Summary of Essential Fish Habitat Description and Identification for Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council Management Species: Summer Flounder, Scup, Black Sea Bass, Bluefish, Atlantic Surfclam, Ocean Quahog, Atlantic Mackerel, Loligo, Illex, Butterfish, Dogfish.

摘要

The Magnuson-Stevens Act Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA), as amended by the Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA), contains provisions for the identification and protection of habitat essential to the production of federally managed species. The Act requires FMPs to include identification and description of essential fish habitat (EFH); description of non-fishing and fishing threats; and suggested measures to conserve and enhance EFH. The Interim Final Rule requires NMFS to coordinate with State and Federal agencies regarding EFH and measures to conserve and enhance it. State and Federal agencies are encouraged to coordinate with NMFS and the Council in the early stages of actions to identify potential impacts to EFH. Federal agencies are required to respond to NMFS and the Council comments on any activities that are Federally authorized, funded, or proposed to be authorized, funded or undertaken that may adversely affect EFH. The Council's SFA Amendments are now complete and the new consultation procedures are being implemented. This document is a brief summary of the EFH sections within each SFA Amendment. It is not meant as a substitution for those sections, but as a guide and a crossreference to the Amendments, to facilitate EFH consultations between State and Federal agencies and NMFS and the Council. For this purpose, fishing threats are not addressed in this summary.