Wednesday, 22 August 2018 03:07 PM
Company Update
WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2018 / Yesterday, in an op-ed published in The Hill, Greg DiDomenico, executive director of the Garden State Seafood Association in New Jersey, and Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, criticized S.1520, a reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) currently being considered by the Senate.
According to the op-ed, S.1520, or the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act of 2018, introduces changes to MSA that ''would impose increasingly burdensome regulations on American fishermen and undermine [the] goal of increasing flexibility in fisheries management.''
Specifically, they wrote that S.1520 would reduce the flexibility available to fisheries managers in rebuilding fish stocks. For example, one provision would require managers to achieve a 75 percent chance of rebuilding a fish stock if it has not been rebuilt in as short a timeframe as possible. According to the authors, this would further increase the reliance on artificial and arbitrary criteria in fisheries management, at the expense of more science-based criteria.
The bill also removes language from MSA that allows managers to alter rebuilding timeframes if a species is depleted due to ''ecological'' issues unrelated to fishing, placing further burdens on fishermen for issues outside of their control.
Earlier this summer, the House passed H.R. 200, its own reauthorization of MSA. This legislation, also called the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, was backed by many members of Saving Seafood's National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC) as an update that would support both sustainable fisheries management and U.S. fishing communities.
The Garden State Seafood Association and California Wetfish Producers Association are NCFC members.
Contact:
Robert Vanasse
[email protected]
202 333 2628
SOURCE: National Coalition for Fishing Communities