Despite positive descriptions from federal regulators, many fish stocks in New England continue to be overharvested and, worse, many of the fish caught off the region’s coast are simply thrown away because they are not commercially valuable. An update of the nation’s fishing laws, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, passed by the Senate, should help by setting catch limits and funding gear research.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service report on the status of U.S. fisheries for 2005, the majority of fish stocks are not overfished. However, the status of more than half the species of fish in U.S. waters is not known. Of the 530 stocks monitored by NMFS, 206 have a known status, with 54 of these considered overfished by the agency.

The annual report lists 14 of the 35 stocks overseen by the New England Fisheries Management Council as overfished, with two species – yellowtail flounder and winter flounder – added to that list this year. Three lesser-known species – barndoor skate, bluefish and golden tilefish – were removed from the overfished list this year.

Overfishing is exacerbated because millions of pounds of fish are discarded at sea, a practice called bycatch. According to a recent report from the Marine Fish Conservation Network, 340 million pounds of groundfish and scallops were thrown overboard in New England in 2002.

This comes on the heels of a study that found the New England ground-fishery has one of the highest by-catch rates in the country. For every 55,000 tons of groundfish brought to port, groundfishermen throw away 98,000 tons at sea, according to the study, published last year in Fish and Fisheries. Fish are discarded for many reasons, including limits on how many can be caught and the fact that they are not valuable.

The fish that are most often thrown away include spiny dogfish, monkfish and hake. The fish that are discarded are usually small, young fish.

In New England there have been important efforts to reduce by-catch such as putting juvenile fish habitat off limits to fishing and requiring bigger holes in nets to allow young fish to more easily escape. But no one is following up to see how well these measures reduce by-catch, a problem that is partially addressed by the Senate’s version of Magnuson-Stevens by setting up a new program to research gear modification to reduce bycatch. Because gear modifications are supported by the fishing industry, they hold promise.

On the negative side, the bill would reduce public access to data collected by federal observers on fishing boats by making the information exempt from Freedom of Information laws. Because fishermen work far from the public eye, observer data is crucial for knowing what fishermen are catching – and throwing away – far out at sea.

Bringing attention to the problem of by-catch is an important first step. The Senate has taken another step by encouraging solutions to the problem.