It is often been said that the Hippocratic Oath,
traditionally taken by medical doctors upon obtaining their degree, advises
physicians to “First, do no harm.”
Although that’s not quite true—the oath contains no such
language—it’s pretty good guidance for not only physicians, but anyone who is
charged with fixing problems, be they auto mechanics or bomb disposal technicians.
It’s particularly apt advice for politicians, who are
constantly being asked by their constituents to “fix” legislation, even when the
bills are not really broken.
I began thinking about such things recently after reading a
couple of op-ed pieces on the website of the Alaska Dispatch News.
One of the pieces was written by Stosh Anderson, a fisherman
and former member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council who operates
out of Kodiak. Entitled “Don
Young seeks to unwind ‘Alaska Model’ for fisheries in Magnuson-Stevens Act,”
Anderson’s op-ed hails the present law’s mandate that fishery regulations be based
on science, that fishermen be held accountable for exceeding their quotas and
that overfished stocks be rebuilt; it decries Congressman Young’s recently
introduced legislation that would abolish or seriously weaken provisions of the
law needed to conserve and rebuild fish stocks on every coast of the United
States.
The other, penned by Congressman Don Young himself, is
headlined “Stosh
Anderson misrepresents Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization.” In it, Young
asserts that
“The April 8 opinion piece by Stosh Anderson…fails to
represent the facts of the legislation I introduced to reauthorize the
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.”
But did Stosh Anderson truly fail to represent the facts?
Could it be possible that Stosh Anderson and
Don Young don’t really disagree on the “facts of the legislation” at all?
Could it be that Congressman Young’s bill is precisely the
wrong medicine—one that will surely do harm—to cure ailing fisheries prosecuted
far from Alaska’s well-managed waters?
Reading both op-ed pieces together, and applying a bit of
local knowledge, makes it pretty clear that is the case.
Anderson said
“The [Magnuson-Stevens Act] is the foundation of sustainable
fisheries management…
“The last reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, in
2006, applied Alaska’s model of federal fisheries management—setting catch
limits based on science—to the nation.”
Young doesn’t really disagree, saying
“Through foresight and willingness, our fisheries managers
have developed and implemented a management system that is considered the envy
of the world, dubbed the 'Alaska Model.' This system has worked extremely well in Alaska due to annual stock
assessments that provide up-to-date information to fisheries managers, a
necessary tool for implementing an adaptive management system that allows for
optimal conservation and use of our fisheries resources.”
So there’s no essential disagreement there. Both Anderson and Young agree that the “Alaska
model,” and by extension the model adopted in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, is “a
management system that is considered the envy of the world.”
That suggests that the Magnuson-Stevens Act is a pretty
solid law, and that weakening it would be a pretty bad idea. But this is where Anderson and Young
disagree.
Except that, when you read closer, they don’t disagree. Not exactly.
Anderson criticizes Young’s bill, H.R. 1335, the
so-called “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in
Fisheries Management Act,” saying
“Under Young’s bill, annual catch limits, set to keep fish
stocks healthy for the long run, would no longer be necessary for
managers. Responsible timelines put in
place to replenish depleted fisheries could also be loosened or open-ended,
delaying economic and recreational opportunities that come from healthy stocks…
“We know that allowing catch limits above scientifically
sustainable levels may result in short term economic gains, but in the long
term it’s bad for communities, fishermen and processors. Harvesting at levels that exceed sustainable
models is a downward spiral that reduces harvest opportunities.”
Congressman Young actually seems to agree with Anderson,
making it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to weaken the “Alaska Model” as it’s
applied to Alaskan fisheries, and thus weaken the management regime that has
made Alaskan fisheries some of the most successful anywhere in the world.
“To set the record straight, I have always applauded and
supported the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council for creating an
unparalleled system of fisheries management…
“My legislation…will not change the way the NPFMC manages our
fisheries. Alaska fishermen and the
communities that they support will continue to reap the benefits of our
well-managed fisheries resources and the NPFMC will continue to use sound scientific
data in their management decisions.
Regardless of the changes proposed to the MSA, the NPFMC will
continue to utilize innovative practices to be leaders in fisheries management. [emphasis added]”
In other words, the Congressman fully recognizes the worth
of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and wants to reassure his constituents that any
changes he makes will only hurt folks outside of Alaska…
Congressman Young attempts to justify his misconceived bill
(remember that, for all practical purposes, H.R. 1335 is nothing more than a
retread of Congressman Doc Hastings’ infamously bad “Empty Oceans Act”) by
saying
“the ‘Alaska Model’ has not worked in other areas of the
country as well as envisioned—for a number of reasons.
“There’s no question that the ‘Alaska Model’ of fisheries management is
what all regional fisheries management councils should strive to achieve. Unfortunately, due to a lack of timely stock
surveys and the inability to provide adequate data for fisheries managers,
other parts of the nation have not been able to successfully operate under the ‘Alaska
Model.’ This lack of data has led fisheries
managers in the Gulf of Mexico, the mid-Atlantic and other regions of the
country to institute layer upon layer of precautionary measures due to uncertainty. The results:
fishermen are unnecessarily losing out on harvesting opportunities,
fishing communities, consumers, and those reliant on the nation’s fishery resources
are being unjustly punished. [emphasis
added]”
It’s difficult to know how to begin responding to such a
statement. Maybe it’s best to start with
the one clear truth, Congressman Young’s admission that “There’s no question
that the ‘Alaska Model” of fisheries management is what all regional fisheries
management councils should strive to achieve.”
Because if we all can agree on that statement, then we all should
agree that it makes little sense to make the job any harder than necessary for
those who “strive to achieve” the Alaskan Model’s ideal.
Yes, most regional fisheries management councils suffer from
a lack of stock assessments, an overabundance of stocks to assess, imperfect
harvest data, etc. They still have a
pretty formidable hill to climb before they can reach the peak of management
effectiveness achieved years ago by the North Pacific Fishery Management
Council. Even so, each council has
already made its way partway up that hill. One, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery
Management Council, stands just below the summit; it has already eliminated all overfishing and
no longer manages any overfished stocks.
Yet, if Congressman Young’s bill becomes law, it would allow
overfishing to continue and rebuilding to slow on every coast, effectively
pushing all of the fishery management councils back to the bottom of the hill,
and forcing them to begin the long, steep climb toward sustainability all over
again.
It’s not just a foolish idea; it’s bad policy that will harm
fisheries that are already well on their way to being rebuilt.
We need to impose a little honesty here.
In the Gulf of Mexico, the red snapper fishery isn’t
suffering from “a lack of data.” The
last benchmark stock assessment is about 850 pages long, and roughly half
of that is a report from the data workshop. It refers to 21 different stock
assessment documents, includes 33 scientific papers designated as “Workshop
Documents” and 50 “Reference Documents” dealing with everything from the
transport of red snapper larvae by ocean currents to damage done to the species
when a demolition crew dynamites the legs of an obsolete oil platform.
No, for red snapper down in the Gulf, data isn’t the problem. The problem is that too many recreational
fishermen, and the organizations that represent them—and pander to their basest
instincts—are faced with a lack of data that says they can harvest more fish. Instead, they are stuck with science-based
restrictions. Thus, they are
trying to overthrow the entire federal fisheries management system, one that
Congressman Young admits is “the envy of the world,” in order to kill a few
more red snapper.
And they are not, contrary to what Congressman Young says, buried
under “layer after layer of precautionary measures.” Until a federal court imposed them in the
case of Guindon
v. Pritzker, the recreational red snapper anglers were subject to almost no
precautionary measures at all…
Similar “problems” exist elsewhere on the coast.
In the Mid-Atlantic, Congressman Young’s bill is a “solution”
looking for a problem to solve. We’ve
already paid our dues on summer flounder; fish are abundant, bag limits have
increased in most of the states, and size limits have gone down.
In the Mid-Atlantic, we have more scup than we can use, and even our most
controversial fishery, black sea bass, is largely a success story, with the
stock fully rebuilt and the fish larger and more abundant, and attracting more
anglers, than just about anyone can recall.
There, we still need some more data, but a stock assessment scheduled
for next year will hopefully address that issue as well.
Therefore, Congressman Young really should not say that “the ‘Alaska
Model’ has not worked in other areas of the country as well as envisioned” and
mention the mid-Atlantic in the same op-ed, because the fact is that here, the Alaska
Model embodied in the Magnuson-Stevens Act has indeed worked very well.
And as for New England, well, it wasn’t the Magnuson-Stevens
Act that killed off all of the cod...
The 2006 reauthorization did finally put something
of a brake on the fishermen’s greed and, for the first time, imposed hard
quotas on a species that had been overfished for decades. Like fishermen elsewhere, those in New England don't like the restrictions needed to rebuild the stock, and thus
they seek “flexibility,” conveniently forgetting that it was the New England
Fishery Management Council’s historic embrace of “flexibility”—days at sea,
trip limits, but never hard quotas—that drove the Gulf of Maine stock down to
3% of sustainable levels in the first place.
It thus appears that Stosh Anderson must have the last
word. He notes
“What [Congressman Young’s] bill does is bring us down to the
lowest common denominator rather than strive to improve our fisheries
management. If other regions don’t have
the science to manage, we should expand data and scientific research, not gut
our fisheries management law…
“It’s not clear why our congressman would introduce a bill
that is actually bad for Alaska communities and the nation’s fish stocks. What we need is an MSA reauthorization that
moves us forward, providing opportunities to better manage fisheries and
bycatch, and protect fishing communities by providing opportunities for
fishermen to access our fisheries. We
need confidence that our fisheries managers put the long-term health of fish
stocks first and that will be in the best interests of our coastal economies.”
That pretty much says it all.
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