The Forage Fish Conservation Act of 2025 amends the Magnuson‑Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to insert forage fish as a distinct management category. It directs the Secretary of Commerce to define “forage fish,” requires Councils and their scientific and statistical committees to account for forage species’ ecosystem role, and pushes fishery management plans to set catch limits that consider the diet needs of predators.
The bill will reallocate monitoring resources in the Atlantic, immediately fold river herring and shad into two regional plans, and create new procedural steps (definitions, guidance, and Council lists) that change how new directed forage fisheries can be developed. For compliance officers and industry leaders the bill signals stronger ecosystem‑based constraints on harvest, additional monitoring obligations for certain gears, and a multi‑year rollout that shifts workload to NOAA Fisheries and the regional Councils.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires the Secretary to define “forage fish,” expands SSC mandates to include maintaining forage abundance and ecosystem role, directs Councils to list unmanaged forage fish and recommend a prohibition on new directed fisheries until impacts are evaluated, and requires plans to set forage ACLs informed by predator diet needs. It also tasks the Secretary with issuing implementation guidelines and workshops.
Who It Affects
Regional Fishery Management Councils, NOAA Fisheries (including SSCs), mid‑water trawl fleets in the Atlantic herring and mackerel fisheries, seafood processors and bait/feed users of forage species, and conservation scientists generating diet and trophic‑interaction data.
Why It Matters
This is an explicit move toward operationalizing ecosystem‑based management within Magnuson‑Stevens: regulators will have to balance predator diet requirements against commercial harvest, reallocate monitoring resources, and adopt new science fora and guidance—changing investment and compliance priorities across fleets and agencies.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill inserts forage fish into the Magnuson‑Stevens Act as a category deserving special treatment because these species shuttle energy from plankton to higher predators. Rather than leaving matters to ad hoc council practice, the statute forces a sequence of administrative steps: a formal federal definition, expanded scientific committee mandates, Council inventories of unmanaged forage species, and plan changes that incorporate predator diet needs into catch limits.
Those steps are designed to move management from single‑species yield metrics toward considerations about how much biomass predators require.
Practically, the Secretary must draft a definition within a year, and that definition must reflect life history and ecological role (low trophic level, schooling behavior, importance in predator diets). SSCs will be required to provide advice not only on ACLs and overfishing but specifically on maintaining sufficient abundance, diversity, and localized distribution of forage fish, plus fuller reporting on bycatch, habitat, social and economic impacts, and fishing sustainability.Councils must create lists of unmanaged forage fish in their regions and, as a default, recommend that no new directed forage fishery be developed until the Council completes an evaluation of impacts, determines whether management is needed, and—if so—submits a new plan or amendment and obtains Secretary‑approved regulations.
The bill also changes plan content to require that when annual catch limits are set for forage species, managers assess diet needs of dependent predators and specify catch limits with those needs in mind.Implementation is phased: some Council functions get a two‑year lead time, the diet‑based catch limit requirement is delayed five years, and the Secretary must produce guidance within 18 months and run stakeholder workshops. Separately and immediately, the bill directs NOAA to add river herring and shad to two Atlantic plans within 180 days, finish necessary amendments within a year, and boost at‑sea monitoring for mid‑water trawl trips in those fisheries so that at least half of trips have an observer or equivalent electronic monitoring.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Secretary must issue a formal definition of “forage fish” within 12 months that considers trophic position, size, schooling behavior, predator reliance, and energy transfer role.
Regional SSCs must expand their advice to include maintaining sufficient abundance, diversity, and localized distribution of forage fish and provide broader reports on bycatch, habitat, social/economic impacts, and fishing sustainability.
Councils must develop lists of unmanaged forage fish and recommend prohibiting the start of any new directed forage fishery until the Council evaluates impacts, decides management is needed, prepares a plan/amendment, and the Secretary issues final rules.
Fishery management plans will be required to assess and set forage annual catch limits by accounting for the diet needs of dependent fish, marine mammals, and birds; that requirement becomes effective five years after enactment.
For the Atlantic herring and Atlantic mackerel fisheries, the Secretary must add river herring and shad to management plans within 180 days, complete related amendments within one year, and reallocate monitoring so at least 50% of mid‑water trawl trips have at‑sea observers or equivalent electronic/video monitoring.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Declares forage fish a distinct management concern
The bill appends findings to Magnuson‑Stevens that characterize forage fish as small to intermediate, schooling species that route energy from plankton to predators and can drive ecosystem shifts when their populations fluctuate. While not regulatory itself, the findings set a statutory purpose that courts and agencies will use to justify treating forage species differently when interpreting subsequent provisions.
Creates a mandatory federal definition and new terms
This provision forces the Secretary to issue a forage fish definition within 12 months and adds a statutory cross‑reference so Councils can identify forage species in their plans. It also defines “low trophic level” (plankton consumers). Operationally, this makes the Secretary’s definition dispositive for agency action, but the bill also preserves Council‑level identifications inside approved plans, creating two places species can be labeled as forage fish.
Expands SSC responsibilities to include forage‑centric advice
SSCs must provide ongoing advice not only on traditional stock metrics but explicitly on maintaining abundance, diversity, and localized distribution of forage populations, plus broader reporting on bycatch, habitat, socioeconomic impacts, and sustainability of fishing practices. That shifts SSC workload toward ecosystem indicators and cross‑disciplinary analyses (diet studies, spatial distribution), requiring new data streams and possibly different expertise on panels.
Requires Councils to inventory unmanaged forage species and preclude new directed fisheries until evaluated
Councils must list unmanaged forage fish in their jurisdiction and recommend prohibiting the development of a new directed forage fishery until they assess impacts, decide if management is needed, prepare a plan/amendment, and receive Secretary‑approved regulations. The bill also inserts forage fish into Council research priority language. These steps create a built‑in moratorium mechanism that delays new commercial targeting of forage species until an explicit regulatory pathway is completed.
Requires diet‑informed catch limits for forage fisheries
Plans must assess predator diet needs when setting annual catch limits for forage species and specify limits accordingly. This is a substantive change to the ACL calculus: instead of relying solely on single‑species MSY or stock biomass targets, managers must quantify how much prey biomass predators require—a task that will rely heavily on diet composition studies, predator consumption models, and possibly precautionary buffers.
Mandates regulatory guidance and stakeholder workshops
The Secretary must issue regulations (guidelines) within 18 months to help Councils implement the new forage provisions and hold workshops involving Councils, scientists, fishery stakeholders, and conservation interests. These guidelines will shape how SSC advice, Council inventories, and diet‑based ACLs are operationalized, and the workshops are the vehicle for translating science and practice into rulemaking choices.
Immediately folds river herring and shad into Atlantic plans and increases monitoring
Within 180 days NOAA must add river herring and shad to the Atlantic Herring and Atlantic Mackerel/Squid/Butterfish plans, then finish necessary amendments within one year. The section also requires reallocating monitoring so that at least 50% of mid‑water trawl trips in those fisheries carry an at‑sea observer or equivalent electronic/video monitoring, an operational change that affects deployment, budgets, and enforcement priorities.
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Explore Environment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Predator‑dependent commercial fisheries (e.g., tuna, pollock) — by building statutory protections for prey biomass the bill aims to stabilize the food base those higher‑value fisheries depend on, which could reduce variability in predator stock productivity over time.
- Marine conservation organizations and ecosystem scientists — the law institutionalizes ecosystem considerations (diet needs, localized distribution) and expands SSC reporting, creating new levers for conservation and more fundable scientific work.
- Coastal communities with mixed fisheries — if forage protection reduces boom‑and‑bust cycles in predator stocks, communities dependent on higher‑trophic fisheries may gain longer‑term economic stability and ecosystem services.
Who Bears the Cost
- Operators of mid‑water trawl vessels in the Atlantic herring and mackerel fisheries — mandated observer or electronic monitoring coverage on at least 50% of trips increases direct monitoring costs, logistics, and potential operational constraints.
- Existing and prospective forage fish harvesters and processors — the Council moratorium mechanism and diet‑based ACLs can limit or delay development of new directed forage fisheries and may lower allowable catches for current fisheries, reducing supply for bait, feed, and industrial markets.
- NOAA Fisheries and regional Councils — the agency will face a significant workload increase: drafting a federal definition, running workshops, producing guidance, supporting SSCs in expanded analyses, and executing rapid plan amendments for river herring/shad.
- Bait, fishmeal, and aquaculture sectors that rely on forage fish — tighter catch limits or new restrictions could increase raw material prices and force supply chain adjustments.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The core dilemma is allocation under uncertainty: the bill prioritizes conserving prey biomass to support predators and ecosystem function, but managers must allocate a limited pool of forage biomass between human harvest and non‑human consumers without robust, spatially explicit data—protecting ecosystems today may reduce economic opportunity tomorrow, and the law forces managers to choose precaution in the face of scientific gaps.
Two implementation challenges dominate. First, the statute forces policy decisions that depend on uncertain science: diet composition, predator consumption rates, spatial overlap, and ecosystem responses to reduced forage harvest are imperfectly known for many species and regions.
Translating predator diet needs into quantitative catch limits will require assumptions and precautionary choices that could be contested by industry and regional managers. Second, the bill reallocates monitoring resources (notably observer/EM coverage) to meet immediate Atlantic requirements; without additional funding, that reallocation could reduce coverage elsewhere or strain observer programs, complicating enforcement and data quality.
There are also legal and administrative frictions. Making the Secretary’s definition the baseline while allowing Councils to label species as forage in approved plans creates two overlapping designations that could produce governance friction.
The phased effective dates (two years for Council functions, five years for diet‑based ACLs) create temporal mismatches between inventory/listing requirements and the point when catch limits must reflect predator needs, which may allow short‑term fishing pressure to continue while analytical capacity ramps up. Finally, the requirement to prohibit new directed forage fisheries until a Council evaluation and new regulations are in place could stifle small or experimental fisheries that might be economically valuable but lack immediate data to demonstrate low ecosystem impact.
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