Four U.S. politicians representing areas in the Southeastern United States have introduced a bill that would revive an effort intended to limit federal regional fishery councils’ management of recreational fishing.
U.S. Representatives Garret Graves (R-Louisiana), Daniel Webster (R-Florida), Rob Wittman (R-Virginia) and Gene Green (D-Texas) have introduced a bill entitled “Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act of 2017,” also known as the Modern Fish Act. Graves, who has spearheaded previous unsuccessful legislative efforts to roll back federal management of recreational fisheries, expand Southern states’ control over federal waters and establish a new management authority to replace the oversight of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), backed the new effort in a statement posted from his Twitter account.
“This legislation will update the federal law that governs recreational fishing and will give room for more flexibility with how fisheries are managed, which means that Louisiana's (and the nation's) anglers will have more access to federal waters,” Graves tweeted.
The bill “addresses many of the recreational fishing community’s priorities,” according to Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, including allowing alternative management for recreational fishing, reexamining fisheries allocations, smartly rebuilding fishery stocks, establishing exemptions where annual catch limits don’t fit and improving recreational data collection.
Another supporter of the legislation, Recreational Fishing Alliance Executive Director Jim Donofrio, said the bill would provide a better balance between recreational and commercial fishing interests.
“For decades in federal fisheries management, recreational fishing was always an afterthought,” Donofrio said. “The [bill] finally addresses the specific needs of the recreational fishing community; stands to bring parity to fisheries management and will get anglers back on the water.”
However, advocacy groups representing commercial fishing organizations oppose the new legislation. In a statement, Seafood Harvesters of America Executive Director Kevin Wheeler said while his organization supported the bill’s objective of gathering more data from the recreational sector, the Modern Fish Act would "hamstring federal regional fishery councils’ ability to manage the fishery sector and most species, while also limiting the ability to innovate new solutions to overfishing."
“This bill would fundamentally exempt the recreational fishing community from adhering to the basic conservation standards that have been central to the rebuilding of many of our fish stocks,” Wheeler said. “Waiting for fisheries to be overfished before we act led to stock collapses in the past and created economic hardship for the entire fishing industry.”
The Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, which is a member of the Seafood Harvesters of America, said in its own statement that it supported more data collection but opposed other proposals in the legislation.
“More and better scientific partnerships – federal and state, public and private – as well as credible third-party validations, help ensure the integrity of the data that managers use to make decisions,” it said. “The more precise and accurate the data are, the more effective the management measures can be, which can improve fishery access for all fishermen.”
The group also stated its support for a move by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) to allow Louisiana to manage its own private anglers and charter fishermen up to 200 nautical miles off the state’s coast. However, it opposed similar moves by Mississippi and Alabama.
“We agree that private recreational anglers need relief and that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach isn’t the most effective way to govern,” the shareholders’ alliance said in a statement. “While we support these additional initiatives and appreciate the commercial fishing protections they offer, we're mainly concerned that Mississippi and Alabama did not articulate safeguards for the federal charter/for-hire fleet as Louisiana did. We strongly encourage these states to address this concern with their federal charter/for-hire fishermen.”
