May 9, 2013 — Robin Alden, executive director of Penobscot East Resource Center, was invited to Washington, D.C. to offer leaders at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ideas for changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Act during the NOAA “Managing our Nation’s Fisheries 3” conference May 7-9.
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act was passed in 1976 and regulates marine fisheries in the U.S.
Alden is asking the NOAA to consider “major changes” to the Act as it enters a new reauthorization period, she said in a telephone interview on Tuesday, May 7. The Act was last reauthorized in 2006.
Right now, the federal fisheries are managed almost exclusively on a by-species basis, meaning that each species is considered separately, and NOAA releases species-specific quotas in what Alden called a “one-size-fits-all” model. Alden is proposing allowing fisheries management to innovate at the regional or local level, pursuing regulation in discussion with local fishermen, even if they don’t have a federal fishing permit. Alden said the current Act does not protect small-scale fisheries and the communities those fisheries support.
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