On the recordMay 8, 2012
I thank the gentleman. I strongly support the amendment. The gentleman from Washington has the regional councils confused with the people who fish. There's a regional split here. If the people on the west coast are happy with this, good luck to them. Here's what happened. In the Magnuson-Stevens Act passed in the lame duck of 2006, we said that provisions that would provide for these kinds of limitations were to be voted on by the people in the fishery. There would have to be a vote of the people in the fishery. What happened was, in Washington, they decided that there were areas where they wouldn't get the fishermen to vote for it--maybe on the west coast, they would; on the east coast, they wouldn't. So they invented--Washington did--catch shares, which is a way to have exactly the same impact as what we have in the bill, but without a referendum. We went to court. The judge said, Well, you've got a good argument, but I've got to go with the administrator. If this amendment passes, if the people in the fishery--the fishermen--want to vote for something that will, in effect, be catch shares, they can put it into effect. And if they vote ``no,'' it will be no. The regional councils, they are not only fishermen, they are appointees. NMFS has had a major impact. So let's be very clear: If you think the fishermen ought to be able to decide, that's what the law says. This catch shares is an invention to get around the law.…
