and study for our fisheries, I believe that you brought this up a couple of times, Mr. Leggett.

Mr. LEGGETT. Yes.

Mr. AEDER. I would like to point out that fishermen themselves are our most valuable resource in terms of biologists and researchers, dissecting thousands of fish each year, studying feed and their feeding habits and maintaining logs, and so forth give us these credentials. I believe it is these credentials that support our recommendations for 50 percent of representation on this council.

Mr. LEGGETT. What if you added representatives of the four tribal areas to your voting council?

Mr. AEDER. Well, I don't think the four tribal areas have the expertise that we have in the ocean fisheries, which of course the act has jurisdiction over.

Mr. LEGGETT. But you indicate the big problem is not so much out in the ocean but up in the environmental enhancement areas. They are as much interested in that as you are.

Mr. AEDER. Right, well

Mr. HUDSON. Well, this is subject to discussion.

Mr. Aeder. Well, I think that-I mean, we have put several hours into this plan, but I know it needs fine tuning.

Mr. LEGGETT. Mr. Baker?

Mr. BAKER. I think just to address that question that you just asked, I think it should be pointed out that American Indians, American natives are citizens of the United States, and as such have all the rights that any other fisherman has, and in that sense they can purchase a license and become commercial fisherman, just like we all can, either on the inside fisheries, which is not regulated by the council, or in the ocean fishery, which is regulated by the council.

Mr. LEGGETT. I guess that's a fact, but I don't see many Indians here.

Mr. AEDER. And I think you asked a question earlier about how Congress might involve itself in the treaty Indian question. I think one way they might do it would be to review and perhaps renegotiate these treaties in a more timely light, just as Congress is now doing with the Panama Canal Treaty, and I think it would not be a bad

Mr. LEGGETT. During renegotiations the bureaucrats generally don't get more. The bureaucrats generally give.

Mr. BAKER. That does seem to be the case.

I think what I would like to do is sort of reflect a consistent message that it seems like all the panels so far today have stated. I think what has happened is that various agencies, Federal agencies and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service and the regional councils have consistently failed to implement what Congress intended when they both wrote and authored the FCMA, and when they conducted the Eastland fishery survey, I think what fishermen want is essentially the same thing they wanted when the Eastland survey was conducted, and Bob pointed this out very well.

I might read an article just briefly that appeared in the Fish Boat magazine, August 1977 issue, and it is an article which describes a meeting with Robert W. Schoning, this meeting was June 18, last year,

and Robert Schoning was then a Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service spoke, and he said that the message was from the Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, Robert Schoning, who foresaw:

Painful times lie ahead as the National Marine Fisheries Service moves from worrying about foreign fishermen to regulating U.S. fishermen. Schoening said the National Marine Fisheries Service anticipates "much greater difficulty with U.S. fishermen than with non-U.S. fishermen." He said the period of adjustment would be "painful and bloody, but it would ultimately result in a U.S.-developed pattern of fisheries regulation that would be widely copied elsewhere in the maritime world." The rule, Schoening said, must be for the greatest good for the greatest number, a phrase often cited by other Federal administrative and regulatory agencies. He forecast the imposition of extended harvest control resulting in larger fishing units, changes in the work force engaging in commercial fishing, and fluctuation in the number of fishing vessels engaged.

I think what I am trying to point out here is that I don't think that Congress intended that it be a painful and bloody period, that its implementation would cause pain and blood for American fishermen. And that is exactly what has happened. Certain agencies, Federal agencies and the regional council appear to have undertaken, and are taking it upon themselves to restructure the American fishing industry without asking American fishermen what in fact they really want, and I think this is probably what has resulted in this hearing being called today, that American fishermen don't feel the act has been implemented with the intent of Congress.

Mr. LEGGETT. Those may have been some of Bob Schoning's words, but I think really what he intended is exactly what I have said many times, that there is no problem in clearing the foreigners off our shores, All that is necessary is to make the law and give the Coast Guard a big enough club to keep foreigners away. The real problem is, How do you effect this renaissance of fishing among the American fishermen? The natural tendency, of course, is to take the same number of fish in half the time and market it in the same old way. Not much happens to the diet, the GNP or to anything else, and we are going through the growing pains now of trying to effect this reorganization. The reason we are here is not because the act has not been effective in closing out foreigners. We have done that. What we are trying to do here today is to figure out how we get out of our tracks without too much Federal redtape and regulation. We have bought a problem with this 200-mile law, in that we have exacerbated the conflict between the tribal groups and the other so-called user groups, but this is a matter that can be resolved. It takes meetings like this to bring out the issues. I think that taking Bob Schoning's statement somewhat out of context is a little unfair to him because he identifies very much with the salmon industry of this coast.

Mr. GREEN. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think the way to implement the renaissance that you talk about, probably the best way is to carry out the stated purposes of the act, and to carry out the recommendations that fishermen made to Congress 2 years ago in the Eastland fishery survey.

Mr. LEGGETT. That was a Senate-inspired document, and we don't really give it much support over on the House side. We have heard more about the Eastland survey today than we have heard over the

past 3 years in the U.S. Congress. So we will study that very carefully, and see if there are any ideas we can pick up.

I do think that in some areas, like the Pacific coast where we have had this confrontation, we can think of some special legislation to augment and make more representative some of these councils. I do not think that the existing council would take any umbrage at that suggestion. Certainly they have a lot of heat on them. They are interested in proposing proper resolutions, with proper input and with as much participation as is reasonably possible recognizing that they can't have a crowd this size and a meeting every month.

Mr. Irwin?

Mr. IRWIN. Yes; Mr. Chairman and Congressman AuCoin, I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I just wanted to state that salmon are a very special problem, both on inland and in our coastal waters, and in order to make the whole situation work, they need to be managed from gravel to gravel, and in order to do this we need a council that is informed and fishwise really, and the only way I feel that we are going to accomplish that is with the restructuring of the regional council, and if it's restructured with 50 percent or greater user groups, I believe that we will have the grease to make the wheels turn much more smoothly. Thank you.

Mr. LEGGETT. Thank you very much.

Do you have any closing statement you want to make in 3 minutes? Mr. HUDSON. Well, in 3 minutes?

First, at the last regulation hearing, California, who, and I use this example only to make a point, California, in the absence of a terminal fishery found that the most problem that they were having getting their runs back to the spawning gravel was lack of water, not overharvest.

The Government has documented on the Columbia River in a pamphlet called the Columbia River and Snake River Sights, that it is not the ocean users that are getting the fish, it is not the lower Columbia gillnets, and it is not the Indian gillnet fisheries, it is the dams, we are dealing with an apex of environmental problems that are really putting us on short notice; we are going to have to respond to them, and that is what we are trying to do.

Mr. LEGGETT. Mr. AuCoin, do you have some closing words of wisdom for this panel?

Mr. AUCOIN. I do want to ask a few questions.

Mr. LEGGETT. I could have been asked to yield at any point under the free-wheeling rules of our subcommittee.

Mr. AUCOIN. With the chairman's indulgence, I do want to ask a few questions. First of all, I think we had better correct one impression that we left, Mr. Chairman, and that is regarding the Eastland resolution. As I understand it, it was a resolution passed by both the House and Senate in 1973, and currently a bill is being drafted in the Senate on the basis of the study authorized by that resolution. I don't think there is a comparable bill being drafted in the House, but it was a resolution passed by both Houses.

Mr. LEGGETT. I recognize that.

Mr. AUCOIN. Bob, as you know, I did not support the moving of the dividing line from Tillamook Head to Cape Falcon, and I think most of the members of the audience recognize that. But I want to ask you

some questions on the reasons for that move. The reason I opposed it, is that I did not feel and I do not feel now that that decision was made, and I'll say this when the management council comes before us, on the basis of sound, biological data. Some members of the council opposed the move, for this very same reason. Be that as it may, I am looking at some figures about the trollers catch, and I think for purposes of the record, I need ask these questions of you.

I have a table before me that shows the 1977 Chinook salmon harvest compared to the harvests of previous years in the ocean north of Tillamook Head. Now off Oregon, the difference in 1977, the year in dispute, shows a decrease in the sports catch of 42 percent, and an increase in the troll catch of 96 percent. Jack Donaldson, of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Department, indicated to me in a letter of March 8 that during 1977, trollers had landed about $238,000 worth of Chinook in the Tillamook area during the entire month of June. This amount reflected the largest Oregon troll Chinook harvest in the history of this fishery, plus $115,000 worth of coho was landed in the same area during the last half of the year of 1977.

The second point I would make, quoting from his letter to me, is this,

Although the 1977 value of the harvest was a 40-percent drop from 1976, which was the best year in history for the troll fishery, it still exceeded the 5-year average considerably.

Now what is your rebuttal to those economic facts?

Mr. HUDSON. Well, I think Mr. Donaldson's figures are probably correct, since his source of data is probably a little bit better than mine, but it is easily understandable that there was an increase in the Chinook harvest. No. 1, you had a fleet that was just coming out from underneath a good year the previous year, and they went out the fleet substantially subsists on coho, that is the main fishery in terms of numbers. Now there are some individuals that fish more Chinook than coho, but Oregon effectually dominates the coho fishery. Well, there were no coho. The alternate fishery for the salmon fishery is albacore. There was extremely poor albacore fishing, and every indication was at that time that there would be no albacore season, which as it turned out was bad, so you had two choices, you target on Chinook, or you go in and tie your boat up, and that is what happened, and you can target on Chinook as opposed to coho.

Mr. GREEN. May I respond to that just briefly?

Mr. AUCOIN. Surely. Any member of the panel may.

Mr. GREEN. Because I am familiar with that area and have fished it for a good many years, and I have never seen that many boats down ther. Because the Washington coast was closed, naturally all the boats came down below the line where they could fish, and they were willing to fish for much less, you know what I mean, their efforts were concentrated in that area, and also I have gone back through my records, and very, very seldom in the years preceding that did I ever even get up as high as 10 salmon a day. It was almost all coho, there is very few salmon mixed in. Well, like Bob says, there was no coho in that area, so everybody concentrated on salmon, and for some reason, I don't know why, there was salmon in that area. There haven't been for many, many years, there was salmon on Stonewall Bank out of Newport

that hadn't been there for many years, and nobody knows why, maybe it was the drought last year or some change somewhere, but I do believe that the data that they used to close that 12-mile area was only on that one exceptionally good year, and I mean good year in the sense that there were salmon there, that apparently haven't been there before; if they were there we would have caught them, and the fact that the fleet concentrated in that ara, we had boats all the way from, I suppos Seattle to ort Bragg, Calif., all-because there was no silvers below, no coho down below, and so everybody concentrated in this one small area where there was a few fish, so that is what, basically what brings that up to that figure, also our price was higher last year than it had been before, if you are using dollar figures.

Mr. GREEN. I think also, wasn't Dr. Donaldson's figures based on dollar value, or was that pounds increase? I just wanted to ask that question first.

Mr. AUCOIN. Well, in dollar value the figures I have are that in 1976 Orgon Coho salmon catch was $11 million, Chinook $3.4 million; that compares to the 1977, where Coho dropped from $11 to $3.4 million, but an incrase in Chinook, dollar value, from $3.4 to $7.7 million. All I am suggesting is that as much as thata regulation might not have been based on biological dat a, these figures would suggest you were not experiencing an economic calamity in the trolling industry.

Mr. HUDSON. If you recall the Production Crdit Association, southwestern Oregon, at midseason issued a letter which said that at that time, and I don't recall the percentage numbers, but it was substantial

A VOICE. Twenty.

Mr. HUDSON. Was it 20 percent, of the $16 million volume that PCA had out in loans was in arrears. When the council elected to close Tillamook Head, we told them, the advisory told them at that time that it would result in a substantial shift of effort with losses suffered in Oregon and California from the increased effort, and so whatever was saved in the northern area was going to be more than offset by that which happened in the south, and some of the more influential council members pooh-poohed it and said, no, they would just tie their boats up, or whatever. In the year in question, Oregon Fish and Wildlife documented between a 30- and 50-percent increase in effort from aerial photos. Now that5s quite a span, 30 or 50 percent, but we told them it would happen; it happened and yet they still, you know, if they get an idea in their he ads they are going to do it, and they are going to do it, advisers be dammed, and that's just the way it works. Mr. AUCOIN. Now you are giving us figurs on what again?

Mr. HUDSON. Well, I am talking about the Tillamook Head closure, when that was closed.

Mr. LEGGETT. The figures on the arrearages in the production credit loans, as of a certain date?

Mr. HUDSON. Right. That was last year.

Mr. AUCOIN. What would be the more direct way of measuring the economic health of the industry-with the average of dollar value of the total catch, say between the year 1972 and 1975, which would be about $6 million average, or the last 2 years, 1976 and 1977, which ran between $4 million and $11 million? Are we talking about dollars or pounds?