Defenders' Experts
Marine Fisheries and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
The future of our living oceans is increasingly under attack by variety of sources: pollution, climate change, habitat loss, industrialized fishing, and more. The state of marine fisheries is one of the more serious problems.
The ocean’s fish stocks are being devastated by unsustainable fishing practices. Unlike polluted air or clearcut forests, the oceans' plight has gone undetected for years because it is distant from our lives on land. Today, bycatch, overfishing, and habitat destruction problems have depleted once bountiful fish populations and jeopardized the oceans' capacity for sustaining life.
Issues Facing Our Oceans
Bycatch
Fishing technology is tragically inefficient. Every year, commercial fishing fleets discard millions of pounds of "non-commercially valuable" marine life known as bycatch. Huge numbers of marine animals are the collateral damage of fishing technologies like hooks, traps and nets that deplete vast areas of the ocean. Every year, casualties include birds, turtles, seals, dolphins, whales, and other marine animals.
Overfishing
Even if we only catch the species we eat, we need to stop killing more fish than can naturally be replaced. Unsustainable fishing has devastated global fish populations. A recent global study found that 90% of the big predator fish have disappeared from the world’s oceans during the last 50 years. In early 2008 according to the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) 41 fish stocks were depleted by overfishing in U.S. ocean territory.
Habitat Destruction
Fish and other marine wildlife are suffering from loss of habitat. One example of this problem is the devastation created by bottom trawlers which drag nets the size of football fields across the ocean floor to capture bottom dwelling creatures like shrimp, cod, flounder, and rockfishes. A single pass from a bottom trawler can destroy miles of fish habitat. What's left behind is a dead zone, like a forest after being clearcut, except that it takes centuries rather than decades to grow back.
How can NEPA Help Marine Fisheries
Strong environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) help us address the threats to the marine ecosystem and protect our oceans by making sure government decisions are based on the best information and analysis available.
NEPA reviews have a long history of environmental success, ensuring that the government properly considers important environmental values in a wide range of conservation actions, and helping to protect thousands of square miles of coral formations, reduce mortality of endangered sea turtles, and begin the rebuilding of depleted fish populations. You help in this process by making sure the government knows what’s important to you.
Unfortunately, the National Marine Fisheries Services is proposing a rule which threatens informed decision making for our oceans. Among the proposed rule’s flaws, it:
- Undermines neutral decision making by allowing individuals with financial interests to control the environmental review and public participation process. The proposed rule enables the fishery management councils – many of whose members have financial interests in the fisheries they manage – to control the environmental review and public participation process. NEPA requires that federal agencies be responsible for these actions, not vested financial interests.
- Undermines public input by allowing mangers to reduce the amount of time you have to review and comment on complicated actions. While fishery management councils would be required to take public comment prior to making decisions, they could reduce the public comment period from the currently required 45 days to as little as 14 days. This could limit your ability to be heard and have your concerns addressed in the decision making process – the opposite of what NEPA is intended to provide.
- Undermines public accountability and consistency by creating an entirely new environmental document with new requirements. While NEPA has for decades required the creation of an “environmental impact statement” for all major federal actions significantly affecting the environment, the proposed rule would create a completely different system for evaluating the effects of fisheries management actions on the oceans. The proposed rule is unclear about whether this new system will actually comply with NEPA’s requirements – potentially allowing illegal changes that break with decades of established practice and legal precedent under NEPA and could lead to weakened protection for oceans and marine life.
Defenders is urging the National Marine Fisheries Service to withdraw its proposed rule and go back to the drawing board to develop a rule that will help us make better decisions for managing our nation's fisheries -- decisions that are based on strong science, fully involve the public, and take a broad look at all of the resources and uses of our ocean. NEPA has been called our basic national charter for the environment, and we must ensure that charter applies to the oceans.
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