Fisheries law extended 3 years Congress voted to extend for three years a law designed to halt the depletion of the nation's fisheries and sent it to President Clinton, who supports it despite reservations. He and other lawmakers of both parties complained that the measure was written entirely by the Senate. Rep. George Miller of California, the committee's senior Democrat, opposed the bill after saying his state's fishermen and processors found it worse than no bill at all. The House had passed a stronger bill a year ago. He nevertheless voted for the bill.
Environmentalists generally support the measure as necessary to protect U.S. fisheries.
The 1976 law tackled the problem of foreign vessels depleting fisheries by extending the national fishing zone to 200 miles offshore. Since then, the foreign catch in the 200-mile zone has dropped from 3.8 billion pounds in 1977, or 77 percent of the total, to zero from 1992 onward. The domestic catch, meanwhile, has increased from 1.56 billion pounds in 1977 to 6.32 billion pounds in 1993. The new legislation would establish management plans to set criteria for determining when a fishery is overfished and how overfished areas should be revitalized. The interior secretary would have to report annually to Congress to identify the regions in danger of being overfished.