June 17, 2013 — The law that underpins federal fishing policy in the U.S. is currently in the process of being revised by Congress. The Magnuson-Stevens Act was passed in 1976 with the aim of protecting U.S. federal waters from foreign competition. The goal has been to try and improve the sustainable management of fisheries through the introduction of science-based catch limits. Tom Porter takes a look at what revisions Maine fishermen and scientists want to see from Washington.
One man who can remember life as a commercial fisherman before Magnuson is Jim Odlin. From offices on Portland's fish pier, Odlin owns and operates a number of groundfishing vessels – both in Maine and in Massachusetts. As a teenager back in the 1970s, he fished regularly in federal waters.
"I have distinct memories – with my first fishing boat I was around 18, 19 – of running through a fleet going towards Brown's Bank, and there was a hundred foreign ships," Odlin says, "so many foreign ships that it lit the sky up like you were going into Boston."
These ships – many of them Russian – hauled everything out the ocean that they could, says Odlin. So when Congress passed Magnuson-Stevens, and effectively kicked out the foreigners, fishermen like him were relieved.
But 27 years later, Odlin says, the New England groundfish fleet has shrunk, from about 1,200 active vessels down to less than 400, only about 10 percent of which are in Maine. Entire fishing ports, he says, have effectively disappeared.
"Rockland used to be a major fishing port, it's no longer, Boothbay Harbor, Portland's on its way," he says. "So, you know, if you look at it in that context, I would question how successful it's been."
Odlin – who served as a member of the New England Fishery Management Council for nine years – is skeptical of some of the science behind catch limits, and says Magnuson-Stevens has been too hard on the industry.
Overfishing, he says, is no longer the threat it was – he points out that there are haddock on George's bank now dying of old age, rather than being fished. Odlin says a re-authorization of the act should recognize this and relax the tight restrictions on groundfishing.
Read the full story and listen to the audio at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network