Horrified fisheries officials in the South Pacific suddenly realized the extent of the drift-net fleet newly arrived in their region.

After noon, on March 28, federal fisheries officials, issued observer permits for the hunt's opening day, to activists and journalists.

Facing a possible ban on caviar exports, Russia and three other countries on the Caspian Sea have surveyed their sturgeon stocks and set fishing quotas, according to an Azerbaijani fisheries official.

But the judge did not tell fisheries officials how to determine if a species was endangered.

In an interview last week, Masanori Miyahara, the chairman of the commission and a senior fisheries official from Japan, acknowledged that the existing system had failed.

The sturgeon shortage here has also sparked a dispute between fisheries officials and fishermen from New York and New Jersey, who together have dominated sturgeon fishing in recent years.

By the mid-1970s, the lake had lost 80 feet of depth, and according to Paiute fisheries officials, the life of the lake was seriously under threat.

Widespread Overfishing "The nation's fisheries are at a crossroads," Diana H. Josephson, a top fisheries official in the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, recently told Congress.

Some fisheries officials asked whether the group might be in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.