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The Environmental Defense Fund welcomes this opportunity to provide 

 testimony on the reauthorization of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and 

 Management Act (MFCMA). EDF is a national non-profit organization that uses 

 science, economics, and law to identify environmental problems and formulate 

 solutions. The authors are a marine ecologist, attorney, and economist, respectively, 

 on the staff of EDF. EDF is a member of the Marine Fish Conservation Network; 

 however, EDF is not representing the Network in this testimony. 



Our nation's fisheries are in serious trouble, both biologically and economically. 

 Overfishing, overcapitalization, declining fish populations, and declining profits have 

 resulted from a combination of many factors. These include: 



* major flaws in current methods of stock assessment and the determination of 

 sustainable yield; 



* lack of a risk-averse approach to managing fisheries; 



* lack of incentives for fishers to practice long-term conservation; 



* the presence of powerful incentives to overharvest and use sometimes destructive 

 gear and fishing practices, resulting from open access management and the race for 

 fish; 



* a contentious, politicized allocation process that is repeated yearly; 



* weak definitions of overfishing and lack of an express prohibition of it; 



* lack of adequate incentives to avoid bycatch, including inadequate enforcement and 

 the lack and/or limited use of selective harvest technology; 



* inability to collect use fees to finance fisheries management; 



* dominance of fishing industry interests on the regional fisheries management 

 councils; 



and, perhaps most importantly in the long term, 



* loss or impairment of the ecosystems that sustain fish populations. 



This testimony focuses on the determination of allowable harvest levels, 

 increasing risk-aversion in fisheries management, removal of incentives for overfishing 

 and creating incentives for conservation, minimizing bycatch, collecting use fees, 

 reforming the regional fisheries management councus, and protecting fish habitat. 

 The policies set forth in the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act 

 (MFCMA) have clearly failed to adequately protect both fish populations and the 

 economic outputs of fisheries. 



On behalf of EDF, we recommend the following measures to address these problems: 



