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Councils or the National Marine Fisheries Service to halt overfishing. Other 

 critical omissions in the Act regarding the development of fishery management 

 plans are that: 1) the guidelines fail to specify a time in which a council must 

 address overfishing once identified; 2) the Act contains no provision for action if 

 a Council does not respond to overfishing; 3) managers are not required to 

 consider predator-prey or other important ecological relationships among fishery 

 resources when determining allowable catches for any single species; 4) the 

 guidelines fail to direct the councils to establish a specific rebuilding goal or 

 rebuilding timetable for depleted but stable populations. The Act should require 

 the Secretary to intervene when a council fails to develop an adequate recovery 

 plan within a specified period for an overfished species. Some observers have 

 suggested creation of an independent scientific review panel to assure that overall 

 catch quotas are sustainable. This would be a good way to ensure that 

 management measures recognize the boundaries of natural capacity. And some 

 believe that management plans for overfished species should include a 

 moratorium on new entrants into the fishery until the fish populations are rebuilt 

 to target levels, a modest but important proposal. The Act should clearly require 

 that Fishery Management Plans favor long-term benefits to the nation over short 

 term profit-making. This is the best way to help fishers and coastal communities. 



A peculiar series of additional problems and inconsistencies in the Act arise in 

 the case of Atlantic tunas and billfishes (swordfish and marlins). Off our Atlantic 

 coast the international Atlantic tuna commission (ICCAT) is involved in 

 management of tunas and billfishes, some of which cross international and high 

 seas boundaries during their annual migrations. The commission can recommend 

 management measures for implementation by its member countries. But its 

 recommendations are very few, and characteristically lax (often contrary to its 

 scientists' recommendations), resulting in documented population declines of 50 

 to 90 percent for bluefin tuna, swordfish, and marlins (according to the 

 commission's own data). Amendments added to the Magnuson Act in 1990 at the 

 behest of tuna and swordfishing interests forbid U.S. catch quotas from being 

 more restrictive than those quotas agreed to by the commission. In effect this 

 allows a country, such as Japan, to participate in setting catch quotas in U.S. 

 waters for fish that are imported to that country from the U.S. Through these 

 amendments, American fishermen protecting short term personal gain have 

 succeeded in handcuffing the National Marine Fisheries Service to the 

 commission's mismanagement. Such deformity of U.S management authority is 

 wholly inconsistent with other U.S. law, is unique among the twenty nations that 

 are party to the tuna commission, and undermines U.S. authority to properly and 

 conscientiously manage our own fish in our. own waters. This language must be 

 struck from the Magnuson Act, allowing the U.S. full power and discretion in 

 managing our fisheries in our Exclusive Economic Zone. More importantly, if 

 the U.S. was empowered to enact conscientious and effective management 

 measures for these fisheries, the U.S. fishing industry would suddenly have 

 incentive to stop using the commission as a refuge for inaction, and seek through 

 the international commission effective conservation by other countries sharing 

 these highly migratory fish populations. 



The Magnuson Act should state that it is national policy to reduce and work 

 toward the elimination of excessive bycatch. The Act also needs to be amended to 

 provide broader authority and clear directives to manage bycatch problems 

 through fishery management plans. It should provide mechanisms for improved 

 data collection on bycatch and create incentives for bycatch-reduction practices 

 and engineering. We also need penalties to discourage excessive bycatch and 

 provide incentive for cleaner and less destructive fishing. 



Currently, the Magnuson Act is set up to try to manage fish in isolation from 



