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even bleaker. So the crews and boats age in a once -proud and independent 

 free-enterprise venture that now offers little sense of future in many areas. This 

 was not the expectation of men and women who have invested their time, money, 

 and lives. On the other hand, fishers themselves have often worked to prevent 

 the management councils from enacting the ounces of prevention that would have 

 been to their own longer-term advantage. Fishery management councils have 

 allowed much damage to occur because the Magnuson Act is vague or lax on key 

 directives. The law should provide fishery managers with both the framework 

 and the legal imperative to accomplish Congress' original intent. And right now, 

 the law provides neither effectively. 



What Went Wrong 



When Congress adopted the Magnuson Act it created a unique form of 

 participatory government by establishing eight regional Fishery Management 

 Councils. The Act directs that the councils be composed of "individuals who, by 

 reason of their occupational or other experience, scientific expertise, or training, 

 are knowledgeable regarding the conservation and management of the 

 commercial or recreational harvest" of marine organisms. This is both a major 

 strength and a major weakness, because, while the voting body of a Council 

 posesses broad practical knowledge about catching and marketing fish, the 

 Councils are largely comprised of individuals with little knowledge or training in 

 resource stewardship or the biological characteristics of marine animal 

 populations. Council composition has also been heavily tilted toward individuals 

 representing fishing groups, resulting in biases so pronounced as to largely 

 account for the failure of the Councils to conserve the fish. (By comparison, we 

 do not allow electric companies to sit on utility commissions.) But the biases of 

 council members are not necessarily self serving or malevolent. Council 

 members are often well-meaning, seeking to shelter fishers in the community 

 they represent from short term economic pain. Unfortunately, an ounce of pain 

 deferred one year, and an ounce deferred the next, have added up to a pound of 

 trouble. The irony is that the cumulative result of many attempts to assure that 

 fishers stay in business is that in many fisheries the financial returns are now the 

 lowest they have ever been, more fishers are going out of business than ever, and 

 fishing holds little promise as a way of life for the children of many fishing 

 families. Overfishing hurts economic and social interests in the long term. And 

 now, eighteen years after the Act came into force, is the long term. The piper is 

 demanding payment, and the fishing communities (not the managers who made or 

 avoided the decisions) are paying. 



Among all these problems weaves the National Marine Fisheries Service. 

 Ostensibly, NMFS is "responsible" for managing the living marine resources of 

 the United States' Exclusive Economic Zoiie, under the authority of over 100 

 federal statutes. In reality, NMFS has been shoved into the back seat and taken 

 for a ride like a kidnapping victim. "The National Marine Fisheries Service is an 

 agency with severe problems and challenges that require immediate attention," 

 says the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, an unusual non-profit 

 organization established by an act of Congress in 1984, which disburses federal 

 monies in support of the programs of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service. Foremost among NMFS' severe problems is 

 that it is buried in the Department of Commerce. Other agencies that deal with 

 our nations living renewable resources (the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife 

 Service, etc.) and are housed in the Department of Interior, among peer groups 

 that understand sustainable resource stewardship and its role in the economy. 

 NMFS exists in solitary confinement in a department that deals with 

 manufactured factory commodities. It is virtually inconceivable that any 

 Secretary of Commerce would have a background attuned to natural resource 



