Fishery management in the northeast is broken and dysfunctional. There is no master plan to improve communications, revise data collection, conduct cooperative research and achieve optimum yield. The Magnuson-Stevens Act, the legislation framed by Congress to manage fisheries, is derailed. Appeals to the judiciary have not worked.
Reasonable alignment of fisheries management with the intent of Congress as expressed in the Magnuson-Stevens Act and other pertinent legislation has as yet not been accomplished.
The discrepancy between the intent of Congress and the implementation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act derives from NOAA's interpretation of language in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which is an unnecessarily hard-line, inflexible approach that wastes fisheries resources, minimizes landings and kills jobs.
The lack of common-sense implementation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act by NOAA has stimulated the cities of New Bedford and Gloucester along with 14 other plaintiffs to sue the federal government to remedy the wasteful and seemingly unlawful interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Read the complete opinion piece from The Standard-Times.