After over forty years of NOAA/NMFS management how are we really doing?

Nils Stope has devoted well over two decades to familiarising himself with and writing about various aspects of the domestic US commercial fishing industry. He has done it in a way that provides a reasonable amount of insight into what are largely complex and too often confusing issues.

Since being involved in the industry – and this involvement goes as far back as the passage of what is now called the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act –  he has seen the focus of government fisheries management increasingly shift away from the fishermen to the fish.

The provisions of the Act as it was originally written were put in place to allow the U.S. fishing industry to regain control of the fisheries in the United States’ highly productive coastal waters, fisheries which had been for the most part taken over by the distant water fleets of other fishing nations. The legislation was singularly effective, so effective that within ten years or so of its passage the greatest portion of our domestic fish and shellfish production was being harvested by U.S. fishermen on U.S. vessels.

Read this latest take of his on the state of fisheries management in the USA - while their fisheries may be up to 5,000 miles from here many of the management issues are mirrored here in the UK!


Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet USA
© 2019 Nils E. Stolpe
June 1, 2019