November 20, 2020 — A national coalition of seafood industry and commercial fishery stakeholders is mobilizing against congressional legislation that would exclude commercial fishing from wide swaths of the nation’s fisheries.
The House bill, filed in late October by U.S. Rep. Raul Grivalja of Arizona, seeks to use “marine protected areas” to ban all “commercial extractive use” across 30% of the nation’s exclusive economic zone by 2030. The closures would be part of the so-called “30×30” strategy to conserve 30% of ocean habitat worldwide by the 2030 target date.
In a letter to Grivalja, more than 800 fishing stakeholders, including the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, framed the conservation-fueled proposal as an undermining threat to the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and an assault on the economic viability of fishing communities from New England to Alaska.
“Members are the commercial fishing industry are very concerned about the attempt to undermine the Magnuson Act via these proposed pieces of legislation,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition.