Kernan may be the most well-meaning man in the world, but for God's sake, we have got to try with every country and for every species.

Fritz, let me say as free of demogoguery as any of us can be, that I'm proud that you are Chairman of the Subcommittee responsible for this legislation. I regret that Fouke is involved, but like you, I am not interested in throwing folks out of business without cause. I know this problem will be tough for the Subcommittee because of all the pressures on both sides. Our position was never considered by the House-and if it were, it was rejected out of hand. Please let me know if we can supply anything or do anything else to help you bring out as strong a bill as possible. Warmest personal regards.

Sincerely,

FRED R. HARRIS.

Senator HOLLINGS. The committee will next hear from Dr. Kenneth Norris, Marine Mammal Council; Dr. Roger Payne, New York Zoological Society; Dr. Daniel Hartman, South Gardner, Maine; Dr. Judson E. Vandevere, Hopkins Marine Station, Pacific Grove, Calif.; and Mr. Jack Lent fer, Barrow, Alaska.

Dr. Kenneth Norris, we welcome you and we want to hear from you first. We have your complete statement. That will be included in its entirety in the record. You can sum it up but in any event, tell me what we know about the porpoises and the dolphins and what we don't know.

STATEMENT OF DR. KENNETH NORRIS, MARINE MAMMAL COUNCIL; ACCOMPANIED BY DR. ROGER PAYNE, NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY; DR. DANIEL H. HARTMAN, SOUTH CARDNER, MAINE; JUDSON E. VANDEVERE, HOPKINS MARINE STATION, PACIFIC GROVE CALIFORNIA; AND JACK LENTFER, BARROW, ALASKA

Dr. NORRIS. First, let me say it is a pleasure to be here and an honor to speak to you in this hearing.

We had hoped to have Mr. William Schevill here from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Harvard but he is sick. I have gotten together with him by phone and our presentation following a few introductory comments of my own relating to Senator Harris' testimony is a joint presentation between me and Mr. Schevill.

A great many of us in the scientific community feel Mr. Schevill is the senior marine mamologist in North America. I am sorry he is. not here with us today.

Senator HOLLINGS. We are, too. We hope he is feeling better soon. Dr. NORRIS. Before going to my prepared testimony I will do my best to set straight some of the record. I can only do part of it.

The case of the Northern fur seal, I think, needs to be straightened out after Senator Harris' testimony. The story, as I understand it, is at the institution of the 1911 Fur Seal Commission the population. began to rise, and by 1948 a count was taken of between 4 and 5 million of these animals in the Bering Sea area and the Commander Islands of the Russians. There is reason to believe the 1948 count is in error and there has been, instead, a steady progression of rise in the fur seal population from protection to the present day. Senator HOLLINGS. There is a rise?

Dr. NORRIS. Up to the present day. As I understand it, in the recent years there has been a reduction in the recruitment to this population below that they expected to occur.

Let me say these managers are among the most sophisticated of fisheries managers in the world. They know remarkably and precisely what to expect and when they can tell you that the recruitment is not what they expected, they are telling this from a great depth of information.

There are two possible reasons why the fur seal may not be increasing its population further at the rate they expect. One of these is the possibility of pollution in the Bering Sea area. The second is simple competition for the fish in the Bering Sea where these animals feed and elsewhere in the North Pacific, with the human take of fish, particularly by the oceanic fishing fleets of Russia, Japan and Korea.

The Russians have their own take of seals on the Commander Islands. The Japanese and Canadians and the United States take fur seals on the Pribilofs.

Senator HOLLINGS. What is the Russian take estimated to be on the adjoining islands?

Dr. NORRIS. I don't have those figures at my command. But there is no reason to think that these animals are declining.

It is, in my estimation, one of the very best managed international fisheries agreements in the world.

Senator HOLLINGS. Could it be improved upon in any way that you can think of?

Dr. NORRIS. I think it is a social decision, whether or not we want fur coats. I think that is quite beyond the purview of management. I think it is an enormously sophisticated fishery at the moment. It seems to me that the take of the bachelor males on these islands is misunderstood here.

These bachelor bulls are animals in their prime, yes, but they are surplus animals because their social structure is called a polygynous. In it a single breeding male gathers around him a harem of a great many females and since when they are born there equal numbers of males and females, there is always a surplus of adult males available.

Therefore, the managers say this is the place in the lifecycle to take animals from that herd without disturbing it in any way. This is, indeed, true.

Senator HOLLINGS. What if you had a complete ban, as has been suggested, no taking whatever. Would there be seals dying of malnutrition or what would you estimate the facts to be?

Dr. NORRIS. With this decline in recruitment that we see, at the moment I doubt anything dramatic at all would happen to the population. You probably would have some additional mortality among the young seals of a slight sort.

The catch itself is rather minor.

Senator HOLLINGS. The catch is considered minor?

Dr. NORRIS. Yes. It is a very carefully controlled one which allows that population to expand towards its former numbers and is now apparently in competition with man elsewhere.

Senator PASTORE. What do you mean in competition with man? Dr. NORRIS. In other words, the seals are eating fish and the man are also catching fish. The Bering Sea is one of the richest areas in the world. It is an open fishing area, exploited by Russia, Japan, and Korea and we are coming into competition with the same resources. Senator PASTORE. Do you think it is possible to properly supervise this management policy that you are expressing?

Dr. NORRIS. I think it is already properly managed. I think it is the very best example in world fisheries at the moment.

Senator PASTORE. Would you say that also for seals and other mammals?

Dr. NORRIS. I think this is certainly not true in many other places within the marine mammals.

But I think it is a mistake to think that a great many of these animals are truly in danger. There are a good many, like the porpoises, that are being taken by the tuna fishery that are worldwide animals and we are certainly affecting them but we are not driving them to extinction. On a local basis we are certainly causing severe stresses to some populations.

The same thing is true with a great many other marine mammals. Senator PASTORE. Do you know of any attempts on an international level to bring about this management philosophy of which you speak? For instance, I know I received mail from Charles Lindberg, for instance, who is very much interested in the subject we are discussing here now. It always struck me that while it would be helpful to limit Americans as to what they could do in the extinction of some of this wildlife, the point was that if you allowed other countries to go ahead willy-nilly and do whatever they wanted, I don't think you would ameliorate the situation to any considerable extent.

It strikes me there should be an international sort of policy on this. I wondered if there was anything afoot in that regard?

Dr. NORRIS. I certainly could not agree more that we need a thrust toward international agreements on the protection of the great whales to bring them under the same kind of fisheries management that you see for the seals. It is not as easy because they are oceanic animals. They are more difficult to count and to keep track of and we know less about where they go and about their numbers.

However, I think there is also a lot of misconception about what has happened in terms of the great whales. The endangered ones, the truly endangered ones are under protection and there is reason to think that they are not now declining towards extinction. In some cases they are certainly in precarious condition because their populations are so small that accidental happenings could hurt them.

The International Whaling Commission has been an ineffective. group because of the very great difficulty of trying to bring together nations without any power to police them, and this certainly should be changed.

We should point out, however, that even with that, the International Whaling Commission has brought the major species into a sustainable yield position at about something like one-fifth the population levels they once enjoyed.

In other words, the decline has apparently been stopped, for example, for the finback whale and so forth.

However, there has not been enough surplus after the catch left. for the animals to come back to their old numbers. This unquestionably is going to be a long, drawn out process and we run into economics here.

Senator HOLLINGS. The Stockholm Conference will discuss conservation of marine mammals.

Dr. NORRIS. There will certainly be parts of that which relate to this question. I don't know the details, I am sorry to say.

Senator HOLLINGS. Whales are on the agenda.

I want to make certain you cover one point from the scientific community. Where would you put it if you had $10 million for research, or $20 million? How much would you recommend and where would you put your efforts so we could have the facts at hand on the porpoise and various other mammals that we do not know at the present time?

Dr. NORRIS. I think we need to know a great deal more basic management biology than we know. We need to know where these animals go, speaking about porpoises and whales. We cannot tell you population sizes in any porpoise species that I know. We cannot tell you recruitment, how many new ones we are adding to the population. We cannot tell you what is a dangerous level for such a population. We don't know these things. It has to be mostly guesswork at the moment.

This is expensive work because it is at sea. We have very few people in the United States concerned with this. There are very few professional people who can actually work in this area simply because the resources are not available, mostly the chance to get with the animals and work with them. The logistics are enormous. Imagine trying to work with a blue whale when you have no ship big enough to get to him, and so on.

This sort of thing is needed. I think the whole management effort in the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration needs to be strengthened greatly.

We need much more basic research and it should be supported for management reasons. We are learning now a great many new things about management that are coming out of the basic research community. The bond between basic science and management science needs to be strengthened.

We need to look in new ways. We need to track these animals by aircraft and satellite. We need to follow them by radio. We need to learn better ways to tag and age them and to understand the ecosystems within which they live.

Senator STEVENS. Could I interrupt? Research is necessary as far as the whales and these other mammals are concerned. However, do you believe that is true about the fur seal, which does mate and produce its offspring on shore?

Dr. NORRIS. As I said before. I think the fur seal is in excellent shape now and in very good hands. I think this should be continued. To negotiate a new treaty would seem redundant to me.

I don't see why we should bother in view of what we have. I think we desperately need a new treaty in favor of the whales and others of the marine mammals.

I would like to move on to the prepared statement of Mr. Schevill and myself.

Public concern is high over man's impact upon wild marine mammal populations. Conservationists and humanitarians, wildlife managers, marine scientists, and public officials all have noted with concern the plight of the great whales, the depredations of oceanic tuna seining upon wild porpoise populations, and the potentials for disaster that exist for the highly vulnerable seals, sea lions, polar bears, and walruses. The critical state of manatee populations is also widely understood. There is no other group of large wild mammals that has already suffered such depletion by man as have the marine mammals. A debate has resulted, and with it, a demand for Federal action. This debate concerns not whether legislation is needed, but what it shall consist of. Two divergent views seem to exist. One demands management and the other demands protection. Those in favor of management want ecologically based regulations, permits, and continua! review in the light of animal population status. In general, those in favor of protection support a moratorium on all killing of marine mammals, and a ban on their products within the United States. It is to this debate that we feel we should comment this morning. To address this question, a panel of scientists has been assembled and they will be introduced following these remarks.

Our views are simply stated. In our minds, there is no question but that the Federal Government should enact legislation that will help to protect the numerous marine mammal species from decline toward overexploitation and extinction as a result of human activity. Wherever human activities impinge upon these animals, such activity should be regulated. This includes the fishing of the great whales, porpoises, seals, and walruses, tuna seining of porpoises, the killing of polar bears for sport or hides, the capture and keeping in captivity of marine mammals by commercial or scientific concerns or by individual citizens, their use in experimentation, or situations in which the natural activities of marine mammals conflict with those of man.

It is equally clear to us that such regulation is not a simple task that can be solved by unilateral U.S. declaration of a moratorium on killing of these animals, or upon the sale of the products resulting from such killing in the United Statees. Why not?

First, the majority of marine mammals are international. Most of the great whales migrate between polar waters and warm waters near the equator. Many seals and sea lions undertake similar journeys. In fact, only a few marine mammals are sedentary enough that they can be considered as local residents of any given area. Thus, a moratorium by us on their killing fails to protect most species since vital parts of their lives are lived outside our territory. Gray whales give birth in Mexico and feed in the Bering Sea or the Siberian Chukchi Sea. Fur seals breed and pup on certain islands, largely under U.S. control, but they migrate far out to sea in international waters during the nonbreeding season. The porpoises being killed in tuna seining efforts are of species that span the world oceans around the tropics and subtropics.