Environment America is the new home of U.S. PIRG’s environmental work.
Statement of U.S. PIRG Oceans Advocate Mike Gravitz
We applaud the House and Senate and their ocean champions for passing a bill this week that is critical to maintaining healthy fish populations, marine life and oceans. The bill mandates an end to overfishing, the first important step toward rebuilding our own depleted fisheries. The bill also mandates that decisions by regional fishery management councils be based on the findings of their science advisors, rather than on the self-interest of members of the councils. These are major steps forward built on a decent framework that has been in place since 1996.
While the bill does not contain everything that the fishery conservation community had hoped for, the bill’s sponsors resisted attempts to roll back important provisions, and took several significant steps forward on conservation.
Given the frightening scientific reports in the last month in Science and more recently in Nature about the declining productivity of our oceans because of global warming and the potential worldwide collapse of commercial fisheries, we look forward to the president’s signature on the bill.
