Marine Fisheries Initiative

Challenge:

Photo courtesy: NOAA

Our ocean andcoastal resources are being inadequately managed, and the growing number of proposed activities and pressures facing ocean areas and resources – including proposals for wind and wave energy, liquefied natural gas, gas terminals, desalinization plants, oil exploration, aquaculture, recreation, shipping and commercial fishing – have resulted in more concern on how to effectively manage these multiple and competing uses while conserving the resource.

National policy has been 30 years of commercial exploitation of the nation’s marine resources, developing where commercial fishing needed and sustaining where already developed. This policy has led to constant boom and bust cycles in the federally regulated fisheries of the coastal states. The one constant in all these fisheries has been the continued and persistent federal policy of sustaining economic activity at the expense of the fish. The implementation of this policy can be seen in the drive for Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs), bailouts for disaster relief, buyouts of parts of different fisheries, federally financed cooperative research programs used to support commercial fisheries and static allocations based on historic catches and the continuous effort by fishery managers to exploit the resource at its maximum annual level of abundance.

Strategy:

The TRCP and its Marine Conservation Working Group have developed sensible solutions for protecting oceans and coasts, while still allowing for recreational use of those resources. In their report, titled Navigating a Future for Saltwater Fishing, they laid out the four SALT principles to be used for future ocean governance. The four principles are:

Science must be used in marine fisheries management decisions in order to effectively restore degraded marine ecosystems and depleted fish stocks, including fishing quotas, gear restrictions, trip and creel limits, size limitations and seasonal or temporary closures of fishing areas. Marine policy should also establish appropriate guidelines for marine protected areas and require a scientific basis for designation, a transparent process and periodic review;

Allocate fisheries resources so that the economic impact of all sectors, including the recreational angling sector, as well as catch records and other factors are considered;

License saltwater anglers to improve data collection and increase funding for marine conservation. New marine policy should encourage the creation of uniform, state-based saltwater fishing licenses, using the income from increased licensing to fund improved coastal fisheries management, and establish a national registry of recreational anglers to serve in the interim; and

Tackle used by anglers should reduce bycatch and not damage habitat. Marine policy should require gear to be evaluated and certified as appropriate in each fishery and encourage the research and use of new, safer technologies.

Action:

The TRCP sees an organizing opportunity for the marine fisheries program in the implementation phase of the recently reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). This phase of MSA will provide the TRCP with an opportunity to implement public policy recommendations that will follow the Commissions’ research and appeal to recreational anglers.

Federal regulators have already begun to write the rules for implementing the bill and it is in that process that crucial decisions will be made that can impact the regulation of fisheries for years to come. Those decisions can, with the twist of one word or a sentence, either reflect the intent of the legislation or undermine it. The recreational fishing community plans to be part of the process of designing the regulations so that the SALT principles are not lost in the implementation of the law.

For more information about our marine fisheries initiative, contact Tom Franklin, senior vice president.