The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF), the largest national organization dedicated to protecting and strengthening the nation’s Atlantic sea scallop fishery, is joining with fishermen and others from around the country at a rally in the nation’s capitol, to urge congressional action and Administration support for a review of and change in the nation’s federal fisheries management laws.
FSF representatives will join with thousands of supporters at tomorrow’s United We Fish rally in Washington, D.C. to call attention to the impact of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary federal law governing America's fisheries, on the nation’s fishing communities.
Feb 23, 2010 – Atlantic sea scallop fishermen and their families are proud to join with the nation’s fishermen in calling for a more appropriate balance between the need for environmental conservation and the importance of maintaining the economic and social health of the nation’s commercial and recreational fishing communities.
Too often fisheries are being managed by artificial and arbitrary targets and timelines that bear little or no connection to our nation’s fish stocks or the working families that rely on them. FSF appreciates the efforts of a bipartisan group of legislators from Maine south to the Caribbean and west to the Gulf of Mexico who are trying to protect fishermen, their families, and the communities in which they live from these kinds of top-down laws that fail to account for local environmental and economic conditions.”
Atlantic sea scallop fishermen have long recognized the importance of improving and strengthening the management of the nation’s scallop fishery, and for more than a decade, they have been working constructively with officials at the federal, state and local levels to help design and build what is today one of most important sustainable fisheries in the country.