In 1976, Congress passed the Magnuson-Stevens Act to support both the environment and the fishing industry. It created separate councils for different regions, and each committee regulated fishing limits and catch sizes within its designated area. The result was an uneasy truce between conservationists and the fishing industry.
Today, it appears that the health of our fishery has returned. But regulations haven’t caught up. For instance until a recent temporary tweak, federal regulators were setting New York’s fluke limits using data from 1998. The fluke population seems to have rebounded, so why use data from 16 years ago?
