4. identify actions which could be taken by the 

 regional fishery management councils, the Na- 

 tional Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and/or 

 the Marine Mammal Commission to better meet 

 the intents of the Marine Mammal Protection 

 Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Fish- 

 ery Conservation and Management Act. 



This paper reports the results of that study. 



This report is organized around three aspects of fishery 

 management in light of the FCMA, the MMPA, and the ESA, 

 namely the nature of conservation and management required 

 by the Acts, whether present fishery management plans and 

 practices satisfy those requirements, and how existing 

 management plans and practices can be modified to meet the 

 intents of the Acts more completely. The intent of this re- 

 port is to document that the ecological awareness reflected 

 in the three Acts requires an ecosystem level perspective on 

 fisheries management, and that the fishery management plans 

 developed to date do not fully reflect that ecological aware- 

 ness. Suggestions are made for broadening fisheries manage- 

 ment perspectives to include ecological interactions and 

 thus to better meet the intents of the FCMA, MMPA, and ESA. 



II. METHODS 



Work began on this study in October of 1978. The first 

 major task was a review of the general intents and relevant 

 provisions of the MMPA, FCMA and ESA to identify the general 

 nature of conservation and management they required. The Acts 

 were reviewed with respect to the conservation and management 

 standards contained in each and the requirements for the de- 

 velopment of fishery management plans in the FCMA. 



In addition to information on the legislative require- 

 ments of the FCMA, insight into the day to day aspects of 

 implementing the FCMA was required for this study. Thus, the 

 second major task was acquisition of information on the es- 

 tablishment and activities of the regional fishery management 

 councils, the differences in their operating procedures, 

 and the process for drafting, adopting, reviewing and im- 

 plementing the fishery management plans required by the FCMA. 

 To get this kind of information, representatives of the 

 fishery management councils, their scientific and statistical 

 committees and the National Marine Fisheries Service were 

 contacted. All of the individuals interviewed during the 

 fall of 1978 for the preparation of the first draft of this 

 report are listed in Appendix A. ■ About half of them were 



