United States Fisheries Policy
Facing threats from overfishing, oil and nitrogen runoff, invasive species, aquaculture, coastal development, climate change, and other detrimental forces, fish species all along the United States' coastline have stared down the fate of extinction over the past 100 years.
Despite this alarming state of affairs, the idea of the ocean as a largely inexhaustible resource has guided much of U.S. ocean policy to date. The 1969 Stratton Commission conducted the nation's first policy review, recommending the creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). However, the commission approached its review with the goal of renovating and expanding fisheries to compete successfully in the world seafood markets, and laws were often implemented only as crises arose.
As a result, marine resources are governed by a dozen agencies and departments and more than 140 laws. The most wide-ranging of these, the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, set up eight regional fishery management councils to manage marine fisheries within a 200-mile wide zone contiguous to the United States. While in theory, this structure would help ensure that each policy is customized for individual regions, in practice, the councils tend to protect short-term commercial interests over long-term sustainability. In the 27 years since the Magnuson-Stevens Act was implemented, U.S. fisheries have been characterized by a race for fish, an overinvestment in fishing capital, and shortened seasons that leave fisherman just scraping by.
At the start of the 21st century, however, the United States is on the cusp of a revolution in managing marine resources. The 2000 Oceans Act established a 16-member U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy to develop recommendations for a new and comprehensive national ocean policy. The commission produced its report four years later. Meanwhile, the Pew Center, frustrated with the U.S. Commission's slow progress, created the Pew Oceans Commission, which released its report in 2003.
In articles prepared for Marine Resource Economics and Issues for Science and Technology, RFF Fellow James N. Sanchirico and colleague Susan A. Hanna of Oregon State University explore the similarities and differences of the two reports and offer their own recommendations to Congress. The authors say in "Navigating U.S. Fishery Management into the 21st Century" that while the reports disagree on how to implement change, both agree that fishery management should take an ecosystem-based approach; advocate a regional approach with strong central support; better use scientific information and analysis in decisionmaking; separate conservation decisions (how much fish can be taken) from allocation decisions (who can take); and end the race for fish. |
Thalassorama: Navigating U.S. Fishery Management into the 21st Century |
According to Sanchirico and Hanna, resolving this situation should take priority over the organizational "reshuffling" advocated by the two commissions. "Basic first aid tells one to stop the bleeding first," they say in "Sink or Swim Time for U.S. Fishery Policy." To this end, they recommend that the president direct the eight regional fishery councils to allow managers to implement guidelines that pair responsibility for marine health with rights to catches. Such guidelines could include fishing cooperatives, in which fishers are granted legal authority to collude to determine their own allocations, or individual fishing quotas (IFQs), a program analogous to other cap-and-trade systems, in which the total allowable catch in a region is allocated to participants based on historical catch and fishing effort. |
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Sanchirico and Hanna's other short-term recommendations include requiring allowable catch limits be set for all major fish stocks this year; requiring fishers to provide adequate, reliable information on fishing activities; and creating a fund to improve data collection methods, such as electronic logbooks and vessel monitoring systems.
In the long-term, they agree with the U.S. and Pew Commissions reports that ocean policy should be guided by an ecosystem-based management approach. However, they warn that hard questions remain, such as what a "true" ecosystem management plan entails. For instance, the Pew Commission recommends redefining management objectives, so that the principal goal is to "protect the long-term health and viability of fisheries by protecting, maintaining, and restoring the health, integrity, productive capacity, and resilience of the marine ecosystems upon which they depend." It emphasizes that this ecosystem goal should always take place over socioeconomic goals but offers little guidance on how to measure such objectives, Sanchirico and Hanna say. |
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The two reports have opened a floodgate of congressional activity: as of 2005, about xx bills with one or more recommendations from the commissions have been introduced. The presidential response thus far has included setting up a cabinet-level Committee on Ocean Policy in January 2005 and sending legislation to Congress in September 2005 to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The bill would double by 2010 the number of "dedicated access privileges" -- rights-based management systems such as IFQs -- bringing eight new fisheries under such management.
Two months after the president issued this legislation, Senators Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) introduced an alternate bill that would, for the first time, mandate the use of allowable catch levels and require that harvest in excess of the annual limit be deducted from the limit for the following year. It would also expand the number of fisheries operating under access privilege programs such as IFQs, setting up a national guideline for these programs and allowing fisheries to adopt them if their regional councils vote to do so.
On the House side, Representatives Richard Pombo (R-Ca) and Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md) are also expected to move their own reauthorization bills through Congress early in 2006.
The first months of 2006 will be a defining time for U.S. fisheries policy. Although reversing current trends will not be easy, say Sanchirico and Hanna, it is possible: if government is able to incorporate the recommendations before them into a cohesive ocean policy, the sea's bounty might be as available for future generations as it is for us today.
