May 28, 2026 · 57 min · 10 segments
April 13, 2026 marked the 50th anniversary of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, or MSA. Meredith Moore, Senior Director of the Fish Conservation Program at Ocean…
Meredith MooreGuestAnoopa AsokanHostI love how positive you are about this, 'cause I feel like a lot of times we talk about the problems and [laughs] where we can go better, and we'll get there.
[laughs] Um, but just reflecting on what you said, I think we hear a lot of complaints.
I've been in MPA, Marine Protected Area, world the last couple of months, pretty deep in California, and you hear a lot from mostly the commercial fishing side about just how regulated they are.
But it's also the only industry I can think of where the regulations protect the industry, right? By having those regulations, you get to keep fishing, and it sort of ensures that your business will be there further on into the future.
But the reason that there are a lot of rules is because there's a lot of people who wanna fish, and a lot of damage that we can do if we're not careful.
And so you're, you're absolutely right that in fisheries, like, we've created, and we'll talk about the law more in a second, but we've created this law that really has a lot of guidelines in it.
Like, here's the type of thing you should do, and then we have a lot of unique fisheries in unique places with unique people, and we need to interpret our structure to a way that works for all the people who need it and the ecosystem.
And that just means you gotta write some more rules and regulations in order to manage that.
But you're right that regulations, like, most of the regulations that people are like, "Oh, it's one of the most highly regulated industry," I was like, yeah, well, most of them are like, "Your season is open." [laughs] Like, that's a regulation.
Um, and they're like, "It's too many." And I was like, well, you do want your season to be open.
It is a lot of customization, but it's the way that we take this public resource and figure out how to share it with both the environment and also people.
I think that's one of the big challenges in fisheries management, is that it's a resource that operates at a huge scale that, like, people don't operate at that scale, and so there's a lot of translational issues there.
It's a common refrain I hear a lot, uh, and spend a lot of time telling people this sort of story around, which is like, it's good actually.
I love how positive you are about this, 'cause I feel like a lot of times we talk about the problems and [laughs] where we can go better, and we'll get there.
[laughs] Um, but just reflecting on what you said, I think we hear a lot of complaints.
I've been in MPA, Marine Protected Area, world the last couple of months, pretty deep in California, and you hear a lot from mostly the commercial fishing side about just how regulated they are.
But it's also the only industry I can think of where the regulations protect the industry, right? By having those regulations, you get to keep fishing, and it sort of ensures that your business will be there further on into the future.
But the reason that there are a lot of rules is because there's a lot of people who wanna fish, and a lot of damage that we can do if we're not careful.
And so you're, you're absolutely right that in fisheries, like, we've created, and we'll talk about the law more in a second, but we've created this law that really has a lot of guidelines in it.
Like, here's the type of thing you should do, and then we have a lot of unique fisheries in unique places with unique people, and we need to interpret our structure to a way that works for all the people who need it and the ecosystem.
And that just means you gotta write some more rules and regulations in order to manage that.
But you're right that regulations, like, most of the regulations that people are like, "Oh, it's one of the most highly regulated industry," I was like, yeah, well, most of them are like, "Your season is open." [laughs] Like, that's a regulation.
Um, and they're like, "It's too many." And I was like, well, you do want your season to be open.
It is a lot of customization, but it's the way that we take this public resource and figure out how to share it with both the environment and also people.
I think that's one of the big challenges in fisheries management, is that it's a resource that operates at a huge scale that, like, people don't operate at that scale, and so there's a lot of translational issues there.
It's a common refrain I hear a lot, uh, and spend a lot of time telling people this sort of story around, which is like, it's good actually.
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