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Originally enacted in 1976, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) is the primary law governing marine fisheries management in the federal waters of the United States. Congress passed the MSA to claim sovereign rights over the fishery resources of the continental shelf within the U.S. exclusive economic zone. The MSA also established eight regional fishery management councils. Each council focuses on a specific coastal region and is made up of individuals knowledgeable of fisheries, with balanced representation from fisheries in that region. Councils have advisory jurisdiction to develop fishery management plans (FMPs) and plan amendments that regulate marine fisheries in federal waters. Generally, fishing interests make up the majority of councils, with state and government agency representatives holding most of the remaining seats.
In 1996, the conservation requirements of the MSA were strengthened through requirements to constrain fishing efforts based on the biology of fish species, rebuild overfished populations in a timely manner, protect ocean habitats that are essential to fishes throughout their lifecycles, and minimize the deaths of fish, birds, and other ocean wildlife that are incidentally caught during fishing operations (also known as bycatch).
Sustainable Fisheries Act Amendments
In response to widespread and growing concern about the status of U.S. fisheries, Congress passed the Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA) to amend the MSA in 1996. The SFA addressed three major concerns: overfishing, bycatch, and habitat destruction, and added new requirements for conservation measures to:
- Constrain fishing rates based on the biology of fished species, thus better preventing overfishing, while also rebuilding overfished species in a timely manner.
- Assess the rates of bycatch and minimize these rates the the extent practicable.
- Define the extent of essential fish habitat (EFH)—areas that fish rely on throughout their lifecycles, protect these areas from fishing impacts to the extent practicable, and require consultations between government agencies if a non-fishing activity is likely to impact EFH.
Additionally, the SFA required the National Marine Fisheries Service to produce an annual report to Congress detailing the Status of Fisheries of the United States as a means to inform members of Congress and the public about the health of fish species. The SFA required councils to enact policies to address these new requirements by October 1998.
Despite a now 5-year old deadline, much work needs to be done to enact the SFA requirements. Of the 959 commercial stocks nationwide, 68.3% are of an unknown status, meaning that it is unknown if the stocks are stable, increasing or declining. Of the 304 stocks whose status is known, 30.6% are either experiencing overfishing, are overfished, or both.1 In most regions of the country, bycatch is generally not counted and few steps have been taken to minimize this wasteful practice. And in almost all areas of the country, councils have inadequately protected essential fish habitat from the impacts of fishing.
Magnuson-Stevens Act Status
This law is amended from time to time, and there has been discussion of and interest in amending it since 2000. In 2001, Congress considered but did not pass a new amendement to this law. In their deliberations, Congress showed a willingness to weaken the SFA requirements in response to complaints from some industry lobbyists that the requirements are too severe—this despite the fact that policies have yet to be formulated to address many of those requirements. For example, there has been consideration of relaxing the need to protect habitats from fishing activity and in redefining overfishing to allow species to drop to historically low levels without declaring them overfished if the decline might be attributed to some change in climate or oceanography (this is a bad idea since an unproductive fish population needs a chance to recover whether its decline was due to fishing or some other factor).
1 Dayton, P.K., S. Thrush, and F.C. Coleman. 2002. Ecological Effects of Fishing in Marine Ecosystems of the United States. Pew Ocean Commission, Arlington, Virginia.
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