Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. S. 39, for the first time, would require: First, the reduction of bycatch in fisheries; require the fishery management councils and the Secretary of Commerce to prevent overfishing; authorize a vessel and permit reduction program to help eliminate overcapacity in our fisheries capability; require council members to recuse themselves from voting on matters they would personally benefit from; require fishing communities to be considered in fishery management decisions; create a lien registry to keep track of encumbrances on limited access permits; and create a new registration system to keep track of fishing vessels themselves. This bill, S. 39, will strengthen existing sections of the Magnuson Act to protect essential fish habitat; streamline the approval process for fishery management plans and regulations; strengthen emergency regulatory authority, and expand research activities. The waste reduction provisions of S. 39 are particularly needed now, Mr. President. Under S. 39, the regional councils will be required to include measures in every fisheries management plan to prevent overfishing. If a council allows a fishery to become overfished, the Secretary of Commerce will be required to step in and stop it. We continue to support having management decisions made in the regions themselves. But if the fisheries management councils have allowed a fishery to become overfished, we want it to be stopped immediately. And this bill will authorize the Secretary of Commerce to step in at that point. But I remind the Senate that the management decisions may be made and should be made by the councils themselves, and this bill preserves that authority. Under S. 39, the councils will also be required to reduce the amount of bycatch in every fishery around our country. This bill will give the councils new tools, including harvest incentives and penalty fees, to stop wasteful practices. The bycatch problem is of great concern in my State of Alaska, where over half of the Nation's fish are harvested each year off our shores. In 1995, 60 factory trawlers discarded nearly as much fish in the Bering Sea as was kept in the New England lobster fishery, the Atlantic mackerel fishery, the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery, the Pacific sablefish fishery, and the North Pacific halibut fishery combined. The waste in that area was as great as the total catch of all the major fisheries off our shores. These 60 factory trawlers threw overboard--dead and unused--about one out of every four fish they caught. I have a chart here to call to the attention of the Senate. Last year, the Bering Sea trawl vessels--this is all the trawl vessels and not just factory trawlers that are committing waste-- threw 17 percent of their catch overboard, dead and not used. That total catch, as you can see by the chart, exceeds by almost 500 million pounds the total catch of all five of the major fisheries of the United States. That is the way we are trying to find to reduce their bycatch. Bycatch is the harvest of fisheries that are not in the targeted fishery area; not the fish that a vessel is trying to catch, but the fish that is caught incidentally. I hope that this bill will bring a stop to this inexcusable amount of waste. This bill also addresses the divisive issue of individual fisheries quotas, the so-called IFQ's, or CTQ's. The ``individual fishing quota'' as defined in S. 39 means both the transferable and nontransferable quotas that are known as IFQ's. We place a moratorium on new IFQ programs until September 30 in the year 2000. In the meantime, the National Academy of Sciences will study IFQ's with the Secretary of Commerce, the councils, the regional councils, and two regional working groups to address many unresolved issues. There are only three IFQ plans in our Nation today. Two of them are on the east coast: the wreckfish IFQ program and the surf clam IFQ program. The largest IFQ program went into effect last year in the halibut/ black cod fisheries off my State of Alaska. The Alaska program involves almost 100 times as much fishing vessels as the two east coast programs. IFQ's are a new tool that we did not even consider in 1990, the last time we reauthorized the Magnuson Act. They were not even dreamed of when we first passed the Magnuson Act. Unlike other limited access systems, IFQ's allow the potential consolidation of fishing efforts in a fishery. This characteristic may provide a useful tool to allow the market to drive a reduction in fishing capacity when needed, Mr. President. However, it has potential negative and other unknown effects. We are worried about the new level of capital requirements of IFQ's. We are worried that fisheries will become investor owned totally under IFQ's and not the family traditional fishing that has been the hallmark of America's fisheries. We are worried about the impact of IFQ's on the fishing communities themselves. And we are worried about foreign control of IFQ's, once they are established, and the fisheries themselves if a rigid U.S. ownership standard is not set for them. In other words, we Americanized the system. And, now, if we really let IFQ's go unrestrained, we could really end up with more ownership of the IFQ's and destroy the whole purpose of the Magnuson Act to create an Americanized zone within which we would protect our fisheries and have a conservation ethic to be the major goal of the Magnuson Act. The Magnuson Act, this bill, would permanently ban transferable IFQ's in the House version that we received. That was H.R. 39. Our Senate bill puts a 4-year moratorium on both transferable and nontransferable IFQ's. We just do not have enough information yet, Mr. President, to decide what limitations ought to be put on the IFQ's, if any. We need facts, and we need a study. I believe the House will agree with this approach, Mr. President. The academy's IFQ report will be due in the year 1998, one year before the next reauthorization of the Magnuson Act. S. 39 includes measures important to predominantly Native and aboriginal communities in both Alaska and Hawaii. For Alaska, this bill will codify the community development quota programs already adopted by the North Pacific Council. For Hawaii, it will provide CDQ authority based on the concepts that have already been developed in Alaska. As I mentioned, this bill has been a bipartisan effort. It has not been an easy job, Mr. President, to bring together all of the diverse views in this body on this issue. But it is the best of what this body should be doing--responding together to the devastating, wasteful practices that we know of, and making every vessel follow sound conservation practices. I want to take the time to specifically thank my good friend from Massachusetts, Senator Kerry, who has worked with me for some time on this issue. Through the change of political control, we find ourselves working together with very slight difference. This time I was chairman. The last time he was. But in purpose we have had a singular purpose, and that is to stop the wasteful practices. Senator Pressler and Senator Hollings, the chairman and ranking member of our committee, and Senators Lott, Snowe, Inouye, Murkowski, Gorton, Hutchison, Breaux, and Murray, and all their staffs, have been very cooperative in this effort. As I said, it has been contentious. Anyone that has ever dealt with fisheries and fishermen know the issues will get contentious. It takes a long time to work out these disputes. I thank the staff involved: Trevor McCabe and Earl Comstock, who have worked with me; Tom Melius, who worked with Senator Pressler; Penny Dalton, who worked with Senator Kerry and Senator Hollings; and Glenn Merrill and Alex Elkan, Sea Grant fellows in the Commerce Committee who worked with us this year. Mr. President, this bill is the product of hearings we have held throughout this country. We went to Maine; we went to Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana; we went into Seattle; several places in my State, and we have held several hearings right here in Washington. This is the way I think the Senate should work. We should go out to the people, get their views and come back and try to find a way to meet the major contentions that have been pressed on us from out in our country. It is not an easy bill for us to handle in the way we are now compelled to handle it because of the timeframe as we close the session. It has taken the cooperation of the majority and minority leader--and I do congratulate Senator Daschle for his role in this also--to make certain that we have had the time to proceed. Where we are now is we have a time agreement and we have a specific allocation of opportunities for Members to offer their amendments. I believe most of those amendments have been cared for in our revisions of the managers' amendment which is a bipartisan effort by myself and Senator Kerry and our staffs, working with all the staffs of the Senate that were interested in this issue. It is my intention now to yield to my good friend, and I know he has a statement to make. But we are hopeful that Senators who may have some interest in making comments realize what the leader has said. We will debate this tonight. We will debate the amendments that are offered pursuant to the agreement tonight but tomorrow there will be no debate. We have not asked for debate tomorrow. We just want to vote on the amendments that might be presented to us tonight and then final passage of this bill. To me this is the most significant piece of legislation to be presented to this Congress. It will be the hallmark of conservation of fisheries throughout the world. I hope the Senate does not miss that. The world is looking to us to see what we are going to do with regard to protecting the fisheries within our 200-mile limit. These are strong measures, Mr. President. The authorizations going to these councils are very strong. The regional fisheries councils were a creature of this Congress, as a matter of fact of this Senate. They amount to delegation of authority from the Federal Government to a new body created by Federal legislation and requests the States to delegate similar authority to those bodies. That has been carried out, and nowhere has the council been more involved in the daily lives of people than in my State through the activities of the North Pacific Fisheries Council. It is a unique council. It is totally off the waters of one State but it has members from the States of Washington and Oregon and a national representative also. So it is something I hope the Senate realizes means a very great deal to me personally and to my State. Half of the coastline of the United States is off our shores. More than half of the fisheries are off our shores. More than half of the fish that our people consume come from the waters off the shores of Alaska. We want to preserve the reproductive capability of those fisheries. We do not want to see a continuation of the numbers on this chart. When we see the possibility of hundreds of millions of pounds of fish being wasted because of fishing practices that could be avoided, we believe it is time for the Congress to act. I am glad that we have reached the point now where I believe the Congress will act, and I am hopeful that the House of Representatives will be willing to accept our changes and modifications to this bill. Again, I commend my good friend who has traveled with me throughout the country for hearings on this measure, and I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts. Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I thank the leader for his courtesy and for his support in moving forward on this bill. The statement made by the leader is correct. As I understand it, there could be, possibly, three votes tomorrow. We are going to try to work that out tonight and see what happens. It is my intention this evening to offer the managers' amendment to S. 39, which is a bill to reauthorize and strengthen the Magnuson Fisheries Conservation Management Act. This managers' amendment will replace the substitute that was approved and reported by the Commerce Committee and will be adopted as original text when it is adopted by the Senate. This is bipartisan legislation that has been in the works now for over 3 years. We called it the ``Sustainable Fisheries Act.'' It is the most significant revision of the Magnuson Act since that bill was enacted in 1976. I first introduced that 200-mile limit concept in the Senate, Mr. President, in 1971. We never envisioned the problems that exist today. I was very grateful to my friend from the State of Washington--I used to call him my ``southern neighbor''--Senator Magnuson, for having worked on that bill for a period of time. It was my motion, made after the bill was passed, that named the bill after the former Senator from Washington, who had been chairman of the Commerce Committee and of the Appropriations Committee. At that time, in the 1970's, we had two primary goals--to Americanize the fisheries off our shores within a 200-mile limit and to protect the U.S. fishery resources, or to protect the capability of the fisheries to sustain themselves. We thought Americanization would go a long way toward conserving the fishery resources of this Nation. Foreign vessels have now given way to U.S. vessels that are capitalized now far beyond what we ever envisioned in the seventies, and the fisheries waste continues to get worse in many areas. This bill, S. 39, revitalizes the conservation measures of the Magnuson Act. Senators Kerry, Pressler, Hollings, Murkowski, Inouye, Lott, Simpson, and Pell have cosponsored this bill that I have introduced. I ask unanimous consent that these and others who may wish to be added as cosponsors to this bill be added for the Record if their request is made before the close of business today.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator's amendment be made a part of the managers' amendment when I present it later this evening.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I could extend comments at length because of some of the comments made by the Senators from Washington. I do not intend to prolong the debate. I want to state, however, that the provisions for the community development quotas are based in part on the authority of Congress to regulate the commerce of the Indian tribes. The communities of the west coast of Alaska are predominantly Alaska Native people. They were there and fishing a long time before anyone else came on the fishing scene. As a matter of fact, there were no factory trawlers off Alaska from the State of Washington until about 9 years ago. During the period of time since then the amount of fish taken by those trawlers has come up from zero to at one time as high as 65 percent. As a result of negotiations, there is now allocated 65 percent to the fisheries offshore and 35 for the onshore fisheries. We are allocating a portion of the fisheries to the communities involved that are historic native communities along our coast. I am sad that the Members from Washington do not agree with that concept. We have watched, I might say, with awe the development of the Indian law in the State of Washington that leads to a substantial claim by the Indians of Washington on the fish of the rivers, particularly the Columbia. This is not the place to get into the argument about it, but we have worked out in Alaska a basis of allocation to protect the species. The Magnuson Act was designed to protect the fish, not fishermen. The amendments for CDQ allocation are to protect communities, not fishermen. They are to protect the traditional fishing communities along the west coast, and as I said half the coastline of the United States is involved and very few communities are protected under the provisions of the CDQ concept. I do appreciate the comments they made and the attitude that has been demonstrated here by all Senators to try to get this bill resolved in the Senate and get it to the House and hopefully to the President before this Congress adjourns. I do want the Senate to know, however, that this is not a subject that will go away. We will be involved in fisheries legislation, I am sure, as long as the Senate and the Congress are in being and as long as there are fisheries because it is a matter of Federal jurisdiction. Whether we like it or not, we have to exercise our responsibility and we have to find a way to accommodate the claims of persons who are entitled to fish in the waters off our shores. We have tried our best to do that while at the same time protecting those people who have traditionally relied upon the sole source for their income, and that is the fish resources off the State of Alaska. That is the case for those Native communities. They are devastated now, Mr. President, and we are trying to find a way to protect their future. I do believe we have the right as the Congress of the United States to pass a law which commits a portion of the fish resources to those communities under the constitutional powers of the United States Congress to deal with the rights of Indian people, and that is why I am pleased to have the provisions in this bill which I think confirm the action of our regional council. The fisheries development quotas were first put into being by action of the council itself. We are now confirming that that is legitimate action under the concept of the Magnuson Act. Mr. President, it is my intention now to offer the managers' amendment. I would like to ask at the same time that the clerk under the direction of the staffs of myself and Senator Kerry be authorized to make the technical amendments necessary to incorporate the amendments that have already been adopted. The amendments that were covered by the time agreement are to be put into the managers' amendment, and we are doing that at the present time. And the amendment of Senator Snowe will also be put in the managers' amendment. So I suggest the absence of a quorum, if I might just do it for a moment. I will yield to my friend from Massachusetts if he wishes to make some comment. I suggest the absence of a quorum, Mr. President,

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send to the desk the managers' amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. I now ask no further amendments be in order, other than the one amendment of the Senator from Texas.

Mr. STEVENS. If all time is yielded back, Mr. President, I would like to move on now to the matter of closing. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. No.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I notified the Senator from Texas it is my intention, and I believe it is the intention of the Senator from Massachusetts, to join together to oppose this amendment in its present form. Should it be modified in a way that is acceptable, it would, of course, be acceptable to the Senator from Louisiana. At the present time it is my understanding there is not the opportunity to debate the amendment, but it is my understanding the Senator has offered the amendment with the hopes that through the night that this can be negotiated out to be acceptable to all concerned, including the Senator from Louisiana. I state, it would be my intention, if there is to be any discussion of this tomorrow, it would be by whatever agreement we make now. And if the Senator wishes some time tomorrow, I do not think that is impossible. How much time would the Senator like tomorrow?

Mr. STEVENS. One amendment that hits the bill in two spots. The Senator is correct. Again, we intend to oppose this amendment, and ask the Senate to oppose it in its present form. If it is modified, it will be modified to meet the Senator's acceptance. It would have to take unanimous consent. Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this amendment be adopted now as original text, and if the Senator from Texas wishes to offer an amendment, that that be in order when she arrives----

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send a substitute amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3723, which is now at the desk.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for the transaction of morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that following morning business at 11 a.m., the Senate resume consideration of S. 39, the Magnuson fisheries bill. At that time, under a previous order, there will be 4 minutes of debate equally divided on a Hutchison amendment. Following that debate time, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a rollcall vote on or in relation to the Hutchison amendment, if necessary, to be followed by a rollcall vote on passage of S. 39, the Magnuson fisheries bill, as amended, and I ask paragraph 4 of rule XII be waived.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until the hour of 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, September 19; further, that immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be deemed approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and there be a period for the transaction of morning business not to extend beyond the hour of 11 a.m., with the following Senators to be recognized for the designated time: Senator Thomas for 30 minutes; Senator Conrad for 30 minutes; Senator Heflin for 10 minutes; Senator Reid for 10 minutes; Senator Murkowski for 10 minutes.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, tomorrow at 11 a.m., following the 4 minutes of debate, the Senate will proceed to one, perhaps two, consecutive rollcall votes--first, on or in relation to the Hutchison amendment, if necessary, to be followed by a vote on the passage of the Magnuson fisheries bill. Following the votes, or vote, the Senate may be asked to turn to consideration of any of the following items: The pipeline safety bill, the maritime bill, H.R. 1350, available appropriations bills or conference reports. Rollcall votes are, therefore, possible throughout Thursday's session on the items just mentioned or any other items cleared for action.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent the bill be considered read for a third time, the Senate immediately proceed to Calendar 508, H.R. 3159, further, all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of S. 1831, as amended, be inserted in lieu thereof, the bill be deemed read for a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, any statements related to the bill be printed at the appropriate place in the Record, and finally, S. 1831 be placed back on the calendar.