logo

Restore The Gulf

What's New

On December 9, 2006, the U.S. House and Senate passed the Magnusen-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act, a bill 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 who are for the most part fishermen. 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, its authors –to their credit-- resisted attempts to rollback important provisions; and they crafted several important steps forward on conservation. Recent scientific reports in Science and Nature warned about the declining productivity of our oceans because of global warming and the potential worldwide collapse of commercial fisheries.

Brief Summary

The Gulf of Mexico -- the world's largest gulf and the ninth largest water body -- has the most extensive coastal wetlands and coral reefs in the continental U.S.  It is home to five species of sea turtles that are threatened or endangered, including the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle which often becomes enmeshed in shrimp nets and drowns.  The Gulf supports more than 30 varieties of dolphins and whales, and thousands of species of fish and birds also. Unfortunately, its rich ecosystems are threatened by upstream pollution, reduced supplies of freshwater, poorly planned coastal development and over-exploitation of fish stocks.

Over fishing is a substantial part of the decline in our oceans' health. Fish are being taken out of our oceans at rates too fast for them to recover. Factory trawlers strip-mine the ocean, destroying precious sea floor habitat and corals, and indiscriminately scooping up everything in their paths. Commercial fishing fleets catch not just fish, but sea turtles, birds, and marine mammals, as well.

The Texas coastal economy depends heavily on the fishing industry.  However, in recent years catch levels have dropped, devastating the fishing economy.  This is due in part to over fishing that has depleted supplies of fish and shrimp in the Gulf.

This is happening because America's oceans are the country's only public resource controlled directly by those who profit from exploiting them—more than 60 percent of the people who sit on the committees that decide how much fish can be taken from the ocean are part of the fishing industry themselves.

In order to protect the Texas Gulf we must recover depleted fishery stocks and enhance the region's economy using a new market-based approach to fishery management. We must also safeguard key marine habitats, conserve biodiversity and endangered species, and improve fishery productivity by creating a network of marine protected areas.

Strict regulation at the federal level needs to be enforced in order to protect the Texas Gulf’s environment and economy.  The Magnuson-Stevens Act needs to be renewed in order to promote a healthy fishing economy for future generations.