June 3, 2024 – The following was released by the National Fisheries Institute:
The United States has built a world-renowned fishery management
system on regional, science-based oversight and stakeholder collaboration. The success of this
system is beyond dispute.
Rep. Mary Peltola’s “Bottom Trawl Clarity Act” flies in the face of decades of scientific
understanding and actual outcomes in hundreds of federally managed fisheries. Subjectively
walling off areas and imposing static area closures based on ideological hostility to certain
harvesting methods is the wrong approach. It will limit the nation’s flexibility to manage
fisheries based on the best available science and, in the process, will threaten a significant
number of jobs in seafood harvesting and processing, many of them in remote Alaska
communities.
Congress should not take up this flawed legislation.
Lisa Wallenda Picard
President & CEO