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PORPOISE QUOTA COMPROMISE

The controversy over porpoise quotas for tuna fishermen has finally been settled by legislation, although nobody's really happy with the outcome. As you'd expect, fishermen have been trying to liberalize porpoise quotas, and environmentalists have been trying equally hard to lower the maximum number of porpoises that can legally be taken.

Years ago-before there were any "porpoise quotas"-an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 porpoises died annually in tuna nets. (Porpoises are often found swimming above schools of tuna.) Then-in 1972-Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, authorizing the Commerce Department to set upper limits on the unintentional killing of porpoises. As it turned out, however, the Commerce Department didn't go ahead and set any limits.

Last year, environmentalists sued the Commerce Department to get a quota, and-as a result-the National Marine Fisheries Service of the Commerce Department set a limit of 59,000 porpoise kills for 1977.

The tuna fishermen-who claim that they cannot earn a decent living and comply with the Commerce Department limitation-have been protesting ever since the first quota was set. In response to this outcry, the Chairman of the House Merchant Marine Committee, John Murphy (DN.Y.), earlier this year introduced a bill in Congress which would modify the porpoise quota upwards to 78,900 kills per year for 1977 and 1978. Since the tunafishing fleet had been in port protesting for almost half of 1977, this would have meant that the fishermen would be allowed to trap 78,900 porpoises in the remaining six months of 1977 (the equivalent of a yearly quota of 157,800 porpoises).

After a long debate and the introduction of many proporpoise amendments, the House decided on a compromise final quota of 69,000 and rejected a Carter administration proposal to halve the quota over the next three years. Under present regulations, Commerce Department observers will monitor porpoise kills on all boats for the next year and a half, and skippers will be fined $32 for each porpoise they catch over the industry average. Captains with a high kill rate will be subject to penalties ranging from mandatory attendance of a 30day "training course" to a year's suspension from fishing.

The tuna industry will reportedly lay out $2 million for a research ship to investigate new fishing techniques and equipment, and for rebates to those captains with the lowest ratios of porpoises killed to tuna caught.

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