The United States disagreed that such trade measures were required by unique conditions arising
from the "complex biology" of the restricted species. Numerous other species of fish - including Atlantic
herring and chum, coho and chinook salmon - gave rise to closely similar conditions: they were
commercially valuable, cyclical, and vulnerable to resource depletion in the absence of an effective
catch reporting system. Yet Canada was able to operate effective conservation programmes for these
other species without export restrictions of any kind. Likewise, the United States had been able to
achieve its conservation objectives for species involved in this dispute without recourse to export
restrictions. The United States also noted that it routinely gathers statistics on all landings of fish in
United States ports, including landings of fish caught in Canadian waters and exported to the
United States. Such data were routinely supplied to Canadian authorities upon request, for Canada's
use in its conservation programme. This strongly suggested that currently existing methods of monitoring
and data-sharing could be applied to the management of the species at issue without export restrictions