Fish Habitat: Essential Fish Habitat and Rehabilitation

<em>Abstract.</em> —With the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act in the fall of 1996, significant new opportunities and challenges exist in the United States to protect and conserve the habitat of marine, estuarine, and anadromous finfish as well as key populations of mollusks and crustaceans. As of October 1998, all federal fishery management councils (the Councils) were required to amend their fishery management plans (covering over 700 stocks) to identify, for each species, the essential fish habitat, which is “those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, feeding or growth to maturity.” Threats to habitat and steps necessary to ameliorate those threats also had to be identified. Information from fisheries scientists and managers throughout the country will be needed to accurately identify essential fish habitat and habitat threats and to monitor the effectiveness of protective measures that come into force once habitat has been identified as essential. My vision, which is also that of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is no further loss of habitat quantity and quality as well as the preservation and restoration of habitat biodiversity by the year 2004. The essential fish habitat provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act provide an outstanding opportunity for the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Councils, and our numerous partners from every sector of society to develop new ecosystem approaches to fishery management addressing cumulative impacts to habitats in a comprehensive, effective, and efficient manner.