Wayne Gilchrest: “I will take a little more time later to explain all of the accusations by the other side of the aisle, but very quickly…”

“I will take a little more time later to explain all of the accusations by the other side of the aisle, but very quickly now, the reason there are fewer dolphin deaths in the eastern tropical Pacific is precisely because of this legislation. Twelve countries have agreed to use the regime, the structure to ensure that dolphins are not killed. Prior to this legislation, prior to this agreement, if Members look at this photograph, this is the bycatch that we were living under before. This agreement, if we sign into it, eliminates the bycatch problems. We were up to this number of dolphin deaths. If we look on the top of this graph, each of these dolphins represent 5,000 dolphins dead. The Panama agreement, as it is now working, reduces this number down to this number. Because of this agreement, a few years ago the maximum number of acceptable dolphin deaths by the Panama agreement was 9,000. There were about 2,500 killed. Who pushed it down to a 5,000 maximum level? The United States. What is the biological accepted limit for the number of dolphin deaths in the eastern tropical Pacific without endangering the species? Sixty thousand. Not only have we reduced it from 100,000 to 60,000 to 9,000 to 5,000, this legislation and this international agreement is going to push it down to lower than that.”