Fishery Management

Ensuring a healthy supply of fish and other marine species in the coastal waters is the responsibility of the Department of Commerce's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and eight regional fishery management councils. Measures to manage fish and marine species are usually developed by the councils, reviewed by NMFS, and approved by the Secretary of Commerce. This report assesses NMFS' compliance with three provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. GAO found that NMFS appears to be using the best available scientific information to determine the condition and the abundance of fish and other marine species, but improvements could be made.

GAO noted that: (1) NMFS appears to be using the best available scientific information to determine the condition and abundance of fish and other marine species, but improvements to include more current and complete data could be made; (2) according to the National Research Council, NMFS' current process provides a valid scientific context for evaluating the status of fish populations and other marine species; (3) at the same time, the Council and others have pointed out that some of this information is not current or complete; (4) the need to rely on such information has led to criticism by fisherman and others who have been adversely affected by fishery management decisions; (5) until NMFS can overcome the weaknesses associated with the information it uses, more consistently involve others in its research activities, and improve communications with fishing communities and the industry, the criticism is likely to continue; (6) NMFS considers the economic impacts of conservation and management measures on fishing communities; (7) however, this consideration concentrates on identifying how communities will be affected by these measures and not necessarily on how to minimize their effects to sustain the communities' participation in a fishery; (8) in addition, the data necessary to identify adverse effects are often unavailable and the usefulness of the analyses is limited by how they are used in the decisionmaking process; (9) the failure to use economic analyses to develop alternatives that minimize adverse impacts to fishing communities will result in continuing questions about why the information is even collected to satisfy this requirement; (10) NMFS has technically met the act's requirements by identifying essential fish habitat and developing a consultation process for addressing potential adverse impacts to that habitat; (11) however, lack of information and tight time frames have caused NMFS to make essential fish habitat designations that, when aggregated for each species, include virtually the entire portion of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that the United States controls; (12) individuals with commercial interests expressed concern that such broad designations could result in consultations that adversely affect their planned construction or development projects; (13) so far, however, there is little evidence to indicate that the new consultation process has resulted in delayed or cancelled projects; and (14) since completing the habitat designations, NMFS has increased its efforts to identify the adverse impacts to habitat and the actions needed to conserve and enhance it.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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