Why It Matters –A recent Presidential Executive Order provided a formal opportunity for the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation and others to weigh in on how we can better manage our marine recreational fisheries.
Highlights:
- 1 million marine recreational anglers support 691,565 jobs and annually contribute $138 billion in sales impacts to the U.S. economy.
- Recreational fishing is a significant source of seafood for millions of Americans who consume their own catch.
- Recreational fisheries, which benefit from access rather than total pounds harvested, are inherently different from commercial fisheries.
In April of this year, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) on “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness”. Since that time, the eight regional fishery management councils have been soliciting stakeholder input on how best to address the opportunities presented by the order. NOAA’s NMFS recently invited comments from a national perspective, and last week, CSF joined the American Sportfishing Association, Center for Sportfishing Policy, and the Coastal Conservation Association in providing our suggested actions.
While much of the EO focuses on commercial fishing and the seafood industry, many of the policies and priorities equally apply to recreational fisheries, such as addressing overregulation, ensuring access, improving fisheries management and science, and modernizing data collection. Along those lines, CSF and our partners urged the Administration to consider, among other items:
- Recognizing the economic, social, and cultural value of recreational fishing (both for personal sustenance and recreation)
- Re-envisioning the fisheries management process to ensure sufficient and accurate data is collected on recreationally important fisheries, and avoiding highly precautionary management approaches that unnecessarily stifle fishing opportunities
- Avoiding limited access privilege programs (LAPPs) in the charter/for-hire industry that reduce access for non-boat-owning anglers
- Reviewing and reevaluating NOAA’s vessel speed restrictions for marine mammal protection, focusing on the latest marine electronics advancements as viable solutions
- Establishing more artificial reefs, which are an important conservation tool that can enhance and replace degrading natural structures such as coral reefs, and increase habitat connectivity and metapopulation ecological benefits for species with high reef affinity
- Supporting state-led data collection and management as the pathway to improving data collection and access to recreational fisheries
- Ensuring Congressionally funded independent absolute abundance estimates become the baseline from which new stock assessment models are built to reflect similar population abundance estimate.
- Collecting more robust recreational economic data by specific fisheries, which is currently severely lacking for most recreationally significant species
- Encouraging the use of alternative management measures, such as harvest control rules, that provide more appropriate fishing access when stocks are doing well
CSF appreciates the tenets of the EO and looks forward to working with the Secretary of Commerce and the regional fishery management councils to improve management of our recreational fisheries.
