Fish catch a break.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Maybe it was the recent study warning that the world's dwindling fisheries may collapse before mid-century.

Maybe it was the cumulative effect of warnings about the crisis facing the seas and the sweeping policy changes recommended by the Pew Oceans Commission in 2003 and echoed the next year by the presidential U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.

Maybe it was the stern call by President Bush to end overfishing and his creation earlier this year of a massive oceanic monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands that is off limits to commercial fishing.

Or maybe it was Sen. Ted Stevens, the veteran Republican from Alaska, calling in decades' worth of political chips from colleagues to make a final push for passage of a bill that bears his name.

No matter what the catalyst, Americans should be grateful that the "do-nothing" 109th Congress finally got its act together before adjourning last week and approved a desperately needed overhaul of the federal law that regulates the nation's fisheries.

The new legislation is far from perfect and won approval only after a last-minute agreement to omit a provision that would have made new catch limits enforceable. But the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act is still a huge improvement over current fishery management law, which has failed abysmally to control overfishing.

The reauthorization bill, which President Bush is expected to sign into law, should ensure that science, not commercial interests, will play a primary role in how catch limits are set by the regional councils that manage fisheries. It requires that the councils establish a recovery plan within two years after a fish stock has been been identified as depleted (previously, councils often allowed overfishing to continue for a decade or longer). It also provides for development of a cap-and-trade style program that will allow harvest shares to be sold or leased, and that should help fishermen offset the impact of ratcheting catch restrict- ions.

The new bill also authorizes the United States to combat the spread of illegal and unregulated fishing that is contributing heavily to the collapse of commercial fisheries. Federal officials will be able to close domestic ports to nations and vessels engaged in such piracy and to require other nations to take similar measures or face possible U.S. bans on their seafood products.

Thanks in large part to a relentless push by Oregon's congressional delegation, the bill also includes money for the recovery of severely depleted Klamath River salmon stocks. It also includes a provision that makes the West Coast fishermen hurt by recent season closures eligible for disaster relief, although no actual funding was allocated.

Much work remains for the next Congress, which must use its oversight powers to make certain the Bush administration follows through in carrying out the new law's requirements. Other priorities should include long-overdue regulations for fish-farming, increased federal funding for programs that monitor the health of federally managed stocks and a long list of other reforms recommended by the Pew Commission and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.

The fact that lawmakers succeeded, however belatedly and imperfectly, in protecting America's fisheries offers hope that they will now move on to address other environmental concerns, starting with global warming, that have become too urgent to put off any longer.