Ted Stevens: “at the close of these remarks I wish to introduce and have appropriately referred the North Pacific Fisheries Waste…”

“at the close of these remarks I wish to introduce and have appropriately referred the North Pacific Fisheries Waste Reduction Act of 1994. The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization recently listed 12 of the world's 17 major fisheries as overfished or in serious trouble. Luckily, none of our Alaskan fisheries were on that list. My bill will help make sure that Alaska fisheries never get on that list. The bill would require the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to adopt conservation and management measures to address the excessive waste of valuable fishery resources that does occur in fisheries off Alaska. Mr. President, specifically, this bill will require the elimination, to the extent practicable, of the incidental harvest of prohibited species, the full retention of economic discards and full utilization of processing waste, the reduction of bycatch of nontarget species, and rebuilding of fish stocks that are at risk of being overfished. As Members of the Senate know, roughly 60 percent of the fish caught in the U.S. waters, the waters off our continent, are caught off Alaska.”