The new changes that the Bush administration is pressing could dramatically weaken protections against overfishing already depleted ocean stocks. As per the public comment filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) the thrust of the Bush plan would cede more control to the fishing industry over environmental harvest limits.
As a reaction of the revisions a coalition of conservation groups delivered thousands of protest letters to regional offices of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) whose National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is charged with conserving ocean fish populations. Congress mandated the updating which was supposed to encourage ecosystem management of ocean resources and strengthen rather than sap safeguards against over-fishing.
The changes include more power to fishing industry, rather than NOAA, in framing assessments of the effects of management policies, expands loopholes for avoiding any environmental reviews on a host of fishery actions; and cuts the ability of outside researchers, conservation groups and the public to review and comment on fishery management decisions.
According to New England PEER Director Kyla Bennett, this is a lame duck gift to the fishing industry. He told that this plan represents a U-turn away from public interest regulation of marine resources most imperiled by commercial over-exploitation. It is said that the schedule for this plan will likely have it finalized in late October, just before the self-imposed November 1st moratorium by the Bush administration for adopting new rules and in a timeframe that will hamper any congressional review until 2009, at the earliest.
At the same time the Bush administration is also privatizing the monitoring of commercial fishing vessels to ensure compliance with catch limits, by-catch rules and regulations protecting marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and other non-commercial sea life.
