Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of our amendment in the nature of a substitute.

I do want to express my respect and appreciation for the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) and his commitment to fisheries management issues over the years. I know many Members, including myself, are very concerned about the sustainability of the fishing industry in our own districts.

I represent about a third of the California coast, including many working coastal communities; and the importance of marine fisheries to my district and, I would say, to our country cannot be overstated.

U.S. fisheries have not only shaped the cultural identity of coastal communities, such as those I represent and our country, but they have also contributed economically in a very significant way, nearly $90 billion and 1.5 million jobs.

Recreational fishing provides important opportunities to bring families and communities together, and, of course, subsistence fishing is a culturally significant tradition that provides an important food source for many people.

However, I do not believe that H.R. 1335 represents a constructive approach to ensuring abundant resources for current and future generations of fishermen. This bill would take us backward in many respects. It would roll back important elements of the Magnuson Act that are critical to making fisheries and the fishing industry in the United States economically and environmentally sustainable. I also don't believe that successful fisheries management has to include taking potshots at bedrock environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act, the Antiquities Act, and NEPA, as this bill seeks to do. For these reasons, I can't support it.

Congress first enacted the Magnuson-Stevens Act in 1976, with two main goals: first, to put an end to unregulated fishing by foreign fleets in U.S. waters, and, second, to develop domestic fleets that could reap the economic benefit of our considerable fisheries resources. It worked, and it worked so well that domestic fishing soon replaced foreign fleets in overexploiting U.S. fisheries.

The 1996 reauthorization required regional fisheries management councils, for the first time, to end domestic overfishing and to develop rebuilding plans, and then the 2007 reauthorization added an important timeline for rebuilding plans and also enforced catch limits. The original law, together with these amendments, established a fisheries management system in the United States that is now a model for the rest of the world.

The important point here is that all three of these acts were bipartisan bills, developed and approved by Republicans and Democrats alike, because everybody recognized the need to maintain sustainable fish stocks and to support domestic commercial and recreational fishing. Now, these were also effective progressive endeavors that drastically improved the fisheries in our country. In fact, our Federal fisheries today have the lowest ever number of stocks that are overfished or subject to overfishing, and a total of 37 stocks have been rebuilt. This is evidence that our science-based approach to determining stock status and the managing for sustainability is working.

But contrary to previous bipartisan acts of Congress, this bill was developed with very little input from Democrats. Subsequently, it was passed out of committee on a strict party-line vote--no Democrats voting in favor and not a single Democratic amendment accepted. Every witness at each hearing that the committee held on this topic in the last Congress agreed on one thing: the Magnuson-Stevens Act was largely working.

This is not a situation where we should be overhauling the law in a wholesale way. It is a situation where we should be making small improvements so that the law can continue to work well into the future.

Now, Mr. Chairman, we want to have meaningful discussions with our Republican colleagues and develop bipartisan legislation in the spirit of previous successful Magnuson Act authorizations. To this end, I introduced the Fishing Economy Improvement Act with my friend, Mr. Sablan, and we are offering a germane version as a substitute amendment that would reauthorize Magnuson and leave intact the core conservation and management provisions, including the requirements to rebuild overfished stocks and set annual catch limits.

The substitute amendment would also make improvements to the act. It would prioritize cooperation between scientists and fishermen on research efforts, a collaboration that produces useful information, breeds confidence in the system, and improves management outcomes. It infuses new funding into cooperative research, allowing the agency to accept outside funding, and it modernizes fishery collection and management by encouraging the use of electronic monitoring.

The amendment makes improvements to the operations of the regional fishery management councils, as well, by increasing transparency and public participation in the process; and it requires that the councils consider the interests of Native Alaskans, Pacific Islanders, and American Indians, who often depend on fish for their livelihoods, in fishery management plans.

Our hope is that we can use this reauthorization process to start a thoughtful, constructive, and bipartisan conversation about fisheries management in the United States. At a time when our oceans face many stressors, including the combined effects of pollution, acidification, and ocean warming, it is essential that we reauthorize Magnuson and build on the act's legacy of successful science-based management.

Mr. Chairman, the fishermen and coastal communities I represent and those whom my colleagues represent deserve that conversation; and, more importantly, they deserve a bill that honors the decades of work that have gone into making American fishery management more sustainable, both economically and ecologically. I urge my colleagues to support our substitute amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, I would just note that the process for listing under the Endangered Species Act requires best available science. It is a very rigorous and public process, and it is subject to being challenged in various ways. So we think it is robust and has proven itself.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Beyer), who also represents a coastal State that understands the importance of sustainably managing our fisheries.

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