BASIC
LAWS
In 1976, the Magnusen-Stevens Act was passed by Congress.
Here is an
overview of the original act:
1) It proposes that the United States must conserve and
manage its stock of
fishes so that an optimum yield will be harvested from
each, while still l
preventing overfishing. An optimum yield is the harvest
level for a certain
species that achieves the greatest overall benefits, including
economic, social,
and biological considerations.
2) The management of all species should be based upon the
best available
scientific information.
3) To the extent practicable, a species of fish should
be managed as a whole
throughout it's range.
4) Conservation and management measures shall not discriminate
between
residents of different states. There are provisions, however,
for some individual
allocation.
5) Measures should consider efficiency in the use of resources,
but not use
economic reasons solely.
6) Measures should take into account and allow for variations
in fisheries,
fishery resources, and catches.
7) Conservation and management measures shall, where practicable,
minimize
costs.
8) Measures shall take into account the importance of fishery
resources to
communities in order to provide for the sustained participation
of such
communities and minimize adverse economic impacts on such
communities.
9) Measures shall, minimize bycatch and mortality of bycatch.
10) Measures shall promote the safety of human life at
sea.
In order
to manage and conserve fish stocks, the Magnuson Act created
eight regional fishery management councils that are overseen
by the Secretary of
Commerce. Each council develops fishery management plans
(FMPs) for the stocks in
their geographical region specifying how a fishery will be
managed. These
plans regulate, among other things, gear types, seasons,
quotas, and licensing > schemes.
In 1996, Congress reauthorized and amended the Magnuson
Act with the
Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA), which made several substantive
changes regarding
bycatch and the conservation of fish habitat. In addition,
the SFA added three new
standards for fishery conservation that the councils must
meet in their
management of federal fisheries. Note that the provisions
of the SFA that called
for these management changes are now part of the Magnuson
Act. It should be
pointed out at this point that the Magnuson-Stevens Act was
doing a fair to good
job in rebuilding the various fish stocks. However, as amended
by the SFA,
seeing positive growth in fish stocks was no longer acceptable.
The SFA set in
place hard numbers governing the amount of time that a fishery
may take to
reach the Optimum Yield, less than ten years in most cases.
This is obviously an
unreasonable time period to regenerate a population that
is engaged in an
active fishery without severe hardship for user groups involved,
especially when
the stock is already increasing in size.
On a regional level, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries
Commission (ASMFC)
was formed for the cooperative management of fisheries on
the East Coast of
the United States. The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council
(Council) is
responsible for the management of living marine resources
from New York south to
North Carolina. The Magnuson Act directs the Council to prepare
fishery
management plans (FMPs) for implementation by the Secretary
of Commerce. Through
the FMPs, the Council must protect fishery resources while
maintaining
opportunities for domestic commercial and recreational fishing
at sustainable levels of
effort and yield. To accomplish this, the Council identifies
fish species and
species groups that are in danger of overfishing, or otherwise
need
management. With the help of its member agencies, the Council
then analyzes the
biological, environmental, economic and social factors affecting
these fisheries, and
prepares and modifies, as needed, fishery management plans
and regulations
for domestic and foreign fishing in the region. The ASMFC
then reviews
fishery management actions in each state to see if the states
are complying with the
management measures in the interstate fishery management
plans. If a state is not complying with a plan, then the
ASMFC must report its findings to the
Secretary of Commerce. The secretary can impose a fishing
moratorium on a state that is not in compliance until the
problem is resolved.
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