its harvesters. American fishermen cannot understand or tolerate foreign participation on our fish stocks on the high seas when PFMC cuts their season continuously.

Mr. LEGGETT. I have read your statement. It will do little good to have you finish reading that. Essentially, what you have said is that you don't believe the council is conducting hearings in places where fishermen can be heard. The voice of the fisherman is not adequately heard in making these decisions. You believe there is a problem as to the catch by the foreign fleet which, of course, we will continue to monitor, and you conclude with a pitch for the Eastland survey. You would rather have Idaho in an advisory role, you want Indian treaty references removed from the language of the bill and you want more biological support to support the decisions.

I think in part I support more people on the council and more biological studies. I don't believe, having talked with Mr. Bonker, that we really would have supported the 200-mile legislation, if we would have known at the time that getting rid of foreigners would have involved us with the internal domestic problems of the inland waters of the United States and with the implementation of Indian treaty rights.

As a practical matter, I think that requires a reconsideration because I don't think any of us would have voted for the bill had we known the situation would have arisen as it has.

I do believe Indian fishing rights could be taken care of by promoting simply more hatcheries, more agricultural problems to get more fish to swim back up the river. That is very simple and I don't think we need to confound it by restricting people on the high seas from doing what they have been doing for a long time. It is as simple as that.

I am prepared to support generous hatchery and aquaculture programs but I don't think we need to get as confounded as we are in the management of this resource.

Mr. Bonker.

Mr. BONKER. I would like to ask both the chairman and the witness as to the composition of the council. It was the intent of the committee when we worked on this legislation that we would develop a council which would deemphasize the Federal role. There is a lot of interest in this. So, we acquiesced with the State request that we compose the council in such a way that the State would have a prevailing voice on these decisions. As it has turned out in our area, the State has been preoccupied in the implementation of both decisions with allocation of the remaining resource to inside fishermen and feeling all the time, Mr. Chairman, that outside fishermen have been unregulated because there is no outside jurisdiction.

So, when we passed this law and set up the management council and made it overly representative of the State people, they were more than anxious to extend the State plan to the outside fishermen.

Jackie, is that basically what has happened? They actually adopted what was the State plan for allocation in compliance with. the Boldt decision?

MS. PREST. That is correct. We have the salmon management plan. The first one was written and devised by Sam Wright, Washington State Department of Fisheries. He made many statements that he

was finally going to have a handle on the troller and he was going to make sure the troller shared the cuts they had coming. This is one of the reasons we have been upset, to say the least, about the way the plan has been implemented.

Mr. LEGGETT. There is a Federal task force which has been detailed to resolve this problem. They are utterly tangled in their recommendations for getting this matter unraveled. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that we didn't enact the 200-mile legislation with an aim toward limited entry. We are now at a time of talking about limited entry and reduction of the boats by 50 percent to accommodate a paragraph in the bill. I don't think we intended to do that, and it is my intent to seek a reversal of this situation.

Mr. BONKER. I am so pleased to hear the chairman say that. I appreciate the fact that he is fully cognizant of the Boldt ruling and its effect on fishermen. It is unusual for a chairman representing another area to be this intimately involved in our fishing problem.

But the question is this, Jackie, if we were to amend the law so that we could allow greater participation of fishermen on the management council in a voting position, about the only way we can carry that out is to have the Governor make the recommendations as is now provided for in the law, then the Commerce Department actually makes the appointments.

But if we don't have the Governor recommend, we need somebody to make those recommendations so we have a management council more properly representative.

The second problem is if we try to redirect the council and get the Federal Government more involved in this, we may be taking on a dimension which in later years we will regret. So I would like to have specific recommendations on, No. 1, how we can set up an apparatus which would allow for appointment of more fishing interests, the mechanism; and No. 2, if the management council is off track, how can we put them on track without the Federal Government being heavy handed in the process?

Mr. LEGGETT. You are asking her imponderables. I don't think we have to organize all the fishery interests in the country. We had some jousting out in the West at the time we formed the Alaska Council as to who was going to participate. Now, we have latent interests showing up on the Pacific coast and I think the way to handle that is to make more spaces allocable to just industry. I do think, however, that we have good input into who NOAA appoints. We had the opportunity of reviewing the appointments in the past. Generally, they have not appointed people who were unsatisfactory. Likewise, the people who have generally been nominated by the Governors were generally satisfactory to the industry.

So I don't think we have had a problem in getting the right people on the list. I don't think we have had a problem of actually getting the right people appointed. The problem has been that we have just had so few slots on the appointment rolls for voting membership, that it was very difficult to accommodate three States and two or three different kinds of fishing interests and then balance that off with an environmental interest and a sport fishing interest, and come up with adequate representation.

Ms. PREST. Mr. Chairman, May I respond to that, please?

Mr. LEGGETT. Sure.

Ms. PREST. I don't mean to disagree with you, sir, but we have not had adequate representation on the council. The council is heavily weighted with government people including State government.

We had an industry workshop the week prior to the oversight hearings. At the industry workshop which our auxiliary and the Seafood Harvesters hosted, we had representatives from California, Oregon, and Washington fishing groups, very diversified. Out of that workshop we put together what we feel is a responsible program to be implemented under the 200-mile legislation which would allow for adequate industry representation by the harvesters.

Today one of my colleagues will present to you that plan. I know that you have heard about it preliminarily at the hearings on the west coast, but I think Mr. Shearer and Mr. Beasley will go over with you in more detail our proposal.

I have worked with fishermen for 25 years, Mr. Chairman, and I know that given the opportunity they are very responsible and they are professionals and they do know their product and their industry and they can respond in a very professional way.

Mr. LEGGETT. Why don't we hear from some of the other witnesses before we perpetuate all this cross-examination.

Mr. Shearer, you are from Ilwaco?

STATEMENT OF ROGER SHEARER, FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT SEAFOOD HARVESTERS

Mr. SHEARER. What I have to say is endorsed by a number of associations.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I bring you greetings and appreciation from the American fishermen of the Northwest. I represent the Federation of Independent Seafood Harvesters, the Washington Kelpers Association, Ocean Harvesters of Garibaldi, Oreg., and a host of independent individual fishermen. I consider it a rare and sacred privilege to participate in the process of selfdetermination of the laws that govern our great republic. We the fishermen of the Northwest are dedicated to the proposition that Government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.

The Fishery Conservation Management Act has created a crossroads in American history, a crossroads at which we stand today. It is the responsibility of this committee to decide which way we will turn. You have heard testimony today addressing specific fishery problems and I am here not to take anything away from those concerns but to point this committee to the basic issue facing the American fishery, particularly the Pacific fishery, the salmon fishery. The council has systematically calculated and practiced denial of due process of law guaranteed by the 5th and 14th amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council has been in existence less than 2 years. In that short period of time they have done more damage to the American salmon fishery than foreign fishing, dam construction, forest practices, and general degradation of spawning areas all put together. The fishery management plan of 1978 gives,

by the council's own admission, an additional 300,000 pounds of American salmon to the Canadian troll fleet this year, salmon which are the property of the citizens-taxpayers-of the United States, and everyone here today. The council would have this committee, the Senate, the Congress, and the people of the United States believe that their rape and perverted implementation of the FCMA is conservation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Distinguished Members of the House, I am not going to belabor this committee with a list of grievances. The mere fact that we are here today is public tribute to their existence. What I am here to do is to suggest to this committee a process by which FCMA can be implemented in line with the original congressional intent and in line with the fundamental notion of due process.

As written FCMA embodies a fundamental principle of regional participation and management. The Congress has recognized that fisheries are regional, localized, and unique. How do we utilize the expertise and experience of American fishermen in the renaissance. of the fishery resource and management process? The implementation of the FCMA failed because the Pacific Regional Council rejected advice and consent of the professional American fisherman.

The American fishermen bring a solution to this dilemma. A solution which will stop the confrontation between management and industry. Senator Eastland's survey defined effective management as a partnership involving government and fishermen, a concept which has been ignored. And I quote from the Eastland survey in reference to development of effective management plans:

Provide for balanced membership on each of the Regional Fishery Management Councils to assure equitable representation of fishery user groups and to maintain an equal partnership between user-group interests and government.

We interpret that as being able to determine who our representative is. Our seafood recommendations should go to the Secretary of Commerce's office with her making the appointment rather than the Governor's office. The attached flow chart demonstrates one possible avenue by which this fundamental concept can be achieved. Specific proposals that we suggest and support:

First. Change the Pacific Regional Council to 50 percent seafood harvesters and 50 percent regulatory and governmental personnel with seafood harvesters' appointments coming directly from seafood harvesters to the Secretary of Commerce and not through the Governors.

Second. Governmental members of the council shall be from coastal States. Inland States with a vested interest shall become part of a nonvoting council.

Third. All language implementing the Indian treaties should be stricken from the law.

Fourth. All regulations should be made on the basis of conservation backed by sound biological data rather than allocation. Optimum yield must be operationally defined in the plan and be consistent with U.S. position at the Law of the Sea Conference.

Fifth. The Pacific Regional Council should be a rulemaking body (title 5, secs. 553, 556, 557, United States Code) to insure genuine compliance with due process rather than the legal bare minimum or complete denial in the present system.

Sixth. Establish an arbitration or appeals board that will be made part of the legislative process, thereby insuring industry input before the regulations go to the Secretary of Commerce.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before your committee today.

DIRECT RECOMMENDATION FROM THE SEAFOOD HARVESTERS TO THE SEC. OF COMMERCE

** RULE MAKING PROCESS: TITLE 5 Sec 553556557

Mr. SHEARER. If I might add, I have a few other concerns besides what is in this paper. I would like to request the record be kept open for a period of up to 2 weeks so I might submit further documen

tation.

Mr. LEGGETT. Certainly. Your views are helpful.

When you say "harvesters," do you mean just the fishermen, or are processors also included?

Mr. SHEARER. The fishermen. For example, the Washington Dungenesse Crab Fishermen's Association. They would like to have a professional fisherman, Ernie Summers. He has been having the same problem as we have had as to having any input into the planning process.

31-980 O-78-28