ABSTRACT 



The Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 

 (FCMA) established an exclusive U.S. Fishery Conservation 

 Zone extending two hundred miles seaward from the U.S. coast, 

 created eight regional fishery management councils and 

 charged them with developing fishery management plans accord- 

 ing to national standards set forth in the Act, and assigned 

 authority and responsibility for implementing and administer- 

 ing the Act to the Secretary of Commerce. Some of the first 

 fishery management plans, developed pursuant to the Act, did 

 not appear to be fully consistent with the intents and pro- 

 visions of the Act or other related legislation, such as the 

 Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the Endangered Species 

 Act (ESA) . Therefore, in September 1978, the Marine Mammal 

 Commission contracted for a study to determine what setps 

 might be taken to better ensure that fishery management plans 

 are ecologically sound and fully consistent with the intents 

 and provisions of the FCMA, the MMFA, and the ESA. This pa- 

 per reports the results of that study. 



To provide the information needed to determine steps that 

 might be taken to better ensure that fishery management plans 

 fully consider and reflect the intents and provisions of the 

 FCMA, the MMPA and the ESA, the relevant provisions of the 

 three Acts were examined, a representative sample of persons 

 involved in developing, reviewing and implementing fishery 

 management plans was interviewed and/or contacted by mail, 

 and four fishery management plans - the Final Northern Anchovy 

 Plan by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the Draft 

 Bering Sea Groundfish Plan by the North Pacific Fishery Man- 

 agement Council, the Draft Spiny Lobster Plan by the Western 

 Pacific Fishery Management Council, and the Draft Squid Plan 

 by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council - were reviewed 

 in detail with respect to treatment of nontarget species and 

 selection of optimum yield levels in relation to maximum sus- 

 tainable yield (MSY) estimates and relevant ecological consid- 

 erations . 



From the information compiled and evaluated, it appears 

 that : 



1. fishery management plans are being based primarily 

 upon traditional, single-species, MSY management 

 concepts, rather than upon multi-species, ecosystem- 

 oriented management concepts, and, consequently, 

 are not fully consistent with the intents and pro- 

 visions of the FCMA; 



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