School of Fish: Federal Fishery Management

Um, okay, so taking it back, all of this data and all of the information that you helped gather as an observer is all part of a bigger system that was established by the Magnuson-Stevens, oh gosh, Fishery.

There's some other words in there.

Conservation and Management Act.

Thank you.

[laughs]

Um, that we just call the MSA for short, and it was established 50 years ago now in response to, I believe, foreign fleets coming in and fishing off of US waters.

So it was kind of a response to that, but maybe you can give us a little bit of the history of where the MSA came from and why we have it.

Absolutely.

I mean, I think you had it right there.

Like, a huge political impetus for the act was sort of removing foreign fishing and replacing it with domestic fishing.

A big concept at the time was noticing that foreign fishers were benefiting from resources that were technically in American-ish waters.

So let's declare that.

So we had our EEZ, and essentially nationalized, um, the fleet, uh, and really promoted American fishing in those waters, and specifically commercial fishing in those waters, as you said, three to 200, um, nautical miles offshore.

So the act was spearheaded by Senators Magnuson and Stevens, who are from Washington and Oregon.

Or excuse me, Washington and Alaska.

Forgive me, Alaska.

And the system was designed to actually really just create a more unified national system of fisheries management across the country and promote fishing.

So it's a very interesting law in that it combines theories and thoughts about how to prevent overfishing and have conservation of, uh, our fishery resources, as well as promoting a fishing industry and supporting the industry.

So management, you have that conservation and management right in the title.

And so a lot of our national laws around nature and natural resources don't necessarily combine those two things in a single law.

So the Magnuson-Stevens is really fascinating in that it brings those two pieces together, uh, and actually has, um, conflicting goals.

You know, how do you balance conservation with extraction? You know, how do you balance community needs with economic needs? How do you balance the interest of the few with the interest of the many? And I-- partially this is why I think Magnuson-Stevens Act is so interesting, because it, it combines all these things that are, uh, fundamental questions of our democracy and has them in this one law that has to do with fishing.

Another really interesting part of Magnuson-Stevens is that it created the council system, which I am, you know, now pretty well aware of, and it, it said...

And this, this was actually the first time this had really happened in legislation, which was to say, "Okay, let's very intentionally create a mechanism that will bring the folks, the people impacted by these decisions of fishery management, and bring them into the process directly," not just as members of the public who can participate in their governance in all the usual ways that Americans can participate in their governance, but actually create a system for that participation directly.

And that was, you know, this council system that said, "Let's have members of the public sitting on these councils that are regional, that can make sort of sub-national policy about what they want for their fisheries." And, uh, now as the Magnuson-Stevens just turned 50 a couple years ago, it is a really interesting time to reflect on how that system has been working.