F R O M T H E C R O W E ’ S N E S T
Stand Up and Be Heard
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (MSA) and the regulatory system that act put in place have failed in their mission to restore and create sustainable fisheries.
There is currently a call from science and industry for Congressional overhaul of the MSA.
While the federal fisheries bureaucracy is claiming success, everyone else involved sees its failures.
Industry leaders want Congress’s tenth-year MSA reauthorization strengthened against bureaucratic agendas. Commercial fishing and communities may not survive another 10 years without MSA changes.
Another less visible development that will affect all fishermen is the evolving National Ocean Policy. The development plan for an ocean policy is as vague as the speculation about how it will specifically impact stakeholders. Born by executive order in 2010 with a 2015 deadline in the context of aggressive domestic energy development, it’s a safe bet that energy will hold trump cards in any National Ocean Policy.
Ocean policy may be no more than the comments that come out of the regional planning body (RPB) meetings. Inside observers liken it to zoning of the ocean within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. An analogy might be the settlement of the wild American West after the Civil War. Railroads were given wide swaths of land to build railroads. Enormous tracts of land and mineral rights were divided and parceled out. State, county, town and individual property lines were drawn. Oil was discovered. Beef cattle farms replaced wild buffalo. Indigenous people were moved out. In a few short decades, the western wilderness was divided up and effectively zoned.
Recent organized efforts of Maine lobster fishery interests were able to reach an arrangement in a serious federal challenge to their fishing rights and livelihoods regarding gear and whales. This is an indication that engagement can work.
Fishermen are the most senior and most involved ocean stakeholders. And they are all busy trying to survive. RPB meetings to date have been establishing marine resource baselines in anticipation of the need to assess changes from various new stakeholder uses. But there have been very few fishermen speaking for protection of and access to their resource. The coming New England RPB meetings in October may be the last time New England fishermen will have an opportunity to put something on the record regarding what is important to them in an ocean policy. Their words will not make law. But they will say, “We are here. This is what we need.” More fishermen need to stand up and be heard this month.