Industry letter outlining concerns with 30x30 provisions
On Monday, November 16, the Seafood Harvesters of America joined more than 830 seafood industry stakeholders to convey our concerns about how Title II of the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act is currently imagined.
You can view a PDF of the letter here.
The Honorable Raul Grijalva
Chairman
Committee on Natural Resources
United States House of Representatives
1324 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
November 16, 2020
Dear Chairman Grijalva:
As participants in our nation’s seafood economy, we write to express deep concern regarding Title II of your recently introduced Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act. If enacted, this Title would undermine our nation’s world-class system of fisheries management, harming fishermen and the coastal communities they sustain. As you seek feedback on your legislation, we urge you to fundamentally rethink Title II’s provisions.
We hail from different regions, participate in different parts of the seafood supply chain, and have a range of views about other provisions of your new legislation. We are united, however, in our commitment to using the best available science to ensure that our nation’s fisheries are harvested sustainably for the benefit of this and future generations. This guiding principle is at the heart of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and its increasingly rigorous application by our Regional Fishery Management Councils has made our fisheries management system the envy of the world.
It is deeply concerning that such a detailed bill, introduced in the House of Representatives Committee charged with continued stewardship of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, could seek to undermine this law’s operation—and specifically its commitment to scientific rigor—in such far-reaching ways. Our industry is extremely proud to have worked with policymakers and other stakeholders over decades to construct a fisheries management system that is not only succeeding here at home, but is inspiring reforms in Europe, Asia, and beyond. Although no system is perfect, in the vast majority of cases the Magnuson-Stevens Act is laying the foundation for win-win outcomes that safeguard sustainability while simultaneously preserving opportunities for economic success. As a result, the production of American seafood preserves vital cultural traditions, achieves exceptional environmental outcomes, creates jobs in communities across the United States, and delivers food with one of the lowest carbon footprints of any protein on Earth. Title II of the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act will jeopardize that remarkable record of success.
We share the following overarching concerns about provisions of Title II that uniquely single out our industry:
1. Title II would compel the Executive Branch to establish Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that prohibit all commercial fishing activity across at least 30 percent of the nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by 2030. One of the central claims made by Title II supporters is that these massive closures would provide benefits to fishermen and other seafood industry participants over the long term. That simply isn’t true. In contrast with many international contexts—where MPAs are established to remedy a profoundly broken fisheries management system and a degraded marine environment—U.S. fisheries are overwhelmingly sustainable and successfully managed to Maximum Sustainable Yield.
Longstanding fisheries bioeconomics theory, which underpins contemporary fisheries management and science, holds that Maximum Sustainable Yield is achieved via exploitation of fish stocks.[1] Put another way, the sustainable harvesting of fish stocks is itself necessary to trigger increased ecosystem productivity that in turn allows for higher sustainable harvest levels. Title II’s implied claim—that closing 30 percent of the U.S. EEZ will result in higher long-term yields from U.S. fisheries—is a false promise, lacking a scientific basis.
2. Accordingly, although the specific decisions of the Administration MPA Task Force are impossible to predict, the overall impacts of Title II are not. Without reliable access to the resource, many commercial fishermen will be unable to profitably harvest species they have been fishing for decades. Harvesters and processors will pause or cancel new investments into equipment, hiring, and innovation.[2] Coastal communities dependent on commercial fishing will lose a major source of local revenue. Wholesalers and distributors will obtain an increasing proportion of their product from foreign sources, which may not have the same sustainability standards. Restaurants and grocery stores will be able to offer American consumers less domestically-sourced seafood. Low-income families will face higher prices for a reduced supply of a wholesome, nutritious protein.
Major parts of our industry have been decimated this year by fallout from COVID-19. We are genuinely taken aback that you are choosing to end 2020 by introducing legislation that puts the viability of our industry under a second dark cloud of uncertainty, for no discernable reason attached to meaningful improvements in conservation outcomes.
3. It is true that, even in high-performing fisheries management contexts, the science-based closure of specific areas to all fishing activity can assist in the rebuilding of depleted stocks and thus benefit fishery participants over the long term. Yet this is precisely what already occurs under our nation’s successful fisheries management system. Title II of your legislation appears to ignore the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s success in providing a rigorous, science-based framework for area-based closures to achieve specific rebuilding outcomes. If the objective of area-based closures is to rebuild depleted fisheries, a stakeholder-driven science-based process is far preferable to a top-down approach that sets an arbitrary threshold for total, indefinite closures to commercial fishing.
Area closures implemented by Fishery Management Councils have been part of the scientifically-rigorous formula that has rebuilt 47 previously-depleted species to health since 2000. Six regional Science Centers, together with the Scientific and Statistical Committees of each Council, harness deep expertise regarding the marine environment of each region to inform management decisions. We should build on this remarkable success and expertise within the Magnuson-Stevens framework. Instead, Title II shunts it aside.
4. High-value benthic habitat, such as deep-sea corals, are important parts of the marine ecosystem and worthy of science-based protection. Yet your legislation ignores the protections that have repeatedly been secured for these marine habitats under the existing Magnuson-Stevens Act. These protections—often implemented through painstaking collaborative efforts between industry, environmental organizations and other stakeholders—may not garner the headlines of a marine monument designation, but they are providing durable protections to vast tracts of the U.S. EEZ right now. In 2017, for example, a new Deep Sea Coral Protection Area spanning more than 38,000 square miles was established off the Mid-Atlantic Coast with support from both commercial fishermen and conservationists. The following year, the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to protect more than 145,000 square miles of sensitive habitats along the West Coast, after a years-long cooperative process initiated by the fishing industry and environmental organizations. Earlier this year, the New England Fishery Management Council adopted sweeping new protections for deep-sea corals in the region, spanning more than 25,000 square miles south of Georges Bank. And just last month, a Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council Amendment using the Essential Fish Habitat provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act became final, extending new protections to 500 square miles of deep-sea coral habitat spanning 13 reefs and canyons stretching from Texas to the Florida Keys. These kinds of actions are precisely how durable, stakeholder-driven habitat conservation is working under the Magnuson-Stevens Act in regions around the country.
Why would you undermine these processes, and eviscerate stakeholder buy-in and trust, through the designation of new MPAs via a cabinet-level Task Force that will have no legitimacy with our industry and no bipartisan support? How will a process that takes as its lodestar the failed Northeast Seamounts and Canyons designation—which earned no industry support and saw commercial fisheries access reinstated upon a change of administration—advance long-term conservation objectives? If your desire is to ensure that high conservation value benthic habitats are protected from human impacts unrelated to commercial fisheries, we urge you to draft legislation that would achieve that goal.
5. As our oceans become warmer in a changing climate, fisheries management must be nimble and adaptive. Part of the genius of the existing Magnuson-Stevens Act is its creation of a stakeholder-involved process via which area-based closures can constantly be reviewed and updated based on new scientific information. The idea that 30 percent of the U.S. EEZ should be permanently closed to all commercial fishing activity, without the opportunity to update the specific closure boundaries as part of an adaptive management strategy over the long term, ignores what our scientists are telling us about what will drive successful marine conservation outcomes in the twenty-first century.
6. Title II would create new Marine Protected Areas that prohibit all commercial fishing while allowing recreational fishing to continue. For decades, the Regional Fishery Management Councils have worked to manage commercial, recreational, and mixed-use fisheries for the long-term benefit of all participants. There is no scientific basis whatsoever for discriminating against those harvesting seafood and in favor of those catching fish for sport. This arbitrary, unscientific distinction lies at the heart of Title II, and reveals the extent to which your legislation uniquely singles out and takes aim at our industry.
We are all committed to being part of the conversation about how to strengthen marine conservation and fisheries management in the years ahead. In recent months some of us have welcomed the chance to participate in the regional listening sessions that Subcommittee Chairman Jared Huffman has convened to review the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s operation and consider improvements; and although we reserve judgment on any reauthorization bill Chairman Huffman may propose, the process has been admirably inclusive and deliberative. It is extremely unfortunate that, in stark contrast, you have introduced legislation that would close 30 percent of the U.S. EEZ to a demonstrably sustainable sector of our economy with no consultation with the vast majority of participants in our industry. We hope your hearing on November 17 is a chance to start over, and to begin building deliberatively on our world-leading science-based fisheries management system and its remarkable record of success.
Respectfully,
[1] For the seminal articulation of this principle see: Schaefer, M.B. (1954) Some aspects of the dynamics of populations, important for the management of the commercial marine fisheries. Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, 1, 7-56.
[2] Without meaningful input and notice regarding Task Force determinations, industry will not understand how, when, and why those determinations will impact specific waters and fisheries. This lack of transparency in and of itself will impede investments into commercial fishing, further eroding the competitiveness of U.S. industry.