Let the Cameras Roll: It’s Time to Modernize Fishing Rules

Do you recall that the Supreme Court reversed the Chevron decision? The one gave deference to agencies’ interpretations of murky regulations? We imagine so. But do you recall the plaintiffs were a family fishing business from New Jersey objecting to being forced to pay for human observers on their boat?

If not (hand up!), their original complaint remains relevant today as the Natural Resources Committee holds a Wednesday hearing titled “Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness"

Partly at issue Wednesday is the ability for fishermen to augment human observation with technology.

Nearly 50 years ago, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act authorized agencies to, among many other things, require fishing vessels to carry human observers to ensure there is no over-fishing and to collect reams of data to inform future fishing quotas and other biological information.

As you can imagine, this can get expensive (up to $1,6000 per day) and produce incomplete results (only 77% of what could be caught was caught across a sample of nineteen countries – including the U.S.).

Technology – specifically, cameras like the ones built by Kentucky-based FlyWire Cameras – can fix this by reducing costs, delivering better data, and ultimately allowing fishers to catch more fish.

Fishers can use electronic monitoring currently … but only after they get past the 3-7 year application process. Perhaps that’s why they’re implemented in less than 1 percent of fisheries.

Fishers can use electronic monitoring currently … but only after they get past the 3-7 year application process. Perhaps that’s why they’re implemented in less than 1 percent of fisheries.

This hearing and a recent Trump executive order (which specifically states tech adoption as an avenue to Make American Fisheries Great Again) can hopefully spur this to change The tech is ready. The government just needs to catch up.