Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have once again introduced legislation to reauthorize and update the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), the primary legislation governing U.S. fisheries.
Legislators say updating the MSA – which was last revised in 2006 – is critical to ensuring federal law reflects the challenges facing fisheries today.
“The ocean is the beating heart of our planet: it feeds us, regulates our climate, and supports coastal economies across the country,” U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (D-California) said in a statement. “But our oceans and fisheries are under mounting pressure from climate change, habitat degradation, and shortsighted management. We need to ensure our laws reflect the urgency and complexity of this moment. While some are focused on rolling back environmental protections and ignoring climate science, we’re doing the hard work to safeguard our oceans. That means using the best available science, listening to those on the frontlines, and making sure our policies work on the ground for the people and ecosystems that depend on healthy, sustainable fisheries.”
Huffman reintroduced the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act alongside U.S. Delegate James Moylan (R-Guam) and U.S. Representative Ed Case (D-Hawaii). Previous efforts to reauthorize the MSA in 2020 and 2022 ultimately fell short, and a version of the bill introduced last year never made it out of committee.
Despite previous struggles to build wide support for the bill, the lawmakers behind the push maintain that it is critical to update federal law.
“MSA has been and will continue to be our main authority for establishing and administering responsible approaches and is overdue for updating to assure it continues to work into the next generations,” Case said. “This is especially important in our Pacific given increasing competition for the ocean’s resources and the corresponding danger that absent sound national and international policies will do irreparable harm unless we do an update to the MSA.”
Addressing climate change is a major focus of the reauthorization bill. The legislation would require regional fishery management council to consider climate change in setting priorities and planning and would create a climate-ready fisheries innovation program to develop tools for addressing climate change in fisheries.
The Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act would also …
