An unlikely champion.

Byline: The Register-Guard=

The politics of fisheries, more than one wag has noted, can make strange seabedfellows. Take the case of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and the environmentalists who have bitterly opposed his unceasing efforts to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Now many are singing Stevens' praises for his efforts to safeguard the nation's beleaguered coastal fisheries.

Last year Stevens introduced a bill to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the nation's fishery management law, for the first time in a decade. Stevens' bill would have required the nation's 13 fishery management councils to use scientific data to set annual catch limits and would have taken steps to unify management of the nation's marine resources and habitats. It also would have strengthened U.S. oversight of fisheries and other marine resources in international waters and aligned U.S. policy with international treaties to protect the seas.

Stevens' original bill would have set catch limits and required any excess catches beyond those levels to be deducted from the next year's limits. But the bill was amended to weaken the quota requirement.

Opponents of tighter controls included Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine - all normally regarded as environmental stalwarts. The New England senators were reacting to pressure from a local fishing industry that has suffered from declining stocks of cod, flounder and other groundfish - ironically because of years of overfishing and the lack of hard quotas.

It's edifying to contrast New England's troubled fishing industry with the robust one in Stevens' home state of Alaska, where sound management, including tough quotas, has produced a long-term sustainable yield. While nine out of 29 stocks are currently being overfished in New England, a rate twice the national average, not one of the 58 federally managed stocks in Alaska is currently being overfished.

Stevens has indicated he may restore the original wording of his bill when it reaches the floor of the Senate. He should do so, and the New England delegation should reflect on the long-term damage that could result to the nation's fishing industry if they succeed in blocking that move.

In the House, Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Richard Pombo, R-Calif., and Don Young, R-Alaska, have introduced a reauthorization bill that would create new loopholes in the requirement that depleted fish stocks be rebuilt within a decade. It would replace the term "overfished" with "diminished," an abstract term that would allow the industry to avoid rebuilding efforts by blaming species collapses on "natural fluctuations" instead of overfishing.

The House bill also would exempt fishery management plans from the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to assess the environmental impacts of its decisions and allows the public to have a say in decision-making. But the bill's most glaring flaw is its failure to establish clear catch limits and its reliance on alternative measures that would allow overfishing to continue.

Congress should approve Stevens' bill, with its original quota provisions fully restored. If that happens, the Alaska senator will have earned an asterisk to his environmental legacy, one that says he set the marker for protecting this nation's coastal fisheries.