POLITICO: Anglers challenge commercial groups over fisheries policy

By Jenny Hopkinson, Washington, D.C.8/7/14 5:03 AM EDTSport fishing groups have a message for the commercial fishing industry now that the federal fisheries law is up for renewal: This time, it’s our turn.The groups, which are feeling their lobbying weight as sport fishing gains in popularity nationally, say their industry’s importance to coastal economies still isn’t reflected in the 38-year-old Magnuson-Stevens Act, which regulates how many fish each of the industries can catch.Recreational anglers, who make up a growing $70 billion industry, care about such things as individual fish sizes, the abundance of prized species and the length of the fishing season — issues they say the law doesn’t adequately address.“We want our fair share, and that’s what we are going for,” Michael Leonard, director of ocean resource policy for the American Sportfishing Association, said, adding that the industry has wanted its issues addressed for many years.“It’s long past time,” Leonard said. “There are better ways of managing fisheries for recreational use, and it’s long past time to start figuring out what those are.”The commercial fishing industry, which had sales of $141 billion in 2012 and accounts for about 98 percent of the domestic annual catch, isn’t taking the demands of recreational anglers lying down. The harvest amounts they’ve been allotted are key to their business models, they say, and the proposed changes could harm their bottom line.With the law now past its 2013 renewal date, both sides are drafting battle plans and lobbying Capitol Hill as House lawmakers and senators prepare to push ahead with a renewal, which could advance this fall.At the same time, the sponsor of one reauthorization bill, Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska.), faces what will likely be a tough reelection in the Republican-leaning state. Commercial fisheries in Alaska contributed $4.2 billion in sales and supported 56,000 jobs in 2012, according to the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service, making the industry a key constituency.If Begich loses — and that’s still a big if — whoever might succeed him as chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation oceans subcommittee could ignore the proposals in his draft bill, which try to meet some of the demands of the recreational fishing industry as well as the calls of commercial fishermen. That’s more likely if Republicans take the Senate this fall.Under that scenario, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) could move from ranking member to chairman of the panel, giving recreational fishing groups a potential champion where it counts. Florida’s recreational fishing industry is the largest in the nation, generating about $13.1 billion in sales and supporting 109,000 jobs in 2012 — more than the commercial industry employed in the state, the NMFS report said.On the House side, Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) introduced a bill (H.R. 4742) in May that would allow more flexibility in stock rebuilding time frames and add to the things that regional councils responsible for managing U.S. fisheries may consider in determining catch limits, such as changes in an ecosystem or the economic needs of fishing communities. It would also make the appointed regional councils more transparent.However, the measure, which could go to the House floor for a vote before the end of the year, falls short on the priorities of the sport fishing industry.The American Sportfishing Association is pressing members of Congress to take the long view in deciding the acceptable catch size for each industry. It says the management of fisheries should be based on long-term harvest rates, not annual quotas, which require a halt to fishing when catch limits are exceeded, hurting businesses. The long-term rate has proved successful in managing inland fisheries, the group says.What’s more, catch sizes for each industry should be reexamined every five years, the ASA says. Currently, there is no set period for such reassessments, a problem made worse by the failure of the regional fisheries management councils to address catch allocations in “mixed-use” fishing grounds, or those used by both commercial and recreational fishermen.Commercial fishermen however, say they depend on those allocations to project long-term revenues, which determine a fleet’s ability to gain financing — something a regular review could throw into uncertainty.“If I were a hunter and gatherer, I would not be intimidated by the idea of a five-year reallocation,” said Chris Brown, head of the Seafood Harvesters of America. “But having negotiated the terms of my financial existence with a lending institution that expects prompt payment every 30 days or so, I have to have a pretty good handle on where my business can go. The thought of reallocation hanging over my head … is something this industry cannot tolerate.”Recreational angling groups say they are “underwhelmed” by Hastings’ bill, which is missing “that wholesale reexamination of how recreational fisheries would be managed federally that we were hoping to see,” Leonard said.Begich’s draft measure, on the other hand, would require the fisheries management councils for the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic — two regions where anglers have long called for a greater piece of the catch — to give catch limits the five-year review that anglers are seeking. It also would require the National Academy of Sciences to help determine criteria for setting catch allocations, including conservation and socioeconomic concerns.The senator’s proposal would also require fisheries managers to take the needs of the fishing communities into account in setting time frames to rebuild fishing stocks and would move toward the electronic, rather than human, collection of fisheries data.Much of the draft bill’s contents address the sport fishing industry’s concerns, although the groups are still pushing for national, rather than region-specific, catch allocations, Leonard said.Mark Gleason, executive director of the commercial fishing group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, praised Begich’s draft, saying it “threads a fine line” on the reallocation issue. Its distinction between environmental issues and overfishing as causes of declining fish populations would be helpful to commercial fishermen, he said.Commercial fishing groups generally protest the move to address recreational fishing priorities, however, saying they have already made a considerable financial sacrifice to keep fisheries sustainable.Magnuson-Stevens largely put the blame for overfishing on commercial boats, “so it was up to the commercial fishing industry to respond and to sacrifice and to make progress” to meet the conservation goals, which meant sticking to strict catch and reporting requirements laid out in the original law, said Brett Veerhusen, executive director of the Seafood Harvesters of America, which represents 14 commercial fishing associations.Sport fishing groups should have to make similar compromises “before we start taking [allocations] away from the user group that has been largely responsible for rebuilding of fish stocks,” said Veerhusen.His group was established in June to lobby on the Magnuson-Stevens renewal, proposed EPA rules on deck wash from commercial boats and Coast Guard rules governing vessel standards, among other things.Although Veerhusen declined to comment on Hastings’ bill, he said the language in Begich’s draft on catch allocations is a red flag. Allowing their reassessment in the South Atlantic and Gulf fisheries “sets a bad precedent” and would be bad for business, he said.Veerhusen added that his group is still fleshing out what the proposed National Academy of Sciences report could mean for the industry and plans to submit comments on the bill to the senator’s office by Aug. 20.The complex provisions in the bill may require “more time to review this and what it means through the end of this year,” he said.Conservationists, meanwhile, say that both bills wouldn’t do enough to protect marine ecosystems.The Hastings bill would roll back requirements on the time frames for rebuilding fish stocks by expanding exemptions from the current 10-year standard, the environmental group Oceana said in a May 29 press release. The bill also doesn’t include provisions to stem so-called bycatch, or the unintentional snaring of fish, or take climate change into account, the group said.Beckie Zisser, who lobbies lawmakers on Magnuson-Stevens for Oceana, called the Begich draft bill “watered down.” The measure doesn’t include provisions to protect forage fish or annual limits on how many fish can be caught, among other things, she said.However, she added, it may be the best conservationists can get.“The question is, do stakeholders want a Begich bill to go through now or a Rubio driven bill next year,” Zisser said.The concern of conservation groups is that a bill from the Florida Republican could call for the further rolling back of conservation measures and changes to base provisions of the law to make it more friendly to recreational anglers and commercial groups alike. “Do we get a bill that is kind of what we want now or a bill we hate in a few years.”Read the full story on PoliticoPro