Haley Stevens: “I am going to send to the desk a bill that is called the American Fisheries Act to raise the U.S. ownership standard for…”

“I am going to send to the desk a bill that is called the American Fisheries Act to raise the U.S. ownership standard for U.S.-flag fishing vessels operating in U.S. waters, to eliminate the exemptions and loopholes interpreted into the existing ownership and control standard, and to phase out large fishing vessels that are destructive to U.S. fishery resources because of their size and power. As I said, this bill is called the American Fisheries Act. Let me point out, these factory trawlers we are talking about make trucks look like tiny bugs. They certainly waste a tremendous amount of fish. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game statistics for 1995--that is the most recent year for which we have statistics-- the 55 factory trawlers in the Bering Sea off my State threw overboard 483 million pounds of groundfish, wasted and unused. That is more fish than the targeted fisheries of New England lobster, Atlantic mackerel, Gulf of Mexico shrimp, and Pacific Northwest salmon combined. It is the most horrendous waste of fishery resources in the history of man. And this bill is designed to stop that.”