December 24, 2013 — The act regulating America’s fisheries could see changes under the discussion draft proposed by the House Natural Resources Committee.
The Magnuson-Stevens Act, or MSA, was up for reauthorization this year but that process won’t be finalized until 2014.
The House Natural Resources Committee released draft legislation Dec. 19 with 30 pages of proposed MSA changes that address several major fisheries issues, including catch share programs, electronic monitoring, rebuilding plans and the term “overfished.”
The draft legislation would authorize the MSA through 2018, and also authorize appropriations for five more years at the current funding level.
Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chairman of that committee, said the changes will help fisheries managers balance the biological needs of fish and the economic needs of fishermen.
“The purpose of this draft proposal is to gather public input and to see how to best improve and modernize this important law governing fisheries,” Hastings said in an official statement. “This proposal would give regional fishery managers increased flexibility to deal with the complexity of fishery issues and provide economic stability and certainty to fishermen and fishery dependent communities. It also would improve data collection and increase transparency so that management decisions are based on sound science and all who are impacted by this law can have an active role in the process.”
Several of the changes would provide fisheries managers with more flexibility, which is what stakeholders asked for during a series of hearings held about the act, according to the committee statement released with the draft.
One such change would allow regional fishery management councils — such as the North Pacific Fishery Management Council — to phase rebuilding plans in over a three-year period “to lessen economic harm to fishing communities.” That would apply in “highly dynamic fisheries.”
It would also change the time for rebuilding stocks. Currently, rebuilding plans are required to restore a stock’s status to a healthy state within 10 years. Under the draft language, rebuilding plans would need to rebuild the stock in the amount of time that it would take to rebuild without any fishing, plus the average lifecycle of the species.
The change would also allow certain exceptions — for instance, if that timeframe threatened another stock or caused significant economic harm it would not necessarily apply. A council could also stop fishery changes under a rebuilding plan if a stock seemed to recover more quickly.
The legislation would also swap the term “overfished” out of the MSA, and use “depleted” instead.
Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce