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Ending Overfishing (Before it Ends Itself) 



Carl Safina 



Simple changes to existing federal law could save billions of dollars 

 and thousands of jobs. 



In the late 1960s and 1970s, fishing vessels from distant nations began arriving 

 in force near the coast of North America. They came primarily from eastern 

 Europe, the U.S.S.R., and east Asia. And they came with fishing power beyond 

 anything Americans had ever used. Equipped to fish for months at a time and 

 with the finest electronic fish-finding gear available, cooperating fleets of catcher 

 boats systematically scoured coastal waters, working with floating factories 

 (affectionately referred to as "mother ships") capable of processing phenomenal 

 quantities of wild fish into seafood products at the scene of capture. Not all of 

 this occurred somewhere over the horizon. I once ran my own boat past a Polish 

 vessel processing squid so close to shore that crew members could watch the 

 Americans in their colorful swimsuits playing in the surf. Neither the fish 

 populations, nor the relatively small-scale coastal American fishers of the day, 

 could last long under the onslaught. 



Reacting on behalf of American fishers to the rapid devastation of many fish 

 populations on the continental shelves of North America, Congress in 1976 passed 

 the Magnuson Fisheries Management and Conservation Act. The Magnuson Act, 

 as it is often called, created federal authority to manage fisheries, and claimed the 

 area between 3 and 200 miles from shore- two million square miles of ocean— as 

 the Fishery Conservation Zone (later changed to the Exclusive Economic Zone, 

 or EEZ) of the United States. 



Congress' major purpose in enacting the Magnuson Fisheries Act was twofold: 

 1) re-Americanize the fisheries by controlling or eliminating foreign fishing 

 along our coasts, and 2) conserve and restore the fish. ITie first goal was 

 accomplished with Yankee efficiency. But with a few exceptions, effective work 

 toward the second goal has never really kicked in. This is largely because 

 deficiencies in the Act remain significant. The Act is up for reauthorization this 

 year, and the time is ripe for some changes in order to end overfishing in U.S. 

 federal waters. Foremost, the Act must be amended to a) compel fishery 

 managers to end overfishing and restore depleted living resources, b) empower 

 fishery managers to conserve and restore habitat, c) erect a national policy for 

 the minimization of incidentally killed bycatch. 



The Magnuson Act's two major purposes have in practice proven 

 incompatible. To aid re-Americanization and domestic fishery development, the 

 federal government extended to American fishermen a protective umbrella of 

 loan guarantees and investment incentives that allowed them to rapidly expand 

 their fishing capability, which soon matched that of the recently-eliminated 

 foreigners. In retrospect, these well-meaning incentive programs were disastrous 

 to both fish and fishers, especially independent fishers, because they encouraged 

 investment in fishing by people with no prior history or stake in fisheries. This 

 increased investment resulted in tremendous overcapitalization; far more fishing 

 power than needed to capture the available fish in sustainable quantities, too much 

 fishing power to allow all the players to remain reasonably profitable, and too 

 many boats chasing too few fish. Overfishing and fish habitat loss have continued 

 to be chronic and widespread, and attempts to grapple with them have been too 

 little or too late in many instances. 



