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Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996

The 1976 law, the Fishery Conservation and Management Act, was later renamed the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, for former Washington Senator Warren G. Magnuson. The Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 made significant amendments to strengthen conservation and added the name of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act maintained the existing regional fishery management structure and featured an increased focus on sustainability by making a number of revisions to:

• Strengthen requirements to prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished fisheries. Each fishery management plan is required to specify objective and measurable criteria for determining when a stock is overfished or when overfishing is occurring, and to establish measures for rebuilding the stock.
• Add definitions for overfishing, overfished, and fishing communities.
• Add three new National Standards to address fishing vessel safety, fishing communities, and bycatch, and also revise several existing standards.
• Address needs for improved fishery monitoring, enhanced research, greater consideration of fishing communities, identification of essential fish habitat, formation of constituent advisory panels, and analysis of fishing capacity, among other activities.