Congress didn’t accomplish much during its brief lame duck session, but lawmakers did pass a major revision to the nation’s fishery management law that, for the first time, prohibits overfishing and sets up a quota system. These are overdue changes that will help rebuild fish stocks, which should in turn boost the fishing industry.

Reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act was somewhat unexpected since a House version of the bill did not include a requirement to end overfishing and it extended the time allowed to rebuild depleted stocks. The House bill was sponsored by Rep. Richard Pombo, a California Republican who had long been critical of environmental regulations. He was defeated in November’s election.

The Senate rewrite of Magnuson, which Sen. Olympia Snowe, chair of the Senate Fisheries and the Coast Guard Subcommittee, helped direct, set clear catch limits for all fisheries and allowed for the creation of quota systems to divide up the allowable catch among fishermen.

Rep. Tom Allen, co-chair of the House Ocean Caucus, amended the Pombo bill with provisions to enforce catch limits and to remove extensions of rebuilding timelines. This made it more in line with the Senate version.

House and Senate negotiators then agreed to move forward with the Senate version, which was ultimately approved by both chambers late last week. The revised law will guide fishery management in federal waters, which are from three miles to 200 miles off shore, until 2013.

Earlier this fall, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced new rules to protect cod by limiting fishing in a portion of the Gulf of Maine to just 27 days per year. According to the latest NOAA assessment, the cod population had fallen by 20 percent between 2001 and 2004. The agency also said the yellowtail flounder population had been overestimated by 77 percent.

This rule change, which followed action by the New England Fisheries Management Council in 2004 to reduce allowable days at sea from 88 to 53, showed that tinkering with a calendar and a map wasn’t stopping overfishing. A better solution was to set a strict overall catch limit coupled with a quota system to divide up that catch. This would let fishermen get back on the water when it was economical and safe.

The just-passed fisheries rules move in that direction by setting catch limits, although it is unclear what action regulators must take if the limits are exceeded. It also sets up a quota system, called Limited Access Privilege Programs, in which fishermen can own and trade shares of the catch. A provision, added by Sen. Olympia Snowe, requires that such a system be approved by two-thirds of fishermen before being implemented in New England.

Quotas are working well in other parts of the country and the world. Allowing them here when other management measures have failed is a logical step in limiting the number of fish that are caught so more remain in the ocean to grow and reproduce, allowing fishermen to catch more in the long term.