Tuesday June 18, 2024
NRDC —
Just in time for National Ocean Month, NOAA Fisheries recently released its annual Status of Stocks report to Congress, offering athn opportunity to check the pulse of domestic fisheries in the United States. The report provides a glimpse into whether fishery management approaches are meeting the sustainability goals laid out in our federal fisheries law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which requires fishery managers to prevent overfishing of U.S. ocean fish populations with science-based catch limits and to expeditiously rebuild depleted fish populations to help ensure their long-term health.
Healthy fish populations are the building blocks of a healthy ocean. They support marine ecosystems, including other wildlife like whales and seabirds. They are also the engines of our coastal economies and the communities that rely on them, with fisheries in the United States supporting an estimated 2.3 million jobs.
While NOAA’s latest report demonstrates some recent progress, the numbers show that we still have a lot of work to do to prevent backsliding of fisheries conservation.