March 25, 2015 — Young’s proposed version of the MSA is titled the “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act.”
Taking the lead on legislation he’s been involved with since it first passed in 1976, Alaska U.S. Rep. Don Young introduced a bill March 4 to reauthorize and amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
The act, or MSA, governs all U.S. federal fisheries, which take place in the exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, between three and 200 miles off the coast. The MSA was most recently reauthorized and updated in 2006.
Young introduced H.R. 1335 on March 4 with three regional cosponsors: Reps. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., and Amata Coleman Radewagen, R-American Samoa.
Young’s proposed version of the MSA is titled the “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act.” His philosophy is to let the councils, who have more intimate understandings of their stocks and more responsiveness than the Department of Commerce, have more control of their respective operations, and to update the act to account for better scientific governance and more attention to economic effects.
The revised act has several amendments regarding stock rebuilding protocols, council transparency, catch limits, pollock cooperative quota limits, the definition of “overfished” or depleted stocks, data collection, MSA authority in relation to other federal responsibilities, and the definition and role of subsistence.
The MSA governs eight regional councils in the federal waters off the U.S. coast. Alaska’s waters, fished mainly by fishermen from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest states, fall under the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s authority.
Some changes make provisions for more flexible planning. The plans for rebuilding depleted fisheries will remove the current mandatory 10 years for rebuilding plans and allow councils to phase in rebuilding plans over a three-year period to limit damaging effects to fishing economies.
Read the full story from the Alaska Journal of Commerce