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©2007 Cascadia Times

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Last winter, Congress strengthened the nation's major ocean fisheries law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act — despite efforts by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and others to weaken it.

The Pacific council instead supported a bill sponsored by California's Richard Pombo, the Central Valley Republican who lost his bid for re-election to the U.S. House in November 2006.

In the end, Pombo — whom a Maine newspaper called the “notoriously anti-environment chair of the House Natural Resources Committee” — saw his bill go down to defeat.

The episode, however, underscores the Pacific council's lack of commitment to protecting the California Current ecosystem at a time when both the Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S. Commission on Oceans had joined numerous scientists in urging fishery managers to do so.

Instead, in oral and written testimony to Congress, the Pacific council lobbied to eviscerate environmental review from fishery management, to roll back existing legal provisions designed to protect vulnerable fish populations and speed recovery of overfished populations, and to prevent a modest accountability provision proposed by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens from seeing the light of day. Due to public pressure, Congress instead rejected Pombo's proposal and the Pacific council's lobbying and strengthened the law.

The council, however, still can weaken the fisheries law. The National Marine Fisheries Service is now writing regulations that will implement the new Magnuson Act. The council is now persistently lobbying NMFS that they are already in compliance with the new law, even though the implementing guidelines have not yet been written. Yet, the council's track record of late indicates it is not adhering to scientific advice in setting catch levels (see "Science sometimes ignored", p 19).

In 2006 and 2007, the council ignored scientific advice in setting the catch level for Pacific whiting. The council set the catch level such that the species would be within 1 percent of being overfished, despite scientific warnings that the species would decline. Instead, the council voted unanimously, heeding the advice of council member Rod Moore, who also represents the biggest Pacific whiting processor on the coast, who told his fellow council members not to worry, that “we're going to be looking at more fish coming in.”

Among other things, the new Magnuson-Stevens Act:

*Forces regional fishery councils to develop annual catch limits for all fisheries that are low enough so that overfishing does not occur. The catch limits must be based on scientific recommendations. Congress also required the councils to comply with “accountability measures” that also ensure overfishing does not occur.

*Requires fishery councils to end overfishing immediately, as well as to implement a rebuilding plan within two years for each stock that is declared overfished.

The Pacific council helped to kill a proposal that would have broadened council representation to include more members of the public. And it helped to stop another proposal that would have limited the voting powers of council members who have direct financial conflicts of interest.

The Pacific council didn't get a lot of things it wanted in the final bill, as many provisions of the Pombo bill did not survive, including provisions that would have:

Allowed regional fishery councils to delay action on rebuilding the overfished species. The Pombo bill tried to introduced a new term into fishery law, “diminished” species. According to the Marine Fish Conservation Network, a coalition of 180 conservation and fishing organizations, fewer fish populations would have been defined as “diminished,” resulting in delays in rebuilding these stocks.

*Increased fishing pressure on vulnerable stocks, threatening their ability to rebuild and delaying the benefits of rebuilt stocks to fishing communities.

*Let the councils develop procedures to restrict the public's ability to comment on fishery management measures.

*Given the councils authority to block the creation of no-fish marine reserves in National Marine Sanctuaries. As the Seattle Times wrote in an editorial in May 2006. “That negates the whole idea of a wildlife sanctuary, and should be rejected."

*Added a layer of secrecy to the council's deliberations. The bill would have exempted fisheries data, like observer information, from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, limiting public access to this information.

*Excused the council from complying with the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires an environmental impact statement on all major federal actions. It would have authorized the Secretary of Commerce to determine that any management plan that complies with the Magnuson Act is deemed in compliance with NEPA.

Of all these provisions in the Pombo bill, the NEPA provision may have been the most controversial. NEPA has unique requirements for evaluating the cumulative environmental impacts of proposed actions, for considering a range of management alternatives, and for allowing public participation. The Magnuson Act does not require the council to do these things.

While lauded by conservationists, the new law didn't give them everything they wanted, either. The law does not decrease next year's catch if this year's catch goes over the limit, a provision that Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens had proposed. Stevens had grown frustrated with fishery councils that continually allowed overfishing to put a black eye on the council system in general.

But early opposition from the Pacific council and others succeeded in killing the provision. The council even spent staff time preparing a white paper critical of it. As a result, if overfishing occurs now, nothing happens, and fishers can get the entire quota again the next year.

Don McIsaac, executive director of the Pacific council, said in testimony before Congress in May 2006 that the council considered Stevens’ provision “unwarranted, disruptive, and dangerous.”

In a letter to Stevens, McIsaac demanded an exemption from NEPA, demanded authority over fishing regulations in National Marine Sanctuaries, demanded a rollback of the law to allow slower rebuilding of depleted stocks, and demanded more loopholes for overfishing.

"So, you've got to ask yourself, if this council bills itself as one that follows science and doesn't overfish, why did they go to bat for Pombo's regressive bill and oppose modest changes offered by Sen. Stevens?" asks Tony DeFalco of the Marine Fish Conservation Network. "One reason is that the council has allowed catches to exceed limits in the past and wants to be able to do so again without penalty to its biggest industry, Pacific Seafood."

Pacific Seafood's representative on the council, and on the council's legislative committee, is Rod Moore, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association. Frank Dulcich, CEO of Pacific Seafood, is president of the processors association.

Moore spoke in favor of exempting the council from NEPA before the House Resources Committee in May 2006. He said that “what NEPA adds to the council process is more work for council staff and fisheries managers, more paper, more cost, and more confusion to the public. The sheer volume of paper that a member of the public has to be familiar with has become so large with the addition of NEPA documents that we regularly need to bring a second suitcase to meetings to avoid overweight luggage charges on airplanes."

One clear linkage between the two appears in a bill that Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon, introduced on Pacific's behalf in July 2005. There, for the first time in federal legislation, the idea of exempting fishery management from NEPA appears.

The bill contains a provision to exempt the Pacific groundfish fishery (a fishery dominated by Pacific Seafood) from environmental review. Nearly identical language, but with a greater sweep, appears in the Pombo bill less than nine months later. That bill would have exempted all fisheries from environmental review. n

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