November 11, 2014 — Alan Risenhoover, director of the Sustainable Fisheries Office at NOAA Fisheries, attributes these rebounds primarily to the US management system and the passing of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in 2007. That act mandated the creation of regional fishery management councils and conservation measures such as catch limits on threatened fish stocks.
Fish – at least in the waters off the United States – are making a comeback.
Nearly two dozen species of Pacific groundfish, including snapper, Dover sole, and dogfish, have experienced population rebounds, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. And the 2004 commercial harvest of Atlantic haddock, which had all but disappeared two decades ago, was seven times as large as the 1995 harvest, the smallest harvest on record, reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its FishWatch site.
Haddock stocks have done particularly well in Georges Bank, where the US harvest grew to 9,000 metric tons in 2010. Ten years earlier, US fishermen harvested only a third of that amount, says Chris Kellogg, deputy director of the New England Fishery Management Council.
Alan Risenhoover, director of the Sustainable Fisheries Office at NOAA Fisheries, attributes these rebounds primarily to the US management system and the passing of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in 2007. That act mandated the creation of regional fishery management councils and conservation measures such as catch limits on threatened fish stocks.