WILLIAM L. ROBINSON, ASSISTANT REGIONAL ADMINISTRATOR FOR SUSTAINABLE FISHERIES, NORTHWEST REGION, NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE
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Mr. SCHMITTEN. Well, thank you very much, and good morning, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank you for inviting us to testify on the issue of West Coast groundfish. Just for the record, I am Rollie Schmitten. I'm NOAA's Assistant Administrator of Fisheries, and, as requested by the Committee, I'm accompanied by Mr. William L. Robinson, the Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries in our Northwest Region and Dr. Richard Methot, the Director of Fisheries Resources, Analysis and Monitoring Division of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. Mr. Chairman, these will be your experts today, and I will introduce—although I'm sure he will introduce himself—from the Pacific Fishery Management Council, Mr. Phil Anderson, a representative from the State of Washington.
You have our complete testimony, so let me just summarize that very briefly for you. I'd like to begin with my conclusion and recommendation to you and the Subcommittee. Mr. Chairman, my concern for West Coast groundfish comes from the 14 years that I was a State and a West Coast regional fisheries manager. During that time, I had the pleasure to serve on both the Pacific Fisheries Management Council and the North Pacific Management Council, so I have some knowledge of the issues of groundfish on our West Coast, and also the process that was used to manage those fisheries.
Let me note, though, that although the Committee's focus is on West Coast groundfish, my concern from groundfish in the west extends from California to Alaska, and that the major part of the solution remains the same, whether it's for California, Oregon, Washington, or Alaska. That is, given the fact that most of these fisheries are overcapitalized, that the competition for each fish has become very aggressive, that technology often outpaces management and scientific knowledge, that abnormal ocean environmental conditions have existed the past decade, therefore, the accuracy and timeliness of fishery data is imperative to maintain both healthy fisheries and fish stocks.
So the solution is simple. We must move from a triennial to an annual survey basis. And the need for annual surveys applies to Alaska as well as to the lower, or the southern part of the West Coast, so as to assure that the largest and most valuable fisheries in the Nation remain robust and that increased knowledge through the annual surveys in the lower West Coast help restore the confidence in the system.
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Mr. Chairman, just for a moment, I'll focus on the process of managing West Coast fisheries. First of all, the term groundfish is an oversimplification for what these people work with. In fact, the Pacific Council's fisheries management plan for groundfish includes 83 diverse species. Currently, the best available information now indicates that some of the stocks are only at 10 to 20 percent of their unfished levels, and that reductions in catch were necessary to allow the rebuilding to safer, more productive levels to occur.
I think the Subcommittee is aware, but, pursuant to Magnuson, NOAA fisheries is responsible for providing the scientific information on which the Councils base their management decisions, and we work very closely with the Council on doing that. What is unusual on the West Coast is that the agency's northwest, southwest, and Alaska science centers all conduct the research that provides the scientific basis for the Council's recommendations on harvest levels.
Mr. Chairman, just to conclude, let me summarize what we've achieved in the past four years, and you can track that by the document, that I believe each Member has.
[The information referred follows:]
INSERT OFFSET FOLIO 21 HERE
Mr. SCHMITTEN. While I was still in Northwest, we began to witness major declines in certain Northwest groundfish stocks. Upon becoming the Director of National Marine Fisheries Service in 1994, I promulgated the need to establish a separate groundfish unit in the Northwest science center, and to no longer rely on the Alaska science center to do the data analysis working up to the stock assessments. It wasn't saying that they couldn't do, and weren't doing, a good job. It was saying that we wanted to establish a separate unit in the West Coast for the West Coast.
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In January, 1995, we initiated the Northwest Fisheries Science Center groundfish program at the Newport lab in Oregon, and they began to provide a coordinated stock assessment program which focused on the important and valuable deep-water species in that area. We initiated that program with a one-and-a-half million dollar dedication of funds and a staff of seven people that same year. To make sure of what was needed, we conducted an external review of West Coast groundfish stock assessments, and they identified that the number one weakness was the lack of survey data as a main cause of the problem. That links back to my solution, that we have to get away from relying on three years before we go back in a survey, and move to an annual survey basis.
Many other things have occurred, including providing the funds—$400,000—to take care of the triennial survey, because the NOAA research vessel was about to go into drydock. That was the number one request of industry. Also this year, we added $750,000 in permanent base funding to the Northwest region for the West Coast groundfish management and research, and that was the number two request of the industry. An unusual feature that Congress asked us to consider the Magnuson-Stevens Act, was the use of fish under a new fish-for-research provision, and that will be embraced for the first time in the Nation on the West Coast.
To just close, I want to comment on an issue that we've been working on closely with Senator Wyden. And I want to stress my admiration for his strong support for the West Coast fisheries industry, and to indicate that the National Marine Fisheries Service supports the utilization of trip-limit overages for science, as proposed by Senator Wyden. Not only would it reduce the unnecessary waste, it would also add science that would help provide a better accounting for the overall groundfish quota. And after extensive talks with the industry, with the State, with the Councils, we will propose such a pilot program to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council in June. To further help facilitate such a proposal, I've agreed with Senator Wyden that a way of closely involving the affected industry is that our agency will sponsor a workshop, under the auspices of the Council, to develop a draft pilot program.
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Mr. Chairman, I think that shows you that in a short four years, we've developed a program, we've nurtured it, and it now is a first-class science program. It's not without problems yet before it, but I think we've come a long way, and I appreciate this opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schmitten may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. SAXTON. Phil Anderson, go to it. Thank you very much.
STATEMENT OF PHILIP ANDERSON, PACIFIC FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL
Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, and good morning members of the Committee. My name is Phil Anderson. I represent the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and I'm here today to testify on behalf of the Pacific Council. The Council appreciates this opportunity that you've provided us to provide testimony on the management and research needs of the West Coast groundfish fishery.
The Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service manage the groundfish fishery consistent with the Pacific Coast groundfish fishery management plan, which was developed in 1982. The fishery is comprised of three primary sectors, the commercial fishing sector, processing sector, and the recreational fishing sector.
The commercial fishery harvests primarily Dover sole, sable fish, Pacific whiting, and a variety of species of rock fish. The majority of the commercial fisheries to extend landings throughout the year by setting cumulative trip limits per vessel, and adjusting them in season as necessary. The recreational fishery harvests a relatively small portion of the total harvest; however, groundfish does represent an important species for that industry.
Annual management specifications for major species are established each year and are derived from stock assessment. Stock assessments are generally conducted with models which allow the utilization of information obtained from a number of different fishery and resource survey sources. In addition, beginning in 1995, National Marine Fisheries Service has made very significant efforts to improve survey technique. However, given the limited amount of funding available, and the technological difficulties of estimating the biomass of groundfish, survey and assessment results are accompanied by substantial uncertainty and imprecision.
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The Council recently implemented a new stock assessment process designed to, first, improve public participation, and increase the level of scientific peer review and to provide greater separation between the science and management. Based on the 1997 stock assessment, the Council recommended very significant reductions in the allowable harvest of a number of the major species that contribute to the commercial fishery for 1998.
The total ex-vessel, or landed value, of the species that were reduced are projected to decline from a level of 59.8 million in 1996 to 41.4 million in 1998. This substantial reduction in revenue will further aggravate the depressed economic conditions in both the fishing and processing sectors, in addition to the overall economies of the coastal communities where they are based. Reasons for the dramatic reductions in biomass from previous assessments are unclear. The results of the 1997 assessments raise a number of questions about the adequacy of the science used to manage the fishery. The industry has been harvesting at levels adopted by the Council, yet significant declines appear to have occurred in many species.
To increase the accuracy of stock assessments, improve management, and provide for a stable fishery, the Council believes the following steps should be taken.
First, National Marine Fisheries Service should increase the frequency and coverage of trawl surveys. The Council also supports cooperative agency and industry research projects, a tool that was recently made available through the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation Fisheries Management Act. In particular, we—I'm sorry, it has the potential to collect needed information at less cost, while providing support to the industry.
Second, we must take a precautionary approach, because even with improved assessments, there will continue to be a wide confidence interval in the biomass estimates. The Council is examining a more conservative harvest policy. Exploitation rates would be reduced as biomass levels decline to address management uncertainty. If approved, this management approach should provide more stable and abundant populations for the future.
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Third, we must improve estimates of total fishing mortality. Assume levels of discard are based upon limited and outdated studies. A comprehensive observer program, and alternative ways of collecting this information are being considered by the Council.
Finally, we must reduce the existing harvest capacity. In 1994, the Council, through National Marine Fisheries Service, implemented a license limitation program in an effort to curb the growth in the fishing fleet. However, the capacity still far exceeds the resource available for harvest. Additional measures are necessary to achieve a stable and economically healthy industry. An industry developed and funded trawl permit buy-back program is currently being considered by the Council. Individual quotas are another method of addressing excessive capacity; unfortunately, this tool is not presently available to the Council.
The Council looks forward to working with the fishing and processing sectors, and National Marine Fisheries Service to meet the resource management challenges that lie ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much. Let me just ask a couple of questions, and then go ahead and turn the rest of the questions over to the other members.
Why have some stock assessment methods been abandoned, such as pot surveys in favor of some others, and are there any types of surveys that are particularly useful to fisheries managers that should be continued or increased? Dr. Methot?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Dr. Methot?
Dr. METHOT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The survey methods that are used on the West Coast have included a number of different techniques. The discontinuation of the pot survey that had been done for sablefish through 1991 was partly based upon the number of resources available to conduct overall surveys, and also due to some technical limitations of conducting that particular pot survey.
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The emphasis since then has been on a multi-species trawl survey. The multi-species aspect of the trawl survey provides us information not just on the sablefish, but also the thornyhead species which are growing in importance, and Dover sole as well. The opportunity to expand our survey efforts to once again include a survey that would be targeted on sablefish, such as a pot survey or a long-line survey, is an opportunity that we are very interested in exploring, as we have greater opportunity to expand our resource survey capabilities.
Mr. SAXTON. You mentioned the trawl survey, which my understanding, you have historically done that every three years. Is that correct?
Dr. METHOT. There are two trawl surveys that are conducted upon the West Coast, and they're independent efforts. One is a triennial survey, every third year, beginning in 1977. And it's a survey that has been targeted upon primarily the rock fish and other species that are upon on to the shallower waters of the continental shelf. Again, that survey's gone on every third year, since 1977, again in 1998.
The other survey has been conducted annually since 1988, and it's a survey that's directed more to the deep-water species. It uses a slightly different trawl, and it's a survey that's been conducted by the NOAA vessel MILLER FREEMAN, whereas the triennial survey has been conducted aboard two chartered trawl fishing vessels, as well as university vessels.
So these two surveys, together, give us some coverage of the diversity of groundfish species, but even these two trawl surveys do not cover all of the various species of groundfish that we have under our jurisdiction.
Mr. SAXTON. Let me just ask, with regard to the trawl survey, understand that the NMFS vessel that conducts, or that you use to do the trawl surveys, is going to be taken out of service, at least temporarily. Is that correct?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Mr. Chairman, this is one that I've been very directly involved in. Yes, for the leg of the triennial survey that it was going to conduct, it will be laid up in the drydock. I think this vessel is 32 years old. Industry was extremely concerned, because that could mean, instead of a 3-year, there could be a 5-year lapse. They sought for some funding relief. I have guaranteed that the $400,000 that is necessary to conduct that survey is committed, and that we will contract with the private sector to get the job done. That was their number-one request of us.
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Mr. SAXTON. Will the methodology and the results of the methodology done by NMFS that you will do through private contracts be compatible with the results of the surveys that you did?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. It certainly is our intent, and that was part of the reason that we contracted with the University of Washington to develop the protocols for allowing and working closer with the private sector to conduct some of the survey work. I ultimately envision both the private sector doing up to 40 percent of the surveys, and NOAA conducting the balance, but in partnership. And I think by doing that, you gain much more believability and reliance, or support of industry.
Mr. SAXTON. I wonder if you would all mind if I do something unusual. Senator Wyden has come in, and he was to be our first panelist. Senator Wyden, we're going to go vote, and I don't want to make you wait until we get back, so maybe if—Rollie, would you mind letting the Senator take your seat?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Yes, sir.
Mr. SAXTON. And we'll hear Senator Wyden's testimony, and then we'll come back to you as soon as the vote has been completed.
You may proceed. We're going to leave here in approximately 10 minutes for our vote, so take your time, but if you could finish up within 10 minutes.
STATEMENT OF HON. RON WYDEN, A SENATOR IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON
Senator WYDEN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your thoughtfulness, and going back to the days when I was a member of this body, I've enjoyed working with you, and I want to thank you for your graciousness again. And I see old friends Congressman Farr, and Wayne, and really appreciate your coming. I would ask unanimous consent that my full statement could be made a part of the record, and perhaps just touch for a minute or two on a couple of key points.
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Mr. SAXTON. Without objection.
Senator WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I just come today to say that I think the National Marine Fisheries Service has worked in a very positive and constructive way with those of us in Oregon who are trying to deal with this groundfish crisis. And it is truly, you know, a crisis.
Terry Garcia came at my request to the south coast, met with fishing families, met with a cross-section of industry leaders, and they are just devastated with these reductions in the allowable catch. And he vowed then to say that he was going to be able to come back and show that we're making some changes. And in fact, he has brought with the proposal that Mr. Schmitten's talking about today something that I think is very, very constructive. In effect, what they are proposing to do is to use the next few months to work with fishing families, with the fishing communities, to devise a new approach that would allow for the first time overage, you know, fishing in excess of the allowable limits to be sold when it gets to shore, used and overseen by a public entity, to start looking at ways to avoid this problem in the first place, and so that we can get better stock assessments. Perhaps hire some of those fishers that are out of work as observers. Look at issues relating to gear and how it's used.
And what they envisage is essentially what we have been talking to them about over the last few months, since Terry Garcia came to the Oregon coast. And the most appealing part of it to me is something Congressman Gilchrest and I always used to talk about when we'd talk about these kinds of issues. It is that this would not be a top-down, run-from-Washington, DC exercise. We've decided that this would be something that would be voluntarily. Fishing families could choose to be part of this if they wanted to, and in the next few months, essentially you would, through some workshops and other sessions on the coast, allow for fishing families to essentially design this over the next few months, use it through our regional organization.
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So I'm very hopeful that we can go forward on this. The industry is in support of this. We've talked to a lot of people in the communities; they're for it. Conservationists like the idea of using this as a chance to test out some new approaches.
My view is, Mr. Chairman, and I'll really wrap up with this last point, that this could be a national model. This could be a national model where we could really study how to deal with this overage question, how to make sure that we make better use of the resource, and the most appealing part of it is, it wouldn't be run from the Beltway. It'd be run from the region, we'd involve the families, come back with good data on the kind of key elements so you and others could take a look at it, and perhaps be duplicated elsewhere.
So, I really appreciate the chance to come, particularly to go out of order. I remember so well having to chase across the street and make a vote, so I really appreciate the chance to give just a couple of minutes of input this way.
Mr. SAXTON. Well, Senator, thank you very much. Your testimony is very articulate and we appreciate very much hearing from you on this issue. I can tell from your testimony how closely you're working with the local folks, as well as with the regulators, Rollie and others. And so we really appreciate the degree of enthusiasm with which you have approached this issue.
Mr. Farr, do you have any questions at this? But I'd just like to thank you for being here. Mr. Farr, do you have any questions?
Mr. FARR. I'll save my questions till after we get back from the vote, but I do want to thank the Senator for coming over here. It's nice to see you here, we miss you in this House, we appreciate your leadership in the Senate, and we hope the Senate will be as user-friendly for our requests as we are for yours.
Senator WYDEN. You have reciprocity under all circumstances, and suffice it to say this Committee, you all are really the experts on this issue. I've learned a lot about groundfish in the last few months, and we're going to be working real closely with you.
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Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Gilchrest.
Mr. GILCHREST. I just want to say, Ron, it's good to have you back here. We really look forward to working with you on this and many other issues, especially how we, the human species, are trying to figure out the complexity of the fluctuations in other species, especially this groundfish problem. But working with the community to set up and anticipate problems so they're not so dramatic or drastic is a wise idea. Good to see you again, Ron.
Senator WYDEN. You're being too logical, as always, and that's the heart of it, it's preventive strategy.
Mr. SAXTON. Well, thank you very much, Senator. And we're going to take a little break here now so that we can run across the street, as the Senator said, and vote, and when we come back, it will be Mr. Farr's turn to question, and Mr. Schmitten, you can resume your seat there when we get back. Thank you very much.
Senator WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Wyden follows:]
STATEMENT OF HON. RON WYDEN, A SENATOR IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON
Mr. Chairman, if ever there was an issue which called for innovation and new ideas, fishery management is it. Everyone agrees that something needs to be done to keep fish stocks from disappearing and keep our fishing communities vital, but nothing has ever seemed to work.
All along my state's magnificent coastline, from Newport to Astoria, fishing communities are at a moment of serious peril. The groundfish stocks on which they depend may have shrunk to dangerously low levels. And the government, in trying to protect that resource, has placed limits on allowable groundfish catch which jeopardize livelihoods and threaten entire communities. At the end of last year the Pacific Fishery Management Council approved harvest guidelines which called for a huge cut in the 1998 allowable catch of many groundfish species. The cuts were made based on scientific stock assessments, but the data underlying those assessments are extremely limited. The Council said it had no choice under the law but to reduce fishing.
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Oregonians want to manage the groundfish resource wisely. The fishing industry is an integral part of the culture of Oregon's coastal communities as well as a major contributor to the economy. In Lincoln County, for example, the fishing industry provides around $61 million each year to the local economy and 20 percent of the total wages earned.
Unfortunately, the measures being taken to protect fish stocks have had a devastating effect on Oregon's seafood community. The reduction in allowable catch, which for some species is as high as 65 percent, will result in a 23 percent decrease in all groundfish-derived contributions to Oregon's economy. This translates into a $14 million loss of personal income or the equivalent of about 678 jobs in Oregon. The cuts will have a disastrous economic ripple effect in coastal communities—from boat crew members and processing plant workers, to boat and plant owners, to marine hardware suppliers, to port businesses.
Most disturbing to me is the fact that the severely reduced harvest guidelines are based on inadequate data. As you know, harvest guidelines are determined by stock assessments, which, in turn, are dependent on the data collected in surveys. Data used to make stock assessments on the West Coast are considered to be inadequate by scientists, fishermen, fishery managers, and environmentalists. Without better data and analysis, stock assessments and harvest guidelines will be subject to skepticism—especially during these times of low harvest levels.
Some of your witnesses may suggest ways to improve the collection and analysis of data. I would like to highlight two ideas: chartered surveys and retention of overages.
It is crucial that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) perform annual surveys of grouch stocks so that fishery management decisions are based on the best data. The Northwest does not have a dedicated research vessel to perform this important work, so surveys have traditionally been performed only every three years. In place of a dedicated research vessel, NMFS is starting to follow the industry's suggestion to charter private vessels to collect data. NMFS should expand the use of these collaborative surveys—the more experience the agency has in conducting these surveys, the more effective the resulting data.
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Chartered surveys can be paid for by ''fish for research''—a concept that allows fishermen to keep the fish caught during chartered surveys as a means of partial payment for the survey. I am encouraged by NMFS's indication that they will be trying out ''fish for research'' this year. This program can potentially create a mechanism to finance the collection of data giving NMFS more data at less cost to the taxpayer.
The other program I would like to highlight is a ''retention of overages'' plan, which would utilize some of the fish that fishermen are forced by regulations to discard. This idea has been raised by the industry several times in the past. The objectives of a retention of overages plan are to reduce the waste of fish and to increase and improve groundfish data.
Overages are marketable fish caught in excess of trip limits. Fishermen are fined if they bring overages to port, so they throw the fish overboard. Most of these fish die. This is a terrible waste, especially considering the current crisis. Fishermen have told me that they are angry they are forced to throw ''beautiful'' fish overboard to die. I suggest that we utilize these fish and work towards increasing our understanding of the fishery so that we can better manage it.
A retention plan would allow fishermen to keep their overages without being fined. A fisherman would bring his catch to port and sell the amount of his trip limit. The overages would be surrendered to a public entity. The entity would sell the fish to the local processor, take the funds and grant them for specific purposes, such as scientific research or community assistance.
I suggest this idea be implemented as pilot project for the remainder of this year. A working group made up of NMFS and industry folks could meet to discuss implementation procedures as well as come up with innovative ideas for using the funds. If this group is established quickly, it could report to the Pacific Fishery Management Council at the Council's next meeting this summer.
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At the end of the year, the working group could reconvene to evaluate the effects and make recommendations on the possibility of a year-long plan for 1999. The objective of a more extensive plan should be to provide the data needed to eventually reduce overages and discards in general. Currently, fishery managers estimate the level of discards and these estimates play a role in determining harvest guidelines. A more extensive retention plan could even help fund an observer program to provide accurate data regarding total catch thereby reducing the level of uncertainty involved in setting harvest levels.
I'd like to be clear in saying that I don't think a retention of overages plan should be permanent. I don't want a plan to legitimize or institutionalize overages and discards. Rather, I'd like the plan to provide the scientific basis from which fishery managers can work to effectively reduce discards.
What I'm advocating here today is implementation of a pilot plan for only this year, so that we can get an idea of how well this idea will work. Afterwards, if appropriate, we can discuss a longer term plan.
I realize that many people have strong feelings regarding the management of groundfish. But we are in a crisis situation. We need to get past the finger pointing stage and start working on solutions. I have been working closely with Terry Garcia, the Deputy Administrator of NOAA, on West Coast fisheries issues. Terry is a breath of fresh air. Recently, he traveled with me to the Oregon Coast to attend two public meetings to discuss groundfish issues. We both left those meetings deeply impressed by the urgent needs of the fishing community. There are critical needs which must be addressed on the West Coast and I think Terry understands them. My suggestions are the result of our meetings on the Oregon Coast.
In closing, I would like to say that as we discuss groundfish management practices, we should remember that the livelihoods of people are directly linked to management decisions. Let's not forget the fishermen, the processors, and all the other people linked to the seafood industry.
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Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling attention to an issue of such importance to Oregonians and to all citizens of the West Coast. I would ask that my prepared statement be printed in the hearing record.
[Recess.]
Mr. SAXTON. If the witnesses would be so kind as to get in their places and take their seats. When we left, we had just concluded with Senator Wyden, and thank you very much for understanding and for permitting the Senator to intervene in this panel. And we were just about to move to Mr. Farr for his questions.
Mr. FARR. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate you having this hearing. As you recall, Congressman Miller and myself asked you, an East Coaster, to hold a hearing on the Pacific Coast fisheries, and I really appreciate it. And it's also good to have you back from last week when you were ill, when we were doing a mark-up of the Oceans Act.
Let me just paraphrase some of my concerns. I'm sort of frustrated. I'm a public official. I'm elected, and I'm appointed to this Committee. The Committee is the Resources Committee. And we essentially have—the major responsibilities are our mining Subcommittee, and those are all the mining resources, oil and gas, and other mineral deposits. We have a water Subcommittee which is just meeting down the hall. They essentially have the whole issue of water and, you know, how much is it and where is it going to go, and so much so that we have a lot of money invested in futures of water and saline-making water contracts and so on. And we have a fisheries Committee. And it seems that it would mean that, of all the resources that we have out there, this is the one that we know the least about.
Why—and as a public official, I mean, I'm sitting here thinking, is this going to be—is fisheries sort of an S and L scandal, that it's where the regulators aren't really regulating very well. Is it that we don't know where we're headed, or is this something where we're overreacting and we're having people sit at home on shore, where there really isn't a problem? And see, we're caught between the two. Because we represent the constituents who are the commercial fishermen, and we represent the public who owns the resources, all the fish stock out there. And I don't want to lose it.
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I represent an area where I grew up with a catastrophic loss of the fishery, and a lot of people don't realize what happened. They know more about the northeast fisheries than they recall of Monterey, which used to be the largest sardine port in the world and we lost the sardines. And the entire place closed. And it was just one city and, you know, there wasn't the kind of programs that we have now on disaster relief and so on. So here's the city of Monterey, just for almost 20 years, the Cannery Row just sat there. And now it's obviously a thriving tourist venture, but what was lost in that 20 years was just incredible productivity of people and lives.
So, here we are. We're sitting here talking about what we know is to be a problem on the Pacific Coast. We have created a management Council. But why—and the management Council is, I think, it's a good—it's a combination of private and public sector and science. Why are we so weak on the science? Why don't we know more about this, and what we know, why aren't we better regulating it? Why are we here worried about depleting a fishery?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Mr. Farr, let me start with that. First, let me personally thank you for your interest, even if it's concern I know it's honest concern for the resource, and for asking for this hearing.
Why we know so little, frankly, it goes to my solution, and that is I think we need to move from triennial surveys, which at one time was thought adequate. We do have a data base that goes back into the mid-1970's, but for today's demands on these resources, the uncertainties with the environment, the issues that I raised with the overcapitalization, we can't afford to rely on what was good for the 1970's and 1980's. We need annual information. We need it every year if we're going to have support of the industry for our data.
Mr. FARR. Well, why haven't we had that? That's the question—I mean, is there anything broken in the law that doesn't allow you to do your job?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Oh, absolutely not. Why we haven't had it is we haven't been able to afford it.
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Mr. FARR. So we haven't had enough money?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Let me just tell you. Last year, we lost five million dollars out of the resource information line which supports annual stock assessments. A portion, in fact a big portion, of that was going to go to the West Coast. We have identified now, since I have been here, the needs on the West Coast. I have taken money away from all parts of the Nation to continue to fund and buildup this program, and we've done that to the tune now of about three million dollars. But we do need help.
Mr. FARR. Well, have we—this is a very frank discussion here—have we done what we need to do to really understand how much money we're going to need to solve the problem? I mean, if we put this on a crisis level, if it is a crisis, Congress loves to respond to crises. That's what we do, in fact, we usually don't respond until it gets there. And if there's a crisis in this, and it's just a matter of inadequate resources, with a concentrated effort and leadership by the administration, we can do that. I mean, you've asked for $750,000 to supplement the inadequate research funds available for ground fisheries for this year. Is that going to be a request next year and the year after, and the year after that?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Yes. That's in permanent funds that will be in perpetuity. I think we know what we need to do, and thanks to the industry, thanks to the Council, we have developed a plan. We need to go to annual surveys. We need to use the industry in conducting a lot of those surveys. This will provide the data that we need, and we're preparing for that. And that's forecasted in future budgets.
Mr. FARR. But if we don't have enough, OK, it's money for scientific data. But the annual surveys, that's a money issue, not a legal issue.
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Yes.
Mr. FARR. In the meantime, when something's threatened, are you really using enough of your authorized controls, enforcement—is the enforcement adequate?
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Mr. SCHMITTEN. First, are we using authorized resources, including enforcement and dollars. I've pledged the $400,000 that the industry asked to do the survey. I've pledged the $750,000, taken it from all parts of the country, to continue the stock assessments in perpetuity. We've engaged in the enforcement side of this. We're willing to use fish for research, as well as support Senator Wyden's concept of avoiding waste in trip overages.
We're trying to be just as aggressive and proactive as we possibly can.
Mr. FARR. There's one ingredient here that's affected this fishery, which is technology. The fisherman have available to them some of the same technology that our military has in being able to discover why the biomass is with the temperature of satellite data and biomass. I mean, they used to go in search of fisheries. Now they don't leave the port until they know where they are and they sell the fish, you know, before the nets are even dropped in the water because they know they're going to catch them. And they catch more than they've ever caught.
So you have fewer boats, but they're catching a hell of a lot more fish. That's all technology that they have, and a lot of that's public given technology, satellite information and so on. Knowing that they're capable of doing that, do you think that you're doing enough in the enforcement area?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. We're at the point where I should turn over to the experts in the field.
Mr. ROBINSON. Congressman, I think one of the situations that we find ourselves in is the level of certainty that we get from what the science is telling us. At one time, when the fish stocks were not under environmental stress, when the biomasses were larger and when the capitalization and technology were not so great, the level of uncertainty in the scientific answers was tolerable.
Times have changed. We have had an environment for the last decade that there's some indication that it is telling us that what we thought were sustainable levels of harvest a decade ago are probably not sustainable levels of harvest. They're probably something less than that, given the environment.
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Mr. FARR. And have you taken appropriate adjustments in enforcement?
Mr. ROBINSON. Yes, the appropriate adjustments are taken through a precautionary approach, a conservative approach that the Council must take in setting the harvest quotas. When you don't have these stress factors, you can live with the uncertainty and you can live with setting quotas that are in a less cautious environment. When you have all of these factors combining to put both biological stress and technological stress and overcapitalization stress, the need for precision is much greater than it has been in the past. That's what we're struggling with. How to make the science more precise so that we know that when the Council chooses a harvest quota, that in fact it is a safe quota. That is the charge of the Council in terms of exercising its stewardship.
What we're struggling with is improving the precision. The program that we began in 1995 at the Newport lab, and the additional supplementation of that program in 1998 is designed to reduce the uncertainty, so that the Council can be assured that the decisions that it makes are truly precautionary and truly conservative, and result in sustainable harvest levels for the future.
Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I know that there's only the two of us so, the other question I have, and I know Mr. Anderson wanted to respond, but just explain to me why your Council does not manage the squid fishery.
Mr. ANDERSON. We are in the process of developing a coastal pelagic species management plan. Primarily, the squid fishery is taking place off the coast of California and has been managed by California Department of Fish and Game.
Mr. FARR. So it hasn't been managed? There's no regulation, no season, there's no—there's hours of fishing, but not limits to fishing. Not days or——
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Mr. ANDERSON. Once again, we are just in the process of developing a coastal pelagic species management plan, and one of the species that would be managed under that plan is squid.
Mr. FARR. What's it take to get a fishery under the management Council?
Mr. ANDERSON. We have to develop a management plan that complies with the requirements under Magnuson, and we have been developing the fishery management plan in this case for coastal pelagics. Actually, it's been in development since 1990, and so it's been a very long and difficult process. We had a coastal pelagic species management plan developed and actually submitted to National Marine Fisheries Service, I believe, in 1994. And it was not approved by National Marine Fisheries Service, and so we've gone back to the drawing table essentially and have developed another plan, and we are in the final stages of development of that plan, and will be submitting it to National Marine Fisheries Service later this year.
Mr. FARR. Are we coordinating as much as we should be with the States? My frustration, coming from the State legislature, all I heard about in the State legislature were fisheries that the State managed, which mostly was salmon and swordfish. And then we got into a problem with taking of sea urchins and mussels, and sort of the bivalves—abalone. And then I came here to Congress and I understand that we manage a whole—they're all in the same place, so why do we have two different governments managing them? Why don't we meld together what States are trying to do and the feds are trying to do, and have less duplication and more collaboration?
Mr. ANDERSON. I think we've tried very hard to avoid duplication, frankly. I think in the case—the Council has been selective in the species complexes that it's developed management plans for, and we've prioritized those that have migratory ranges to cross State borders. We've prioritized species that predominantly reside outside three miles, in the Federal waters, and have relied principally on the States to manage fisheries which are located primarily in State waters.
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Mr. FARR. Let me ask this question: What was the basis for the Council's decision to ignore the recommended quota cuts for sable fish and short spine thornyheads?
Mr. ANDERSON. Relative to sable fish, I do not believe that we ignored the scientific information that we received. On sable fish, the stock assessment models that were used to bring the information forward ranged in a recommendation for a harvest guideline from approximately 2,500 tons up to 7,500 tons. There were five different pieces of information that were utilized in those models, and depending on what combination of those five pieces of information, you got a different result and a different recommendation for a harvest guideline. And I believe in our decision on sable fish, we used the best information that we received from the scientific community in recommending the 5,200 metric tons for a harvest guideline and allowable biological catch for this year.
Mr. FARR. And what happens if that's not adequate? I mean, you've already heard that they're approaching overfished condition last year, so now you have this new harvest guideline, and you'll have new information. What will you do then if they're still approaching being overfished?
Mr. ANDERSON. First of all, I don't believe the number that the Council recommended to National Marine Fisheries on sable fish approached the overfishing definition. I believe that the model, and the parameters of the model, that we utilized in setting the ABC was consistent with an F–35 approach to managing sable fish.
The short spine thornyhead issue is a different issue, and it was a different set of circumstances. And, with your permission, I'd like to ask Mr. Robinson to speak to that issue. And I would also ask that you allow me to come back and respond to some of your earlier comments if I could, please.
Mr. FARR. Certainly. It's the chairman's charge.
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Mr. ROBINSON. Congressman, just to elaborate on Mr. Anderson's answer a small bit. The Council was faced with taking a precautionary approach to setting the harvest quotas in the face of substantial uncertainty, which the scientific side of the Council was really unable to advise the Council on in terms of how to best evaluate that uncertainty. There was a lack of risk-assessment information that left the Council trying to figure out essentially what the best conservative approach was. The Council's response was to reduce the sablefish quota by almost half. It took what I believe to be a fairly big cut out of the quota, and a fairly conservative approach.
I guess one of the reasons we're here today—and the outcome of what we're talking about—will tell us whether that was a big enough cut or not, and where we need to go in the future. Fortunately, the harvest rates that we apply to these stocks are not so great that we're going to put them in any short-term danger. That's not going to happen. Most likely, with additional surveys, with additional stock assessments, we will gain more confidence in the numbers and more confident that we're taking an appropriately conservative approach upon the species. But we're not going to know for sure whether we're conservative enough, or not conservative enough, until we get more surveys and better information.
Mr. FARR. OK. I don't think any of us——
Mr. SAXTON. Last question.
Mr. FARR. In this room—thank you, Mr. Chairman—any of us in this room want, on our watch, to lose a fish stock. I mean, that's total failure in a modern society with the information we have. So whatever resources you need, the public wouldn't tolerate this if it was in so many other areas. You know, the ocean we still don't know enough about. But we stand ready. I'm here to help you. But I think you've got to use us more, us in Congress. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Farr. Let me just ask a couple of questions and make a few comments, if I may. With regard to the funds that you need for research, in particular research vessels, my memory tells me that in fiscal year 1998, we authorized and appropriated, I think it was two-and-a-half million dollars for the design of six new research vessels. And I believe we did so with the understanding that we would then move forward with the administration's request in 1999 and see their request for money for construction of those vessels. We gave you the two-and-a-half million in 1998, and when your request came through for NOAA funding in 1999, there was no request for construction. Can you tell us why that is?
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Mr. SCHMITTEN. Mr. Chairman, since I've been the director, I've been encouraging and supporting the need for replacement vessels, even though we would reduce the overall number of nine down to six, and augment with more industry involvement. This is a good news/bad news story. Finally, the administration has agreed, and they've indicated that starting in 2000—I wanted 1999, and certainly supported that, but starting in 2000—they put approximately $160 million for vessels to be constructed in 2000, 2001, 2002, out to 20003. The very first research vessel constructed in this Nation will go to the West Coast.
Mr. SAXTON. What?
[Laughter.]
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Yes, sir. It will be dedicated to this problem, and it will solve both Alaska and the West Coast issues, in that it will provide annual surveys in the entire West Coast. The East Coast enjoys those, Mr. Chairman, for the most part. That's why I say we should start where the problem is. That first vessel will go to the West Coast.
Mr. SAXTON. Now, if you request funding for these vessels beginning in the year 2000, when will Mr. Farr be able to see this vessel steaming off shore and doing research off the California coast?
Mr. SCHMITTEN. I believe it's a two-year construction, so in two to three years he will have his vessel. In between there, we will continue to augment the needed surveys between that period of time so we don't get behind on gathering the data.
Mr. SAXTON. OK. In regard to Mr. Farr's general question about why we know so little about fisheries, I've had those thoughts myself. In fact, last night, Mr. Farr and I shared a podium before a conservation group, and I think we both addressed that question without knowing the other was going to, and I'm not sure that we have an answer. But this situation is a good example of more evidence that we really don't know much about, or enough about, what we're doing.
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In 1997, for example, you came here and indicated that you thought the groundfish fishery that we're dealing with today was healthy. And in 1998, you indicated through the process that there ought to be a 60 percent reduction in the take in the fishery. How do you explain what you thought in 1997 was so incorrect as related to your position in 1998?
Dr. METHOT. The situation we have with groundfish is mixed, because of the great diversity of species we're dealing with. We certainly have some healthy species in the groundfish complex, and we have some that now appear to be at much lower levels than we would desire them to be. The combination of this mix of species, as we accumulate more information to better track the exact status of species, has begun to tip us more into the realization that there are a number of species that have declined to a greater degree than we had anticipated might occur. And the combination of these species over the last few years has begun to make us realize that we need to pay greater attention to the entire groundfish complex to be certain that we do have a good fix on just where they're at, and what is the long-term potential for these resources. This situation of unanticipated declines has grown on us over the last four to five years, as we look more closely at a number of species.
Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Chairman? May also say something to that question?
Mr. SAXTON. Sure, please.
Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you. I'd urge us not to underestimate the difficulty of assessing the biomass and the populations of these species. We're talking about 83 species that live anywhere from 300 to 2,000-plus feet below the surface of the water, that we never see. And most of them are intermixed with one another. Some of them are transboundary in nature—yellowtail rockfish, ling cod, Pacific whiting—migrate north into Canadian waters and are harvested there.
This is a very, very complex problem of assessing precisely, with any degree of accuracy, the total numbers of fish, and thereby extrapolating an acceptable amount that may be removed through harvest. It's in its infancy, in my opinion. Remember, we've been doing surveys every three years, and we started in 1977. Haven't been working at this very long, and as I indicated in my testimony, National Marine Fisheries Service has taken some extraordinary efforts in recent years to improve their survey techniques. And I think that's going to pay dividends to us as we move through the next years, and we go to an annual survey.
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But this is a very difficult group of fish to manage, and assess the total abundance, and determine what—they're long-lived. They sometimes go decades between years when you have good recruitment of new fish into a population. You've got some extraordinary exception—I hope they're exceptional—ocean conditions on the West Coast in terms of low productivity, low upwellings, warm water, exceptionally warm water, much more frequently in the last decade than in previous decades.
And so all of those dynamics play into the difficulty of coming up with biomass estimates to determine annual harvest levels that are acceptable and that will maintain healthy populations into the future. Believe me, we are as frustrated as you are.
Relative to sable fish, we had been managing along at about a 7,800-ton level for seven or eight years. And then, all of a sudden, we get an assessment that tells us that's it's somewhere between 2,500 and 7,800 tons. We go, what's going on here? This kind of change simply couldn't have happened in this short a period of time. And that was the difficulty in struggling with setting a sable fish allocation that took a precautionary approach in making sure that we didn't overharvest that particular species.
Mr. SAXTON. Let me try to make something clear, and I think I can speak for Mr. Farr and I both with regard to this, and if I don't, Mr. Farr can break in and correct me. But we oftentimes, I fear, give the impression that we don't trust what you, as individuals, are doing. And that is a notion that we don't mean to convey. Our queries are more in trying to find out what it is that the system needs that it doesn't have, both in terms of resources and process. And I think that we would both, from our observations, come to the conclusion that resources are not sufficient, and that process may need some fine-tuning, or maybe some big changes.
I've had this conversation with Rollie Schmitten on numerous occasions. Sometimes we've been quiet about it, and sometimes we've been rather noisy about it. But it is frustrating, and I know the people that serve on the New England Council, I know the people that serve on the Mid-Atlantic Council. I know that Mr. Young knows the people that serve on your Council. I deal with the people in NMFS all the time, and I don't think I can identify a person who's not there for all the right reasons.
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And yet, the situation that we're hear discussing today, unfortunately, is more common than it is unusual. And so we are hopeful that our well-intended efforts can somehow dovetail with your well-intended efforts to get the proper funding to do the kind of research that we need to do, and to improve the process. That's what we're striving to do. And I thank Rollie, who was in my office last week, I guess it was, and we were talking about making some changes in process that sprung from my urging and his creative thinking. And hopefully we'll be able to move forward with some of those, which may or may not require legislative changes. Hopefully not, because it's a lot easier on everybody if we don't have to do it that way.
So, anyway, I just wanted to say that in conclusion, Mr. Farr, unless you have something that can take a minute or two, I think we'll move on to the next panel.
Mr. FARR. Yes, go on to the next panel. You know, it's interesting, in the offshore oil and gas, we require the oil companies to tell us where the oil and gas deposits are, and then they file with us interest in offshore oil development. And then we tell them where they can drill, what the conditions are that they can drill, and for how long they can drill. I mean, that's a public resource owned by the Federal Government offshore. Why don't we do the same thing for fisheries? It's essentially a question of putting the burden on the private sector, and saying you tell us how much fishery is out there and we'll tell you how much you can take. Rather than putting the burden on the public sector to say, we'll tell you—you just keep fishing until we tell you when to stop.
Mr. SCHMITTEN. Mr. Chairman, I've often raised the very same issue. It's the only natural resource that I can think of—water, you require fees; grazing rights, you require fees; and timber permits, you require fees. The fees usually go into the management of those resources. This is the one anomaly. Why, it's constructed in the tenets of Magnuson-Stevens, and I think that we should allow fees to help with the management. The Administration actually proposed that this year, and hasn't gotten very far. I agree, part of the problem there is that we need to work it out with the industry. Ultimately I view that someday there will be fees that help support the management, and allow the permits.
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Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much for your comments, and the information you have brought to us this morning, and for the time and forbearance that you have demonstrated in being here with us this morning. Thank you.
I'd now like to introduce our second panel. We have Dr. David Sampson of Oregon State University; Mr. Gerald Gunnari of the Coos Bay Trawlers Association; Ms. Karen Garrison of the Natural Rsources Defense Council, and Rod Moore, an old friend, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors. I'd like to remind the witnesses about the 5-minute rule. Your written testimony will be included in the record in its entirety, and when you are in place and ready, Dr. Sampson, we will begin with your 5-minute testimony.
STATEMENT OF DAVID SAMPSON, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. SAMPSON. Mr. Chairman, Congressmen, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for inviting me to testify to you today. My name is David Sampson. I am an Associate Professor of Fisheries at Oregon State University. I'm also a member of the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Pacific Fishery Management Council.
I'll try to describe for you briefly some of the aspects of stock assessment and some of the problems associated with managing West Coast groundfish. Our groundfish stocks are managed on the basis of catch quotas that are primarily determined from estimates of exploitable biomass and estimates of the target harvest rate. These are the two fundamental problems that a stock assessment tries to address. Both of these problems are beset with uncertainties, and that's one of the things I'd like to illustrate for you.
The process, as it works on the West Coast, involves State agencies collecting information from the fishermen. Landings of fish that are brought to the docks are sampled for catch-at-age, maturity, things of that nature. And, in addition, we've heard from the National Marine Fisheries Service of their triennial trawl surveys that are measuring the abundance.
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Together, those sources of information are fed into something called a catch-at-age analysis, which tries to reconstruct the size of the stock over time and where we currently stand. This is one of the fundamental problems of stock assessment. The information's also fed into what's known as yield-per-recruit analysis, or spawning-biomass-per-recruit analysis, which attempt to figure out an appropriate rate of harvest. Those are the two fundamental problems of stock assessment. Together, those two pieces of information are brought forward to the managers in the form of recommendations for catch quotas and the likely consequences of different types of harvest policies.
We heard a little bit from the others with regard to uncertainty associated with our stock assessments. Here's an example with our deep-water sablefish resource. It's assessed primarily to coincide with the triennial surveys. In 1994, there was an assessment which basically put the spawning stock at roughly one-third of the unexploited virgin level. And in 1994, we had reasonable catch quotas based on that assessment. Three years later, we had a new assessment based on a few additional years of catch history, and one additional survey. All of a sudden, we have a very different picture of the resource, one that, from the pessimistic view, shows the stock brought to almost as low as 10 percent of the unexploited level. So, part of the reason we're meeting here today was this very sudden change in perception of this resource.
Here is another example from one of our rockfish species, yellowtail rockfish. It was assessed in 1993 and a certain level of harvest seemed appropriate given the size of the stock. In 1996, three years later, we had new information from one additional survey and additional years of catch history, and we had a very, very different perception of the level of depletion of this resource.
Partly as a result of complaints about the uncertainty of this resource assessment, it was reassessed in 1997 and, in fact, the 1997 assessment, based on basically one additional year of information, put us back where we were in the 1993 assessment.
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I think the sablefish and the yellowtail rockfish examples illustrate some of the problems and the uncertainties associated with trying to figure out how many fish there are in the ocean. It's a very big ocean, it's a very difficult job to figure out how much is out there and how much we can safely harvest.
Mr. SAXTON. May I just interrupt you for a moment?
Dr. SAMPSON. Certainly.
Mr. SAXTON. I'm trying to interpret. I understand the point that you're making relative to the difficulty in getting accurate information, or in drawing conclusions therefrom. This chart would tend to indicate that the later surveys indicated that there was a higher population than the earlier surveys. Is that correct?
Dr. SAMPSON. The 1997 assessment, which is the solid line there, basically came to a similar conclusion as the 1993 assessment, with regard to the size of the stock and how it got to that level. The 1996 assessment was the anomalous one, at least with these examples. These are not that unusual. In general, if you put together a sequence of assessments, the numbers we're getting from the assessments are bouncing around quite a bit. And I think that's a telling feature of stock assessment and the level of imprecision that we just have to live with when it comes to reconstructing what's out there.
I should have mentioned that, you should have written copies of these same figures in the testimony that I submitted.
Mr. SAXTON. We do.
Dr. SAMPSON. Finally, I thought I'd leave you with a picture of what's been happening with the fishermen and the size of the fishing fleet.
[The information referred to may be found at end of hearing.]
Dr. SAMPSON. This illustrates the growth in the number of hours of trawling on the West Coast since the implementation of the 200-mile law in 1976. In the early years of the fishery, most of the fishery was concentrated in relatively shallow water, relatively near the coast. And over time, especially through the late 1980's and into the 1990's, there was a dramatic increase in the amount of fishing on the West Coast, and there was a significant expansion into deeper waters, into areas which previously were essentially unexploited. The growth of the sablefish fishery, the thornyheads that we've heard about, and Dover sole—those are deep-water species which, prior to the mid-1980's, were essentially unharvested.
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So, some of what we're seeing, in my view, with the current crisis is imprecision in our understanding of what's out there in the ocean. But also, our Council is handicapped in its ability to control the growth of the fishing industry itself. Catch quotas do not limit how many boats there are. We did put a limit on the number of boats, but it wasn't put in place until 1994. So, some of what we're seeing today, in my opinion, is a natural consequence of the combination of uncertainty about the status of the stocks and overcapacity in the fishing fleet.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Sampson may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Gunnari.
STATEMENT OF GERALD GUNNARI, COOS BAY TRAWLERS ASSOCIATION
Mr. GUNNARI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I find it interesting that it does stop in 1994, when we did go into limited entry. I would like to see a current analogy of 1994 today. I think that the increase has gone to a decrease.
I wish to thank each of you for allowing me this opportunity to tell you about the West Coast groundfish crisis. The trawl fleet is made up of small, independent businesses, mosly family owned and operated. Many have been involved in the West Coast fishing for generations, like my family. I'm a fourth-generation West Coast fishing family. We all take pride in supplying our Nation's tables with reliable source of fresh fish, providing jobs for our communities—it's new money, building our economy, and the exports of our valuable processed products are important to the Nation.
The trawl fleet is the traditional mainstay of supplying our Nation with a dependable source of fresh fish year-round, so restaurants and markets can put fish on their menus. The trawl fleet is the largest investment in supplying our Nation with fresh fish, and it costs a lot to operate and maintain a 75-foot fishing vessel capable of fishing 40 miles offshore in the dead of winter.
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Suddenly, with this latest round of surprise cuts in allowable landings, our West Coast businesses are in crises. This ugly situation is rearing its head in many forms. We are the ones with the vested interest to see there are fish for our future. We welcome management measures that ensure this to happen. We need regulations that conserve real fish, not paper fish, to create landing reduction.
Irresponsible practices are now being implemented by NMFS, such as the ling cod harvest being reduced by 97.5 percent, which means a 75-foot vessel like mine can only supply 150 pounds of ling cod per month. The chair of the groundfish management team told the Pacific Fisheries Management Council that going from a 20,000-pound trip limit to a 500-pound trip limit would not create increased discards because most of the ling cod was from targeted ling cod trips, and only by a few vessels.
The results? The Pacific Fisheries Management Council illegally allocated from the people whose livelihood depends on fishing, to a few people who might catch some for fun and at the same time deprive our Nation's restaurants and markets of supply to the public. And the reality? I am 46 pounds over my monthly quota of ling cod right now, and I haven't even fished where ling cod live. All the ling cod I catch now will go back over the side of my boat, by law.
There's no accountability for anything NMFS does. Is Mark Salin so far, and the GMT so far out of touch that statements they make to the Council while creating allocations can be made on totally false information? Is there anyone who cares or is accountable for any of these actions?
Rick Methot's interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act should be disturbing to you as well. Having neglected to gather enough data to determine proper harvest amounts, and then to use uncertainty in the data to automatically reduce landings of certain species, no matter what the condition that the stock is in, is wrong.
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This methodology is creating discards we have never had before, and should not have now. Their current practices are not utilizing the best science available, but only what science they want to make available. More than 90 percent of the sports fish is from inside 30 fathoms, close to river mouths and shore. The only assessment of ling cod is outside 30 fathoms into central Oregon, so now more than 50 percent of the ling cod are suddenly shifted from an unassessed area and taken by the sports fleet from an assessed area and traditionally caught by commercial fishers.
We do not have conflicts with sports fishermen on the ocean, but we now have conflicts in Council meeting rooms. At the last PFMC meeting, the desperation of not enough fish to pay the bills is becoming a predominant issue for many. The organized attitudes of one gear group that started throwing mud and dirt upon another gear group in attempts to sway the Council to take fish from one group, who have traditionally caught those fish, and give it to their group.
These are some tough issues to deal with. We all have to understand fellow fishers have no other recourse than to turn on each other. It's the only way some of them could see to increase their own landings. We get our fish the same way they get theirs. We earn it by working hard and investing in our vessels and putting in time over the years. Trying to steal someone else's fish and investment is not an acceptable solution, but is the result of management efforts. The trawl fleet's investments are many times greater than any of their gear groups. The cost of operations are real, and far-reaching effects into the Nation's economy.
The cutbacks we are facing proportionately affects our ability to pay our bills too, destroying generations of hard work and the very infrastructure dependent upon the fishing community. Over the past 10 years or more, we've been doing exactly what Rick Methot has recommended, only to find ourselves facing the worst situation ever, and they still don't have enough scientific data to make sound management decisions. Now Rick says there's not enough fish for all in the business to survive.
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NMFS claims they need five new research boats at over $55 million each. The dock is full of such requests, lying idle in Seattle now. The fishing fleet has a thousand times the data collection capabilities right now. This money would go farther utilizing existing resources, and the cost of these research ships could buy out the entire West Coast fishing industry.
The West Coast fishing industry is at the crossroads now, and the most recent slashes in landings will cost $100 million in losses. The amount of harvest is calculated. No species is overfished, or even close to endangered. It's down to who will harvest the fish allowed. The burden of conservation must be shared equally, and if PFMC has a blind eye on this issue, we must be certain one man's dream come true isn't a nightmare for the man with the investment and the time on the ocean.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gunnari may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Gunnari, thank you very much for your testimony.
We're going to move along to Ms. Garrison, the Natural Resources Defense Council.
STATEMENT OF KAREN GARRISON, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL
Ms. GARRISON. Natural Resources Defense Council. Thank you, and it's a pleasure to be here today. We've had a wake-up call on Pacific groundfish. It's clearly a call to do a better job gathering and analyzing information, and that includes not just more frequent surveys and stock assessments, but also estimates of by-catch and assessments of habitat that may be at risk.
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It's also a reminder of the critical need to apply the new provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act where fisheries are in crisis, and where they're considered relatively healthy, as you pointed out these were about a year ago. The Act has extraordinary power to transform fishery management for the better, but the habits that get us into trouble are very tenacious, and you've heard some of them today. You'll be asked more than once to say you didn't mean what you said in the Act. I know Congress never does that. What happened with groundfish illustrates many of the reasons you passed the Act, and now need to stick by its original intent.
For example, over the years, participants in the process have downplayed uncertainty, rather than taking it fully into account, as the Act's guidelines require. The fishery suffers from overcapitalization, from high by-catch rates, from increasing use of roller gear that's thought to be damaging to rockfish habitat.
So improving the data is important, but more precise data is not enough. Twice-a-year surveys didn't help the New England groundfish. We need to be addressing these other related problems, and I'm going to talk about several of them briefly.
First, the data. In addition to improving our information for species of known status, we need to conduct whatever level of stock assessment is feasible on most or all of the 68 species of unknown status, focusing more resources on trouble spots like near-shore rockfish. This is a high-value, high-pressure fishery headed for a boom and bust cycle if we don't attend to it. And it's not just happening in southern California; it's happening in Congressman Farr's district as well.
More funds are likely to be needed to get the information that we need, and Congress can help. NRDC and other organizations are recommending the creation of the ocean equivalent of the land and water conservation fund to finance applied marine science. Your support for that would be welcome.
Second, we need a more precautionary approach to taking account of uncertainty, because it will always be there. If we want to avoid surprises like this one, we have to end what I call the ''conspiracy of optimism'' in the way we interpret data. We have to stop assuming that more precise data will allow us to keep shaving as close as possible to the danger zone. That means acknowledging the full extent of uncertainty, and not using it as an excuse to reinterpret scientific advice, as we believe the Council did for a couple of stocks last year.
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We support the Council in its consideration of other precautionary steps, like the use of more conservative harvest targets and the creation of no-fishing reserves for groundfish, which could serve as an insurance policy against the possibility of being wrong. While the details of those measures should be up to the Council and NMFS, Congressional support for more precautionary management is essential.
Third, capacity reduction, as others have said, is a vital step toward relieving the pressure on groundfish, reducing by-catch, and making the fishery more viable for its participants. To be effective, the program should retire capacity, not simply shift it to other fisheries. Virtually all West Coast fisheries are overcapitalized now, and some important State-managed fisheries, (or unmanaged fisheries, as in the case of squid), are open enough to become easy targets, or maybe we should say victims, for excess capacity.
The current proposal to retire permits, not vessels, fails this and other tests of a good program. We urge Congress to insist on a buy-back program that complies with Magnuson-Stevens and avoids the risk that removed capacity will resurface elsewhere.
Fourth, current high by-catch rates for the trawl fleet intensify the pressure on vulnerable groundfish species. The first step toward reducing it is a mandatory observer program, with full coverage for large vessels and partial coverage for small vessels. That program is needed now. Measures to reduce by-catch are also critically needed, and should include incentives or rewards for clean fishing.
Finally, protection of habitat is essential if we want to sustain the long-term productivity and diversity of the groundfish fishery. NMFS' initial proposal for groundfish habitat conservation is a commendable step in the right direction, and the Council should take it further.
In conclusion, Congress can take a number of steps that will help avoid unwelcome surprises in the future. They include providing funding for data collection and analysis, supporting expanded stock assessment for groundfish, affirming the commitment to the precautionary principle, encouraging the development of a mandatory observer program and by-catch reduction measures, and insisting on retiring vessels, not permits.
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Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Garrison may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, Ms. Garrison.
And now, last but certainly not least, Mr. Moore.
STATEMENT OF ROD MOORE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WEST COAST SEAFOOD PROCESSORS ASSOCIATION
Mr. MOORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be here, and we appreciate your interest and Mr. Farr's interest, and Mr. Miller's interest, and Mr. Young's interest in our poor, measly fishery out there on the West Coast. We're trying hard, and we're glad you had this hearing today. It's already been productive with Rollie's announcement this morning of supporting the trip limit overage program. That's something the industry has been pushing for. We're very pleased to see that NMFS is supporting it, and I'm glad that this sort of was the occasion for doing that.
And Mr. Farr, you talked a little bit about how Congress responds to crises. Now, unlike New England, our crisis is not no fish. Our crisis is no science. In my view, the problems we're facing today are a direct result of 20 years of scientific neglect, which are compounded to a certain extent by management policies driven by paranoia over New England.
Let me read you a very quick quote. This is from a report that was done by a scientific review panel set up by NMFS on West Coast groundfish stock assessments from 1995.
''Due to the lack of a reliable index of abundance, many different interpretations about the status of the stocks are consistent with the historical data, and it is not possible to choose among them on scientific grounds.'' In other words, we didn't know what we're doing and we don't know what's out there.
Dave Sampson showed you some numbers on yellowtail rockfish, or some charts on yellowtail rockfish. I'm going to put some numbers to that: 27,784 metric tons, and 85,263 metric tons. Those were the low point and the high point from different assumptions of the stock assessment in 1997 on yellowtail rockfish.
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Now, Mr. Saxton, if you were running for president, and you hired a pollster to go out and assess the American people's support of your candidacy, and the pollster came back and said, well, either 27 percent of the people support you, or 85 percent of the people support you, you know what you'd do? You'd have that pollster go work for your opponent.
Mr. SAXTON. And then I probably wouldn't run.
Mr. MOORE. And then you probably wouldn't run.
[Laughter.]
I'm not trying to start any rumors, but that's the sort of thing that the Council is having to deal with. And that's what makes it real difficult for them, and why we get into all of these disputes at the Council level.
Then you get into management policy. Now, Karen talked about being precautionary, and Phil mentioned the new management policy they're looking at. Well, what that new management policy is, is that, when you have any sort of uncertainty, which we have all the time on West Coast groundfish, you have to set the harvest level at a rate at least 3 percent below the rate that provides MSY. Now, even when you changed the law in 1996, you didn't say, never fish to MSY. Yet some mysterious working group in the National Marine Fisheries Service has come up with this harvest policy, which they're trying out on us and, I suspect, on other Councils in the near future, which says, hey, you guys are never going to be able to get even close to there, no matter what you're doing.
You passed the Sustainable Fisheries Act, not the Stop Fishing Act, and somebody in Silver Spring needs to be reminded about that.
Now, the industry has been trying to respond to all of this. We've been trying to find innovative ways to solve the root problem, which is getting more data. The Oregon Trawl Commission has been conducting a pilot observer program for several years, funded by the industry. Our processors are embarked on a project now with a graduate student out of Newport, Oregon, trying to demonstrate that processing workers can be used to provide data to improve the stock assessments.
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Gerald Gunnari was the first of several fishermen who went on board the Miller Freeman and demonstrated to NMFS how their survey gear could work a heck of a lot better. We've got a port interview project starting. We've got an electronic logbook project starting. All of these things are ways that we are trying to be innovative and support getting more data, and finding out what's out there.
Now, yes, I complain about the National Marine Fisheries Service but, you know, we've gotten help from them too. Rollie mentiond the $750,000 that he put into the budget this year. Rick Methot and I have attended more meetings together, talking about—trying to figure out ways where the industry and NMFS can work together to try to do something, and try to do something positive.
Unfortunately, you know, all of this takes a lot of time and, you know, we really don't feel we should have to be here pleading that the Nation's fisheries agency be doing more basic research. We're committed to keep going until we get the problem solved, or until we go broke. You know, it's taking time to do all this stuff, and as the lights show, for us, time is running out.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Moore may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much, Rod.
Let me just pose a question for any of you who would like to respond. I have another job here. I'm chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, and every month we hold an employment hearing. And sometimes we have very high rates of growth in employment, and sometimes we have negative growth rates in employment. In other words, we lose jobs. And we would like to, you know, come to each monthly meeting and say that we've had a very steady climb in employment. We never, ever, ever get that.
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It's much the same pattern that you have, and, you know, obviously, we're not going to solve that problem because part of it has to do with real rates of employment and unemployment; other has to do with flaws in our method of measuring employment and unemployment. And I suspect the same principle holds true in fisheries. So the difficulty in statistics, gathering statistics on fisheries is partly that we have not funded the activity well enough, partly because there are flaws in methodology, and partly because, as we know, there are spikes and valleys in populations, which occur naturally. And, in addition to that, I would submit at least that there are diminutions of populations that occur because of overfishing. I hope that we can at least agree on all that.
And so, given the fact that we're never going to have perfect statistics, it would seem to me that if we had a 27,000 metric ton estimate one year, and 83 million ton, or whatever the big number was.
Mr. GUNNARI. It was the same year, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SAXTON. Same year. OK. It would seem to me that somebody would have to somehow conclude that, given those sets of circumstances, that we would have to set, begin to set limits of catch, or limits of take, based on the full set of parameters that we have to work with, which are far from perfect. And from Karen Garrison's point of view, she would not want to have the limits set too high, because if we collapse the fishery, she would have failed to do her job. And seems to me that Gerald Gunnari might want to have a conservative limit on take set as well because, if he's like the fishermen, at least in my neighborhood, he's got mortgages on his boats, and families, and economic issues to worry about. And if the fishery collapses, it's not good for him.
So it seems to me that we ought to be able to conclude together that, given the statistical base that we have to work with, which is not perfect, given the fact that we all have economic concerns and resource concerns, and kind of pull us to a common conclusion that we have got to set limits based on some kind of reasonable and conservative guidelines.
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Now, I would just like to begin with Dr. Sampson and work our way across the table, and see how you all respond to that, and see if there is some common ground perhaps. David?
Dr. SAMPSON. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think some of the problem is that we all have different, in a sense, discount rates. We all have different degrees of comfort with uncertainty.
Fishermen are, perhaps, dealing with uncertainty in a very fundamental way that most of us don't even contemplate. They're putting their lives on the lines, oftentimes, when they go out to sea. And that's a regular occurrence for them, and I suspect that they inherently have a different willingness to take risks, perhaps, than the rest of us. And so I think some of the discrepancies we have, and the difficulties we have on agreeing as to what's a reasonable policy is a reflection of a different ability to cope with uncertainty. How you get around that problem, I don't know. I think the Council process is involved in debating what is a reasonable level of risk.
I think, historically, the scientific crew has not done a very good job at making the gamble clear to the managers. If you do this, there are certain consequences that are likely to follow. If you take some other course of action, these are the likely consequences. We haven't laid things out for the decisionmakers on that basis, and I think that's a failing of the scientific community, and we are, I think, collectively working to remedy that. But ultimately, we don't know the certain outcome of a particular course of events. We are going to be making gambles with our resources. I think that's an inherent part of fisheries management.
Mr. SAXTON. Jerry?
Mr. GUNNARI. Yes, I think your assessment is fairly accurate about the increases and decreases. I've been fishing for many years and watched bocaccios move into our area thick. I've watched them move out of our area, watched true cod come in and go out. Dover increase and decrease. Sable fish. All of our stocks fluctuate greatly, and we do appreciate good conservation measures that conserve real fish, not paper fish.
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The 97.5 decrease in our ling cod this year, I don't believe is a reasonable situation. We're not seeing this type of decline on the grounds. In fact, we've had some pretty fair year classes a couple of times over the past 10 years that have not been reflected anywhere in any of the data. So I think that there should be a balance, and the fact of using the full range as the model outputs.
One thing that I see as a real problem in modeling is the models can only model the catch. When you drop 97.5 percent of the catch, of course, the model is going to say there isn't any. And makes modeling, I think, more complex than ever, because as the catch goes down, which it has in recent times, the model goes down. And so it's kind of an exasperating situation.
Mr. SAXTON. Ms. Garrison?
Ms. GARRISON. Yes, I also agree with your assessment, and I agree with David's suggestion that scientists need to make the gamble more clear. I think that you're right at mentioning that it's a combination of factors, that we've got natural variations in fish populations. We've got pressure on habitat. We've got long-term climatic and ocean-temperature shifts. And it is often the combination of these factors that throw us for a loop.
I think in addition to being more careful about the way that we set catch limits—and we are fine-tuning that process all the time and, I think, getting somewhat better at it—we need to think about things we can do outside that process that provide insurance. And that's one of the reasons that so many people have gotten interested in the concept of no-fishing reserves. I think they are going to be an important part of the process, particularly for groundfish, where there are some species that are quite vulnerable because they're long-lived and they're subject to by-catch. Reserves appear to be a particularly good tool for species like that, and may be able to allow catch levels to stay higher on short-lived fish, because we will have some places where long-lived rockfish can safely breed and spawn and grow large and keep reproducing at high rates. Thank you.
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Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Moore?
Mr. MOORE. You know, Mr. Chairman, during the many years I had the honor of working with you on staff of the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, there were a lot of times I heard fishermen, processors come in and say, oh, we got problems, you got to find us more fish. And it's real easy to do that, to come in and say, gee, you know, we're not making any money, we're all going broke, you know, so you got to give us more fish. Well, the Congress can't legislate fish that aren't there, and they shouldn't even try to do something as silly as that. Which is why, you know, none of us are here today saying, hey, you know, you got to get us more fish.
What we're trying to do is address the root of the problem, which is the fact that we don't know what's out there and we don't know what's going on out there. And those are the sorts of things that need to be done. David is absolutely right in talking about the scientific community doing a poor job of describing the risks of uncertainty. I've seen that happen in the Council innumerable times with the numbers that are presented for final approval by the Council, versus all of the work that's gone on by the scientists and the resource managers before that. That process we're internally trying to fix within the Council system. That's not something you guys should be involved in. It's something that we're all trying to do.
Yes, you've got to be precautionary, but at what point do you allow yourselves to be precautioned out of business? And that's the difficult problem.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you very much. We're going to go to Mr. Farr now, and I would just like to say at this point that we're going to draw to a close about a quarter after, Sam, so you proceed at your pace. The time is yours.
Mr. FARR. Well, thank you Mr. Chairman. As you can see, I'm a little bit more on a philosophical level today than I am on a technical level. And one of my questions is how do we get the industry to be, to respond more to this issue of being involved with the science. What you're talking about is the lack of science. My experience is that when an indusry benefits from a resource, it puts a lot of its own money into research, and collaboration with the government.
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The point was made here that in all the other resources that this Committee manages, like timber, water, mining, there's a partnership. The regulatory responsibility is the government responsibility, but there's really an area out there where there is a partnership, and that is on trying to get the best data we can so that we can sustain this over a long period of time. And I think what we're in, our generation, you as responsible leaders in your roles and we in Congress, that in the next 10 years—and Chairman Saxton is talking about the Joint Economic Committee. The real goal here——
Mr. SAXTON. In 10 years, I'll be on my sailboat.
Mr. FARR. But, I mean, in that period, it's not whether we'll be here in 10 years. But I think this next decade, where we have to use our professional abilities, is to really nail down how can you sustain an economic enterprise, not just use it and lose it. You know, I live in the ''Salad Bowl of the Nation''—I'm also on the Agriculture Committee, and we have a $2.2 billion agricultural industry in one county that I represent. And it's a county where everybody wants to live, so it's a land use fight. I mean, we're going to bury the goose that lays the golden egg by just paving over agriculture which grows crops that don't grow anywhere else?
Your fisheries are the same way. I mean, these fisheries aren't necessarily all over the planet. It's not that they can just be picked up by somebody else. Yes, we can change our diet, we'll eat a different fish, and that will always be available. But there's a responsibility here by the private sector to be there. And I agree with the statement of the young man talking about the ling cod fisheries—I mean, we ought to be, if there's capability of having the fishing vessels rented for, or leased for, scientific purposes, we ought to do that. I mean, I know in my district—in sport fishery, these guys usually went broke during the winter time. Now they're making more money off whale-watching than they are off sport fishing. So, there are alternative services that can be provided.
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And I, frankly, think that if we're really smart about this, we're going to develop an ecotourism around the ocean that we have not even yet discovered yet, and we will all benefit from that. But, how do we bring your industry to be a partnership with it? Because we can either go out there and do an assessment fee, to which you'd have to agree. The politicians will never put it on you, because, you know, it'd be a tax, and so on. But if the industry came along and could really believe that if you put money together in some kind of a collection process that could be used solely for the purposes which you've discussed today, could it be possible to do it that way? Because I think this is an industry where you've got to have the private sector doing a little more heavy lifting than they are. And the public sector's got to be more accountable to it.
Mr. MOORE. Mr. Farr, if I can try to answer that question. And, I can't resist—I've got to say, as far as the—I don't want to disparage my colleagues in the agricultural community, but if we had 10 percent of the Federal research support that agriculture has got, we'd be in great shape, we'd know a heck of a lot more about the fisheries. But, if I may, Mr. Farr, just to answer your question, which is a very good one.
Why shouldn't the industry be more involved? The fact is we are, we're trying to be more and more every day. I went through some of the stuff in my testimony on things we've already done, but, you know, we've put our own money up to try to design an expanded logbook program and a pilot observer program, something that, you know, in some parts of the country, is paid for by the Federal Government.
We've put, we've used our own time and resources and effort to put people on board the research vessels to help them improve their research gear. We've got processing workers that we're trying to train to do the job that right now State and Federal workers, mostly State workers do. I've been talking with the National Marine Fisheries Service about trying to get some more fish-ticket data to them so they can use it in their stock assessments. The industry's put together a fund to hire, through an independent contractor, a scientist to do stock assessments and run them through the peer review process.
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You know, there are all of these things that we're all trying to do out there, and sometimes, unfortunately, we've had to drag the National Marine Fisheries Service kicking and screaming into it. And, you know, I understand their point of view, because it takes a lot longer for the bureaucracy to do something and to come to a decision, and scientists are by nature cautious, as opposed to the sort of risk-takers that Dave Sampson talked about that are fishermen and processors. You know, we've got to be innovative every day to stay alive economically.
Mr. FARR. What if we had something in the line of like a duck stamp for all fisheries? The duck stamp has generated so much money. It's gone back into habitat restoration, so much so that we had a hearing in this room about there's too many snow geese around, and we ought to have a better method of taking them.
Mr. MOORE. You know, Mr. Farr, if I remember—I can't remember the exact year. It was something like 1987 or 1988. Chairman Young introduced a bill for a minimal fisheries fee, it was like $15, something like that, on commercial fishing vessels, and another one, but the same price, on sport fishing vessels, with all of the money to be dedicated to research. There was nobody who supported it, and that's——
Mr. FARR. Did the industry support it?
Mr. MOORE. I'm trying to remember back then. Yes, we had gotten some support. I was working for Mr. Young at the time on Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, and we did get some industry support out of it. We unfortunately got none from the recreational community, and the worst case was a letter we got from the State director of fish and game in Arizona, who was complaining about this marine use tax being put on fishermen. And the last time I looked, Arizona doesn't have a marine coastline. But that was sort of the nature of the opposition that was generated out there.
The processing sector, within the Pacific Council, is talking right now about trying to get the Council to put a permit requirement on groundfish processors. So we have a start of knowing who's out there, and what they're doing. And at some point, if the Congress changes the law and says you've got to pay a fee to get a permit, then we expect we're going to get charged. And if that money can be dedicated to fisheries research, great. But right now, what we're trying to do is, with our meager resources—none of us are rich, you know. But we're trying to pool as much money and manpower and sweat equity as we can to improve the data base, and work with the Federal Government to doing that.
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Mr. FARR. What's lacking to do that? Because I think there's enough willpower here, if we get everybody in the room. It's one of those things where you have a common agenda. Hopefully, we can work some of that out with this oceans conference in Monterey in June. I mean, I think we just sort of open the door on these issues, and then we do the substantive work, heavy lifting, next year.
But, you know, you talked about a lack of scientific data. I'm involved with this oceans conference. I'm just learning of all the incredible opportunities that the Navy's had. You know, I was kind of getting a kick out of the National Marine Fisheries talking about how they don't know anything. And yet, right across, the building across the way, they're sitting there in the Navy committee on the intelligence, where they say they know everything that goes on under the ocean. Why does one arm of the government know so much about what happens under the ocean, and the other arm of government knows so little? I mean, there must be some data that can be shared.
Mr. MOORE. You know, Mr. Farr, if I could figure out why one arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service knows something about the ocean and the other arm doesn't, I'd be satisfied at that. Yes, there's a lot of synergistic, piggy-backing sort of things that can go on out there.
For example, the National Oceans Service has got what they call the GLOBEC program, which is run out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. And on the West Coast, they're starting to look at some basic oceanographic stuff, but it's dedicated mostly to production for salmon. And we've been asking the question, hey, is anybody looking at that, and seeing if you can turn it into something for groundfish as well. Because groundfish is where the need is. That is happening. You know, Rick Methot told me the other day that yes, they're starting to try to see if they can use some of that data.
There's lots of things that are going on, and one of the things that needs to happen is somebody, somewhere needs to sit down and look at all of these projects that are being done by the industry, by NMFS, by other arms of NOAA, by the military, by the universities. Put them all together, see where they are duplicating their efforts, and perhaps they shouldn't be doing that.
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Mr. FARR. Time's running out. In your opinion, who—what—I mean, certainly, this Committee could do that, but we don't have the time or the resources to do it. Who does?
Mr. MOORE. Could be anybody, you know. You could certainly ask either NMFS or NOAA to do it. The Council, I know, doesn't have the resources. The industry is talking about putting together a private conference in July, and one of the background things for this is to try to identify those various things. You know, even if—the Northwest region of the National Marine Fisheries Service has got couple of hundred people devoted to salmon. You know, if they could let one of them lose and say, hey, you're going to go do some stuff on groundfish, which is going to be so simple as to call people up on the phone and say, what kind of research are you doing? Tell me about it. Send me a synopsis. And put it all together so we all know what people are doing. That would be great.
Mr. FARR. Could you do me a favor on your way back to—are you here, or in the West Coast?
Mr. MOORE. I'm in Portland, sir.
Mr. FARR. On your way back to Portland, why don't you just jot out just what you said about who should be at the table, and we ought to do it by region. We ought to do it in the West Coast. I'd be very interested in that. I think this is—we're at a stage where we need to mediate between all of these issues. This isn't just legislating or appropriating.
Mr. MOORE. Great.
Mr. FARR. And I'd be glad to be involved in that.
Mr. MOORE. Well, actually Mr. Farr, I'll do you one better because I'm going to be here until May 8, so I'll get together with your staff between now