Lawmakers favor keeping fishing limits

WASHINGTON -- Leaders of congressional panels with jurisdiction over fisheries say they will push this year to extend federal limits on commercial fishing, caps that advocates say are needed to preserve fish populations from destruction but that some New England fishermen have blamed for crippling their livelihoods.

The Magnuson-Stevens Act, first passed in 1976 in response to declining fish stocks and foreigners fishing in American waters, set up regional panels to regulate the industry in waters between 3 and 200 miles of the United States, an area that includes Georges Bank. Fishermen and environmental groups both credit the act with rescuing some threatened fish stocks, but with reauthorization likely, both groups want changes in the law.

Northeastern fishermen have complained that the law, especially a provision that requires them to wait 10 years before they can resume catching fish deemed overfished, is too rigid and has contributed to the decline of the fishing industry in New England.

Fishermen are also worried the act may be amended to include a federal commission's recommendation last year that would change the way the fish quotas are imposed and could end up giving big fishing corporations an advantage.

Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine, announced last week that she will hold a series of meetings with Maine fishermen to discuss possible changes to the law, which may be reexamined during this Congress.

The law has not been updated in nine years, but the new chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, has described reauthorization of the bill as a high priority.

In the House of Representatives, the Fisheries subcommittee chairman, Representative Wayne Gilchrest, Republican of Maryland, has said he wants to hold hearings and introduce a bill renewing Magnuson-Stevens sometime this year.

Patricia M. Fiorelli, a spokeswoman for the New England Fisheries Management Council, the regional body set up by the act, said the law protects key stocks like scallops and herring from overfishing, and that by restricting foreign fishing, the law ''Americanized the fishery, because we had so many foreign vessels in here and our fleet was falling apart."

Lobstermen, who generate the majority of seafood revenue in New England, aren't affected by the law, Fiorelli said, since most lobsters and shellfish are caught within 3 miles of shore, which is considered state jurisdiction.

Still, some New England fishermen want the law changed to strike a better balance between preserving stocks and keeping fishing economically viable.

''Currently, we are rebuilding stocks to the detriment of entire geographical areas such as eastern Maine," said Craig A. Pendleton, coordinator of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance in Saco, who plans to attend at least one of the meetings with Snowe.

Under the current rules, members of the eight regional councils, many of them commercial fishermen, have the authority to set quotas on commercial and recreational fishing.

Lee Crockett, the executive director of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, a coalition of groups that support fishing limits, said the law needs to be tightened because some regional councils had proved less effective than others, singling out New England as one region where preservation efforts have been too timid.

''New England Council historically has set the quotas above what is sustainable," Crockett said. ''They have a long history of not making the hard decisions."

He said New England needed to be more like Alaska, where quotas are set with heavy input from scientists, rather than fishermen. ''In Alaska, they pay strict attention to what their scientists tell them," he said. ''What we're advocating is taking that Alaska model and apply it nationally."

Crockett said he wanted the fisheries management councils to have stricter conflict-of-interest rules, require them to take scientific advice into account, and expand membership to include nonfishermen.

Last year, a federal commission on oceans recommended giving individual fishermen a set percentage of the quota, an allocation they could trade. Crockett said a similar scheme for surf clams, which are used in clam chowder, led to the consolidation of the industry in the mid-Atlantic states, driving some local fishermen out of business.

Snowe's office said the meetings are scheduled for Tuesday in Portland, Wednesday in Rockland, and Thursday in Ellsworth.