Magnuson again

Maine commercial fishermen often complain that they spend more time at legislative and regulatory hearings than they do actually fishing. It’s a legitimate complaint and one that only underscores the importance of a Senate field hearing Saturday on reauthorization of the Sustainable Fisheries Act, the cornerstone of the nation’s fisheries-management policies.

The hearing on SFA, formerly called the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and popularly know as Magnuson, will be held at 9:30 a.m. at Portland City Hall. It will be led by Sen. Olympia Snowe, chairwoman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Ocean and Fisheries, and will include three panels of witnesses representing state and federal managers, fishermen and conservationists.

There also will be open microphones for public comment and Maine fishermen must step up to them. The depletion of groundfish stocks, once a blue-ocean problem, now has washed up on Maine shores, in no small measure due to the nearly 25 years of the short-sighted and meandering federal policies that followed the enactment of Magnuson.

And all the flaws of federal policies may be about to affect the once-immune lobster industry. A federal stock assessment is expected within weeks — if it shows depletion, lobstermen will find themselves working under the same confusing and contradictory rebuilding guidelines that have made life miserable for their groundfishing counterparts.

The hearing also will give lobstermen the opportunity to reiterate the good point they’ve been making for years — dragging for lobster is a rapacious fishing technique and should be banned. The SFA, signed into law in 1996, emphasizes habitat preservation. Congress must be reminded that dragging is habitat destruction.

Fishermen may also want to remind lawmakers that a recent Clinton administration decision to re-assign a Maine seat on the New England Fisheries Management Council to a representative of New Hampshire’s minuscule fishing industry is merely pre-presidential primary pandering and is unacceptable. That alone should make going to Portland worth the trip.