August 21, 2018 — The following op-ed was originally published in The Hill and was written by Greg DiDomenico, the Executive Director of the Garden State Seafood Association, and Diane Pleschner-Steele, the Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers Association:
In July, the House passed H.R. 200 the “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act,” a much needed update of federal fisheries law that allows for both sustainable fisheries management and the long-term preservation of our nation’s fishing communities. Unfortunately, its counterpart bill making its way through the Senate would likely have the opposite effect.
The Senate bill, S.1520, or the “Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act of 2018,” introduces changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA)—the main law governing U.S. fisheries—that would impose increasingly burdensome regulations on American fishermen and undermine H.R. 200’s goal of increasing flexibility in fisheries management.
Of particular concern are provisions contained in Section 104 of the bill, “Rebuilding Overfished Fisheries.“ Rather than giving fisheries managers more flexibility in how they manage and rebuild fish stocks, these new requirements added to S.1520 make rebuilding requirements more stringent and onerous.
For example, one of the most disturbing changes is the requirement that Regional Fishery Management Councils achieve a 75 percent chance of rebuilding a stock if that stock has not rebuilt in as short a timeframe as possible. What that means in practice is that regulators will be forced to set quotas according to a rigid, predetermined timeframe, rather than one based around scientific evidence or biological necessity. This will lead to quotas that are much lower than they need to be to sustainably manage the species, and fishing communities being unnecessarily hurt in the process.
Read the full opinion piece at The Hill