Spring 1997 Update
Fisheries Management Improving
In “Where Have All the Fishes Gone?” (Issues, Spring 1994), I documented how overfishing and poor management had devastated the U.S. commercial fishing industry, and I called for a major overhaul of the 1976 Magnuson Act, the federal legislation that guides fisheries management.
In the fall of 1996, Congress passed and the President Clinton signed a bill that addresses many of the most serious problems. If properly implemented, the new legislation, now called the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, should substantially aid the recovery and sustainable management of the nation’s fisheries.
The basic flaws of the Magnuson Act were its failures to define and prohibit overfishing, to direct fishery managers to rebuild depleted populations, to protect habitat for fishery resources, to reduce wasteful and harmful “bycatch” of nontarget organisms, and to consider predator-prey or other important ecological relationships.
A key revision in the new act is a one-word change in the definition of the “optimum yield” that fishery managers can allow. Previously, optimum yield was defined as “the maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as modified by any relevant social, economic, or ecological factor.” However, fishery managers, citing economic difficulties facing local fisheries, had often allowed more fishing than was sustainable, leading to severe depletion of fish. The new definition substitutes the word “reduced” for “modified,” meaning that fishery managers may no longer allow catches exceeding what the fish population is capable of producing on a sustainable basis. Further, entirely new language directs managers to rebuild depleted fish populations within specified time frames or forfeit management authority to the Department of Commerce.
New language also requires fishery managers to minimize and reduce mortality of nontarget fish caught incidentally. Such bycatch, much of which is now discarded dead, accounts for nearly a third of all landings worldwide. In the Gulf of Mexico, where four pounds of small and juvenile fish are discarded for every pound of shrimp kept, the new law ends a moratorium on any new federal regulations requiring use of bycatch-reduction devices.
Another significant change is a provision directing fishery managers to identify, for each fishery they manage, “essential fish habitat,” defined as “waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity.” Fishery managers can now formally consult with other federal agencies that are considering permits for activities that would alter essential habitats, with the goal of modifying plans that would adversely affect such habitats.
Unfinished business
Unfortunately, the revised act did not delete language that prevents the United States from unilaterally setting lower catch quotas for certain species of fish in its own waters than have been set in international agreements. This provision largely affects catches of bluefin tuna and swordfish, both of which are severely depleted.
Although the revised act promises to usher in an era of fish recovery, proper implementation will likely require considerable public guidance as fishery managers adjust to their new responsibilities. In addition, certain practices widely perceived as publicly unacceptable, such as cutting off the fins of sharks (for use in shark fin soup) and then releasing the disabled animals to certain death, are not directly addressed in the law.
Declining Science Budget
A call for vigilance in preserving the nation’s investment in science is proving to be well justified. In “Tough Choices for a Tight Budget” (Issues, Winter 1995-96), Norman Metzger laid out a proposal for a new way of measuring the status of the federal government’s investment in new knowledge and technologies to ensure that the United States remains the world leader in R&D. Reporting the recommendations of a joint committee of the National Academies of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, Metzger explained the importance of calculating a federal science and technology (FS&T) budget that would not include the part of federal R&D devoted to production engineering, testing and evaluation, and upgrading of large weapons and related systems. The committee argued that this would provide a more accurate picture of the nation’s investment in generating broadly useful knowledge..
To follow through on the committee’s recommendation, the Panel on FS&T Analyses, composed of Frank Press, who chaired the original committee, and H. Guyford Stever, a committee member, was formed to do the budget analysis. In the first of what will be a series of reports, the panel states that the FS&T appropriation for FY 1997 is about $43.4 billion, an increase of 0.7 percent in real terms over the FY 1996 appropriation. The panel notes, however, that the upturn in FS&T spending does not offset several years of shrinkage. The new FS&T budget is 5 percent less than it was in FY 1994 and would be 9.7 percent less if the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which includes the budget for the National Institutes of Health, were not included. Overall, only 2 of the 10 major S&T agencies and departments-DHHS and the National Science Foundation-have more FS&T spending in FY 1997 than they had in FY 1994.