Top Photo by John McMurray. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens) has been a success. Even its critics admit that. In 2000, 72 fish stocks were subject to overfishing; today, that number is down to 30. During the same period, the number of overfished stocks was reduced from 92 to 38. Since 2000, […]
Illustration: Zeus with Amalthea and nymph The ancient Greeks told a story, which may have originated more than 2,500 years ago, of the infant Zeus, who was destined to be King of the Gods. Hidden from his father, Chronos, who planned to devour him, Zeus survived by drinking the milk of the she-goat Amalthea. Yet […]
Photo: Atlantic Cod, by Joachim S. Mueller It’s the middle of summer. Forty years ago, I would have been fishing for cod southeast of Rhode Island. That might catch some people by surprise, because they think of cod as a cold-water species that only appears off New York and southern New England during the dead […]
Author Charles Witke will testify at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on the Magnuson-Stevens Act on July 19th. In this post, he explains why the recent Commerce Department decision undermines ASFMC and the future of cooperative interstate fisheries management. Late in the afternoon of July 11, 2017, the United States Department of Commerce (Commerce) […]
Black sea bass photo courtesy of Charles Witek Over the past couple of seasons, no fish has frustrated Mid-Atlantic fishery managers—and Mid-Atlantic recreational fishermen—as much as the black sea bass. There are a lot of them out there. A benchmark stock assessment completed late in 2016 estimated that the spawning stock biomass (SSB) at the […]
Recently, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) issued a rule which reopened the federal red snapper season for private-boat anglers in the Gulf of Mexico (Temporary Rule). While such Temporary Rule was welcomed by many participants in the red snapper fishery, it is in serious conflict with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens), […]
Fluke photo by John McMurray. Managing federal fisheries is a relatively simple process, thanks to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens). Pursuant to Magnuson-Stevens, “Conservation and management measures shall be based on the best scientific information available.” Such “Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing.” To better assure that overfishing doesn’t occur, each […]
On May 1, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) released a request for proposals “to evaluate the feasibility of developing a fishing mortality (F) based management approach to the recreational summer flounder fishery.” Currently, summer flounder are managed with a combination of bag limits, size limits and seasons intended to constrain recreational harvest to, or […]
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