February 19, 2014 — Commercial and recreational fishermen in the United States are hoping that an amendment to the Magnuson-Stevens Act will address a misnaming issue that has unjustly penalized the fishing industry.
The proposed amendment is contained in the draft, called Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act.
The draft legislation aims to alleviate a number of concerns that recreational and commercial fishermen and the businesses that depend on them have had, since the original intent of the MSA has been severely distorted by a number of agenda-driven organizations, according to Fishupdate.com.
Currently the MSA defines any stock of fish that is not at a high enough level to produce the maximum sustainable yield as being “over-fished.”
This is regardless of whether it is fishing that has reduced the stock to this level, or of whether cutting back on or curtailing fishing will return that stock to a “non-over-fished” condition.
The law is without question the most important piece of legislation that deals with U.S. domestic fisheries management. Thus, equating “not enough fish” with “over-fished” contributes to a blame-it-all-on-fishing mindset and is a gift to the anti-fishing activists.
Read the full story at the Homer News