It’s long since past time to fix the Magnuson Act and put recreational fishermen back on the water. We rallied once, we have to do it again!
The date was February 24, 2010, the place, a small park alongside the Capitol Building where full sessions of the House of Representatives and Senate were underway. An army of over 5,000 recreational and commercial fishermen descended on the park in an orderly and respectful show of force to tell our elected representatives that legislation they passed in 2007 was not working and was, in fact, putting thousands of American fishermen, both commercial and recreational, along with people in the industries that are supported by fishing OUT OF BUSINESS! And the shame was it was totally unnecessary. The rally featured a host of speakers from the recreational and commercial fishing community, organizers of the event, and a handful of Congressmen and Senators who seemed genuinely concerned with our plight and addressed the crowd. Noticeably absent, representatives of the sportfishing and boating trade associations, who, it was later reported, were working behind the scenes to thwart the efforts of the fishermen at the rally, something that has not been forgotten to this day.
We left Washington with high hopes that our representatives had gotten the message loud and clear. Fixing the MSA was not just a conservation matter, but also a jobs issue with huge socioeconomic consequences. In the weeks that followed lip service was paid, other more pressing issues pushed fisheries reform legislation to the back burner and here we are two years later with the problems created by the 2007 MSA reauthorization reaching critical mass.
Was the 2010 Rally a failure? Not according to Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, one of the primary organizing groups of the event. “While the rally did not bring about the substantive changes that were needed,” he told us in a recent interview, “it did bring the problems resulting from the prior MSA reauthorization language to the forefront and these festering problems have spawned a host of bills introduced in the House and Senate in the past few months, each aimed at correcting some perceived problem with the old legislation.
“With over 15 years of lobbying experience in D.C. on behalf of the RFA one thing is abundantly clear,” Donofrio continued, “Congress works at a glacial pace and unless the pressure brought to bear on them is strong and constant, important issues like these fall out of their stream of consciousness. That’s why we are organizing a second rally under the banner of “Keep Fishermen Fishing” to take place on March 21, 2012 in the same place as the original rally in 2010.”
So what’s different today that might increase our chances of a successful outcome this time? “First and foremost, this is an election year,” counseled Donofrio. “There is great fear in Washington among our elected representatives that their days are numbered and that their inability to coalesce behind important issues like this will be the downfall of their political careers. Politicians should be more receptive to working together to correct the very problems that are putting commercial and recreational fishermen off the water and killing jobs in the tackle and marine industries with no significant conservation benefit to our fisheries resources. The sad part, and the one that really has fishermen mad as hell, is that these problems are a direct result of poorly crafted, poorly vetted legislation that was passed in 2007.”
“This time the level of frustration among fishermen and the industry has reached a fever pitch and we expect to have even stronger attendance at this rally,” he continued. “There are currently six different pieces of legislation floating around House and Senate committees all aimed at fixing some part of the MSA. This confluence of these factors should jar what has become a do-nothing Congress with the lowest approval rating in history into acting on our behalf!”
You can add to this mix of imminent factors an historically unpopular administration that has made appointing some of the most radical environmentalist to head NOAA Fisheries. There is a total lack of trust in the job they are doing and a lot of questions about the motives behind many of the positions the fisheries service has taken since 2008! There is a growing number of members of the House and Senate from both parties that have lost all faith and confidence in the Fisheries Service bureaucracy under its current stewardship.
The rally this year takes place under the banner “Keep Fishermen Fishing” and will bring together thousands of fishermen from coastal states around the nation. Up-to-the-minute details can be found at keepfishermenfishing.com or by calling the Recreational Fishing Alliance office at 888-JOIN-RFA. Buses to transport fishermen from near and far to the Washington rally will be listed [check this issue of Angler magazine as well] and there is contact information for fishing clubs, tackle shops, marinas, or any other organizations or businesses that wish to organize buses from their facilities. This has to be a massive effort for it to garner the notice and necessary action from our representatives.
“No one is asking for a total relaxation in regulations or for the ability to go out and catch the last fish,” advised Donofrio. “Recreational fishermen are conservationists at heart and have been involved in saving and rebuilding fisheries for many more years than the environmental zealots who feel they are now running the show. All we are asking for is a recognition that managers are dealing with highly questionable data and a process that forces them to make onerous regulatory decisions without any flexibility to consider the level of socioeconomic harm that is being done with little or no conservation benefit.
“MSA needs to be fixed so that fishermen can maintain a reasonable level of access to rebuilding and rebuilt fisheries and that is why many of the people attending the rally will be championing the House Bill HR3061 co-sponsored by Congressmen Frank Pallone Jr (D-NJ) and Walter B. Jones (R-NC). The bill does not gut MSA like some in the environmental community claim, but makes reasonable changes to correct the inappropriate use of supposed management tools like Annual Catch Limits (ACL) and Accountability Measures (AM). These provisions are almost impossible to implement with the current level and accuracy of assessment and landings data and force draconian shut downs of entire fisheries that common sense tells us are in better shape than they have been in years. Of the bills currently being circulated through the committee process in Congress, only HR3601 addresses all the problems that need serious and immediate attention.”
Here’s what HR3601 would do:
1. Address lack of management flexibility with arbitrary rebuilding timelines by including language which gives the Secretary of Commerce limited authority to extend rebuilding timelines for fish stocks on a positive rebuilding trend and where environmental or socioeconomic concerns warrant an extension. HR3061 gives the Secretary discretion of applying the proven management tool to all fisheries given certain criteria are met; furthermore, any extension is based on the biological attributes of the stock and current environmental factors influencing rebuilding. In no way are rebuilding timeframes left open ended.
2. Require the Science and Statistical Committees (SSC) to provide detailed reports justifying any management recommendations while also identifying areas where precautionary management approach was applied. This will give fishermen the opportunity to better understand how the SSC arrives at final recommendations and provide a chance to openly respond interactively at the regional management council level in terms of the quota-setting process.
3. Provide the Secretary of Commerce with authority to suspend application of annual catch limits (ACLs) if the stock is either rebuilt or deemed not overfished, or when the level of uncertainty in the data is not consistent with National Standard 8 (best available science). A product of the 2006 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, ACLs set a rigid catch limit in terms of pounds to which each sector must adhere. While pound-for-pound harvest monitoring is straightforward and timely in the commercial sector, random data sampling of anglers makes it impossible to develop recreational ACL estimates (in pounds) with the same low level of error as with the commercial sector.
4. Requires regional councils to calculate the socioeconomic impact of their management decisions on an annual basis. Furthermore, the councils will be required to project what the current management decisions will have on the socioeconomic value of the fishery once management objectives are met.
5. Charges the National Research Council (NRC) with performing a comprehensive review of the current recreational data collection systems to determine what changes, if any, were made since the last NRC report in 2006 and subsequent congressional mandate to replace by January 1, 2009.
So get ready for a trip to Washington DC on March 21st for what we hope will be the biggest fishermen’s rally that has even been organized. It’s time for all of us to show our elected representatives we are mad as hell and unless they get off their butts and fix the MSA we’re not going to take it anymore. They will be marked for an end to their political careers in November 2012.
For more information on the rally go to http://www.keepfishermenfishing.com and visit the RFA website (http://www.joinrfa.org) regularly too.
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