Fisheries committee  Thank you for the insightful questions and the discussion. It was very helpful.

Fisheries committee  There are certain measures that increase the availability of the resource, such as the rebuilding strategies I've talked about; then there are other measures that mesh with them that protect biodiversity and protect the larger ecosystems. Enclosed areas like national parks are part of that strategy.

Fisheries committee  Enforcement is important, but monitoring is as well.

Fisheries committee  No.

Fisheries committee  I haven't had such discussions recently. My sense from the scientific community is that there was a great deal of frustration with the ineffectiveness of NAFO and other RFMOs, such as ICAP, for example. People felt it was more worthwhile to invest their time in coastal state management, with the 200-mile limit, because that's the way you can produce results, and there was a disillusionment or frustration with the way NAFO has worked in the past.

Fisheries committee  I will not give my opinion, but I will give what's done in the U.S., which I think makes a lot of sense. When a stock is rebuilding and there's uncertainty as to where the stock is, as there always is, and there's uncertainty as to how much we should take, as there always is—there's a range, and 3,000 to 12,000 is a large range, which tells me as a scientist that there's a lot of uncertainty—they always go with the lower band by law.

Fisheries committee  I apologize, I'm not an expert on the NAFO framework. I can only speak from my experience of talking to scientists who are concerned about these stocks. They feel that in the past the management of stocks under NAFO has not been very effective in reducing illegal and unregulated fishing and setting precautionary quotas that allow for rebuilding.

Fisheries committee  That's a very important topic that the science community is actively studying. I'll give you an example. North Sea cod is a resource that historically has been incredibly important for the region. It has been systematically overfished in large part because it straddles various countries' EEZs, so it's hard to get any one country to commit to reducing catches.

Fisheries committee  That's correct.

Fisheries committee  My position, and that of the science community generally, is that the 200-mile limit is an incredibly important conservation tool that allows coastal states to be good stewards of their resources. It hasn't always worked out, but it has worked in some cases. I talked to policy-makers in Washington last week, and they're now taking the success stories in their own waters and asking other states, through RFMOs or directly, to follow suit and basically translate their successes within the territorial waters to the high seas environment.

Fisheries committee  I have little insight into what Iceland or the Faroe Islands will do or what they think. It's important to note that Iceland and the Faroe Islands are both very forward-thinking nations in managing their domestic fisheries. They've been strong proponents of cutting the exploitation rate and managing sustainably, unlike some other European nations, like Spain or France, for example.

Fisheries committee  No, I'm not aware of that.

Fisheries committee  I don't have insight into the specific wording of the document. As I said, I think if it weakens the provisions for a 200-mile limit and fishing within the jurisdiction of the 200-mile limit, it will worry me.

Fisheries committee  Not really. Just to clarify for the committee, the 2006 study was a study done to understand the impacts of biodiversity laws on human well-being, one of which is fisheries, but there are other things, like water quality and other issues, that we dealt with. So it was a fairly broad treatment of the benefits the ocean provides to society—economic and other benefits—and how they're impacted by the loss of species.

Fisheries committee  I would like to follow up on this. Heike has provided a bit of historical context. She is an environmental historian who has detailed the change in fisheries and the ecosystems associated with them. The public perception of this is now largely a bad-news story. A lot of the fisheries issues are perceived as bad news--species collapsing, fisheries closing, and so on.