OCEANS: U.S. Ocean Fish Recovery: Staying the Course

doi:10.1126/science.1113725

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Policy Forum

OCEANS:
U.S. Ocean Fish Recovery: Staying the Course

Carl Safina,^1* Andrew A. Rosenberg,² Ransom A. Myers,³ Terrance J. Quinn II,⁴ Jeremy S. Collie^5*

This Policy Forum is a defense of existing, embattled U.S. legislative policy toward ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted populations within a specified time frame. The United States now uniquely has numerous marine species whose recovering populations are linkable to federal rebuilding mandates. Yet lawsuits and congressional bills introduced at the behest of the fishing industry would relax or eliminate the law's recovery mandates. We show quantitatively that the existing timetable is responsible, reasonable, and biologically feasible.

¹Marine Sciences Research Center, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook NY 11794, USA. ²College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA. ³Biology Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4J1. ⁴Juneau Center, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Juneau, AK 99801, USA. ⁵Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI 02882, USA.

*Author for correspondence. E-mail: csafina{at}blueocean.org

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