WELCOME TO BILL'S CORNER!

Dear Constituents,

This summer, NOAA Fisheries Service offered a series of proposals to strengthen our guidelines to Councils on managing fish stocks. These guidelines will end overfishing quicker and require that timelines to rebuild the nation’s fish stocks be more consistent with the biology of the stocks. Since the proposal is primarily scientific and technical in nature and has been misunderstood and therefore misrepresented in the press, I want to be very clear about our goal and what we would achieve. Our goal is an end to overfishing, resulting in healthy, sustainable stocks and fisheries.

We’ve made some rebuilding progress under the existing guidelines. Our annual Status of Stocks report to Congress will be released this month. It shows that we took 6 stocks off the overfished list in 2004 and 3 stocks off the overfishing list. We owe this progress to rebuilding programs put into place within the last 9 years. However, we know we can do better. The report also shows that 3 stocks are newly identified as overfished, and 5 stocks have been newly identified as subject to overfishing. This information disturbs me, primarily because we should no longer have stocks appearing on the overfishing list, particularly in cases where overfishing was previously eliminated.

We are committed to working with the fishery management councils and states to tighten our belts and fix this problem. Our proposal aims to update the agency’s guidelines for how to comply with National Standard 1 of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Act includes 10 National Standards that govern fishery laws in the nation, and Standard 1 requires us to end overfishing and rebuild fish stocks that have become overfished. After nine years of experience working with this mandate under the current guidelines, our top scientists recommended these refinements to close loopholes that have allowed overfishing to continue in some instances. Further, the proposal offers a more scientific way to calculate appropriate rebuilding timeframes and recommends that fishing targets be set halfway between the minimum allowed catch and the maximum catch. This is a major departure from current standard practice of setting rebuilding timelines to the maximum allowed, which results in longer rebuilding timeframes for overfished stocks.

It disturbs me to read how some groups have characterized the reasons for the proposals put forward by the National Marine Fisheries Service. I have extended a hand to all interest groups to make sure they understand our goals. Yet, some continue to berate the agency in the news media, saying that we’re trying to get rid of rebuilding plans or that we’ve given in to one group or another. I take these accusations personally. They are terribly wrong, unfounded and damaging. The agency’s goals are very clear and simple: to end overfishing and rebuild the nation’s overfished stocks. People are welcome to disagree with our approaches to achieving these goals, but not to attack our integrity or spin our proposals and goals into something they are not.

In the spirit of openness and cooperation, I invited representatives from most of the major marine conservation groups to meet with my staff and me here at our headquarters on August 2 to explain our proposal and the rationale behind the proposed changes to our National Standard 1 Guidelines. I was heartened to hear that they collectively agree with the intent of the proposal. That means they don’t truly believe we are “throwing in the towel” on fishermen or abandoning rebuilding plans.

We have extended the comment period until October 21st, and I look forward to receiving your input so that we can tighten the language in the proposal to more precisely communicate our goals and leave no ambiguity for misinterpretation.

I want to thank each and every one of you for your support of the agency. We’ve gotten through some tough times over the past several years, but the agency is stronger for it. You help make us better by participating in the process and keeping the lines of communication open.

One final thing – the Administration is scheduled to release its recommendations for changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Act next month. As I noted before, we have nine years of experience implementing rebuilding plans since the last major change to the Act in 1996. We know what has worked and what has not. Based on this knowledge, we are developing a robust bill for Congress to consider that would implement many of the important provisions of the President’s Ocean Action Plan and give us even stronger management tools. There is only so far we can go with guidelines for implementing the National Standards, but packaged with our Magnuson bill, the Administration’s approaches will help us achieve our shared goals.

References

NOAA Fisheries Service Proposes Improved Guidelines for Fishery Management Decisions