Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

The Source Code

By Ted Venker
TIDE
July/August 2006

In the movie The Matrix, a computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality, a futuristic world he was completely unaware of, but which controls him completely. Understandably, he is perturbed by this revelation and uses cool martial arts and lots of special effects to fight the system, through three movies.

If CCA were a movie studio, we probably could have made a similar movie with a fisherman instead of a computer hacker as the hero. Anglers, and for that matter the fish they catch, are subject to control by a mysterious code that most of them know nothing about.

The code for fishermen is called the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act – our Matrix. There are groups and individuals who know how to manipulate the code and achieve vastly different outcomes, but for most of us this Matrix remains a mystery. In Washington DC, however, the fights over lines of code in the Matrix are as intense as anything you see in the movies, minus the cool martial arts.

CCA’s General Counsel and National Government Relations Committee have been our guides in this maze, seeking to delete certain lines of code and insert others that benefit sound conservation and recreational angling. They have been involved in shaping legislation to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act for the last year.

The Act is getting close to its first comprehensive revision in 10 years so the stakes are high. Bills introduced in both the House and Senate over the past several months seek to place lines of code in the Act that could change how fisheries are managed substantially for the next decade.

Just as in the movie, things are not always as they appear, and it is imperative to thoroughly consider the implications of each 1 and 0 in the Matrix.

CCA worked with Rep. Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee, to produce HR 5018, the American Fisheries Management and Marine Life Enhancement Act. It contains, among other things, provisions that:

· Require no-fishing zones to be based on sound science and public involvement, and contain sunsets for the continued consideration of the measure’s effectiveness in the event an area is closed;

· Define recreational fishing more like an industry than a avocation and includes consideration of marinas, boats builders and tackle sales in determining fishing dependant communities;

· Require that the economic impact on the recreational sector must be taken into account in any allocation decision.

Each line is significant when plugged into the overall framework of our Matrix, and would elevate the economic importance of recreational angling to a level we have never enjoyed before.

At the same time, other lines of seemingly beneficial code have been proposed that would radically change the regulation matrix for anglers. One such provision in a competing House bill would require every stock of fish to have an annual total allowable catch, or TAC. In the event the annual quota is exceeded (based on data from the Marine Recreational Fishery Statistical Survey or MRFSS) the excess would be automatically deducted from the next annual TAC.

Only two recreational fisheries in this country are managed by quotas (red snapper and school bluefin each have three-year quotas) and that is a good thing. MRFSS data is notoriously unreliable for producing state-by-state, digital accuracy of recreational catch. It is completely unlike the reporting system for commercial fishing, which closely monitors a much smaller and well-known universe of participants.

Had this hard TAC provision been in place in 2004, for example, recreational fishing for red grouper would have automatically been shut down for two and half years, marlin landings would have been stopped for five years and the summer flounder season reduced to less than a month.

To the extent that these fisheries have been overfished, the most significant impact was the commercial fishing industry under this section would continue its harvest unabated. None of those recreational closures would have contributed to a significant conservation gain for any of these species but would have significantly disrupted recreational fishing.

Such is life in the Matrix, where things are not always as they appear on the surface.

As the first movie in our saga draws to a close, we are locked in a battle over specific lines of code that will define a system to stop overfishing and provide flexibility in rebuilding fish stocks, among other important issues.

Stay tuned for the sequels.