PROTECTING OUR OCEANS—Shore birds looking for dinner in the wash from the surf in Virginia’s Assateague Island National Seashore. Overfishing off our coasts has led to dwindling fish populations. U.S. PIRG is working to strengthen fishery management laws in Congress.

Most of us have fond memories of going down to the sea or the beach as children or adults to bask in the warmth of the sun and enjoy the smells and sounds.

The oceans play an important role in our quality of life, our food, our history and our happiness.

U.S. fishermen landed 4.3 million tons of seafood valued at $3.3 billion in 2003. Their industry provided nearly 70,000 jobs in the seafood sector. But commercial uses of the ocean don’t tell the full story.

Visiting the beach is a national pastime. Each year, nearly 64 million Americans visit a beach or fish for outdoor recreation—and they spend tens of billions of dollars.

Oceans In Deep Trouble
But our oceans are in bad shape. Recently, two bi-partisan commissions, the President’s U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (2004) and the Pew Oceans Commission (2003), reported a number of significant problems in our oceans.

They found serious overfishing of already depleted fish populations, fishery management councils too heavily influenced by the fishing industry and a variety of other problems like coastal pollution.

The most recent report to Congress on fish from the National Marine Fisheries Service tells a sad story. In New England, almost half of all major fish stocks like cod, flounder, and haddock are severely depleted—with populations at 5 to 20 percent of their historical size.

Unfortunately, overfishing is still rampant elsewhere:
• In the Southeast, all the groupers and snappers are overfished.
• In the Gulf of Mexico, red snapper are depleted.
• Off the Pacific coast, most rockfish populations are so depleted they are essentially closed to commercial fishing.

Management Partly To Blame
At the heart of the overfishing problem is a system of regional fishery management councils set up by the federal government to regulate the nation’s fisheries.

Most of the members of these advisory councils are people who have a commercial interest in catching fish.

The councils are rounded out with a small number of government officials and conservationists who try to balance the influence of the $31 billion per year seafood industry.

The U.S. is alone in giving fishermen so much authority in making harvest decisions; in most countries a government agency plays this role with fishermen as advisors.

Overfishing Report Cards
Since the eight regional councils play such a dominant role in managing their fish it is important to evaluate how they are doing. The Ocean Conservancy recently graded each of the management councils.

Most councils are failing or doing very badly. The best council, the one controlling fishing off Alaska , only got a grade of B. Half of the councils received a failing grade.

What’s obvious from the Ocean Conservancy’s study is that fish off the coasts of New England, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean are in the worst shape. We know that nationally 28 percent of the species for which we have sufficient information are overfished.

What’s also striking is that for almost half of the species that are managed by the government, there is so little available information that we don’t know whether they are overfished or not.

Beginning Fishery Restoration
To end overfishing, the Congress and fishery councils need the political will to take on the fishing industry and vocal fishing communities that exploit overfished species.

In practical terms, it will take a reauthorized version of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, requiring the fishery management councils to listen to the advice of their independent scientific committees and set catch limits at or below sustainable levels.

If fishermen go over their catch limit in a given year, the Magnuson-Stevens Act should require an automatic reduction in the next year’s limit.

Restoration of fish stocks also means reducing fishing capacity because in many fisheries that are in trouble there are too many boats chasing too few fish.

Protecting our fisheries will also require reform of the fishery management councils, so that they make better conservation decisions. U.S. PIRG and our coalition are recommending that Congress take the following actions:
• Require the councils to listen to the advice of independent scientific committees on what catch limits to set for fishermen;
• Broaden representation on the councils to include citizens without a financial interest in the fishing industry;
• Require technical training for council members before they can start voting.

Congress Should Strengthen Act
The Senate will debate a bill in the next few months to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The bill has bipartisan support.

Unfortunately, the Magnuson- Stevens bill only “treads water” on the overfishing problem. The regional fishery management councils wouldn’t be required to follow independent scientific advice about catch levels. If fishermen go over their catch-limit in a given year, there would be no clear, automatic reduction in the next year’s limit.

In the next few months, both the Senate and House versions of the fishery management laws will come to a vote.

U.S. PIRG has been working over the last few months to improve the Senate version of the Magnuson- Stevens bill to strengthen overfishing protections.

In the House, we have been working to build support for a proposal by Rep. Nick Rahall (W. Va.) called the Fisheries Science and Management Enhancement Act, which would reform the regional management councils.

It has been a long decade since Congress last focused on the oceans. The oceans can’t endure another 10 years of overfishing before we take action.

This article was written by Mike Gravitz, ocean conservation advocate for U.S. PIRG.