Tag Archives: Fishery Management Councils
Fisheries across nation seeking monitor waivers
What began in the fisheries of New England has spread across the country. Fishing stakeholders from as far away as the West Coast and Alaska have joined Northeast commercial fishermen in pressuring NOAA Fisheries to extend — and uniformly apply — waivers from having to carry at-sea monitors and other observers on vessels while the COVID-19 pandemic still rages. The Seafood Harvesters of America, an umbrella organization that represents 18 separate fishing groups from Maine to Alaska, wrote to NOAA Fisheries and Department of Commerce officials this week to advance many of the same safety arguments against reinstating observers aboard commercial fishing vessels in the midst of the pandemic. >click to read< 16:30
Magnuson Reauthorization, let’s get it right this time – Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet USA
When the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) became law 0n April 13, 1976, one of its primary selling points, along with reserving the fish and shellfish in our coastal waters out to two hundred miles for U.S. fishermen, was that the eight regional Fishery Management Councils that it established had as voting members both government employees who were involved in fisheries management and private citizens who were knowledgeable about fisheries. Ideally this made for balanced decision making, allowing for both the official view of what’s going on in particular fisheries and the on-the-water observations of people with an actual working knowledge of the fisheries, and with the Secretary of Commerce required to sign off on any fishery management actions. (It’s important to note that this was well before supposed environmental crises were supporting a multi-billion dollar industry.) click here to read this article. 12:21
MSA: Finding Win-Win Outcomes For Conservation And Utilization
The economic importance of the U.S. fishing industry cannot be overstated. The survival of many coastal communities largely depends on whether Congress and fishery managers can establish policies allowing fisheries to generate yield over the long term, rebuild overfished stocks and achieve the conservation objectives of the MSA. Read more here 09:05
Commerce IG Releases Catch Share Investigation Report, Announces Observer Program Audit
Attached please find the final report of our review of NOAAs management of Catch Share programs. This is the third report in a multiple-phase review of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and Fishery Management Councils (FMC). The objective of the review was to evaluate the sufficiency of NOAA’s implementation and monitoring of a selection of catch share programs developed by FMCs. For the six programs reviewed, the report identified several issues: here
Notice: Audit of the National Marine Fisheries Service Observer Program here 16:49
