Guest column: Keeping enough fish in the sea for tomorrow’s meal

For restaurants like mine — in New Orleans and New York — serving fresh seafood every day is the backbone of our business. Being able to serve seafood caught by U.S. fishermen is the icing on the cake. The U.S. boasts some of the most sustainably managed wild fisheries in the world, making American seafood the preferred choice for chefs like myself, and increasingly for our customers. But this wasn’t always the case. Until the mid-1990s, many U.S. fish were being caught at an unsustainable rate — depleting the ocean of the very species we now serve with pride.

Fortunately, many fishermen and fish lovers recognized the need to change course and worked with Congress to make key changes to a federal law known as the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA). The law has since proven to be incredibly successful at rebuilding fish populations and ensuring they remain healthy. Under the MSA, more than 45 of our country’s fish stocks have recovered from unsustainably fished levels. For chefs, that means we have had access to more sustainable U.S. seafood than ever.

If you are involved in the seafood industry in the Gulf of Mexico, however, you know that there are new challenges now, driven by climate change.

Warming waters, increasing acidity, and decreasing oxygen are now putting fish stocks at risk. Habitats are changing, and some finfish are leaving the gulf in search of cooler waters. Closer to shore, record Midwest rainfalls last summer caused massive freshwater runoffs that were disastrous for oysters, crabs, and shrimp. In short, the changing climate is threatening the progress we have made and threatening our fisheries, our coastal communities, and our way of life.

As overwhelming as this all seems, there is good news too. Scientists looking at climate impacts on fish stocks in both the U.S. and around the world have come to an important conclusion. Well managed, sustainable fisheries — like many in the United States — have the best chance of surviving and adapting in the face of climate change. In other words, never has it been more important for us to maintain the strong, science-based management standards that brought many of our fisheries back from the brink.

During the past few months, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., has been traveling around the country to talk to stakeholders about the MSA. In almost every session, he has heard about the impacts that climate change is having on our fisheries, and almost certainly he will hear similar stories when he appears Thursday in New Orleans with U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge. Equally important will be the message that now is not the time to turn back the clock on our hard-earned success. In the face of climate change, it is imperative that we uphold the MSA’s proven processes to rebuild depleted fisheries and ensure the adoption of the accountability measures that make our system work.

By:  Kerry Heffernan
Source: The Advocate

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