That's because on Jan. 1, a well-intended conservation requirement of the Magnuson-Stevens Act - the law that regulates fishing in federal offshore waters - is scheduled to throw the switch on a time bomb that could wreck whole sectors of marine fishing.

The issue is "annual catch limits," known as ACLs, another way of saying "yearly creel limits." When Magnuson-Stevens was reauthorized in 2006 environmentalists of all stripes - including sportsmen - liked ACLs. That was because even though Magnuson-Stevens had been around since 1976, the nation still lacks adequate scientific profiles of most marine species. Without that information, whole sections of the marine ecosystem were at risk because we were fishing beyond science.

There had been numerous resolutions and requests to fill that void, but the budgets never materialized, and the major resource user-groups either didn't push the issue or didn't have the political power to see them through.

Read the complete story from The News Observer.