The AP has a vivid description of fishermen rallying in Massachusetts last week to protest the transition to new US fishing restrictions (to take effect next May).

The new regulations they are protesting are part of a last-ditch effort to overhaul the nation’s devastated fisheries following the strengthening of the US Fisheries Conservation and Management Act in 2006, which set a goal of ending overfishing in U.S. ocean waters by 2011, and restoring depleted fish populations within a decade.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is now carrying out this new mandate: in January it published a final rule requiring fishery managers to set scientifically-justifiable catch limits, factoring in scientific uncertainty, bycatch, and cheating.

Why was the Act strengthened ?

Decades of overfishing have left many US fish stocks in precarious state. Once abundant North Atlantic fish like cod, haddock, and flounder are at only a fraction of their historic levels and forty other marine fish stocks around the country are either overfished or subject to overfishing – sound familiar ?

For years, fishery managers used maximum sustainable yield to set the catch limits. Unfortunately, those limits failed to account for uncertainty in fish stock assessment models, and did little to promote the goal of rebuilding depleted stocks. Catch limits were often set at unsustainably high levels – sound familiar ?

A major cause of dwindling fish stocks has been the willingness of fishery managers to ignore science in favour of protecting fishing communities from more immediate pain; for them to be equally reluctant to make the tough decisions needed to protect fisheries from over-exploitation and to rebuild those that have been severely depleted. As a result, catch limits have been too high for too long – – sound familiar ?

Overfishing is disastrous not only for the fish but also for broader marine ecosystems, and ultimately for the fishing communities themselves as current management practices have not only failed to restore fish stocks to sustainable levels but have often allowed them to deteriorate further.

A little fairy dust will not fix the deeply-rooted problem of catching overcapacity so fishing communities can only survive in the long term if stocks are allowed to regenerate and create a truly sustainable fishing industry.

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