Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

21. Department of Commerce · Notable · Needs Congress

Harmonize the Magnuson–Stevens Act with the National Marine Sanctuaries Act

Not started

676 21. Department of Commerce

“Harmonize the Magnuson–Stevens Act with the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. Under the auspices of NOS, marine sanctuaries (including no-fishing zones) are being established country-wide, often conflicting with the goals of the Magnuson–Stevens Act fisheries management authorities of NOAA Fisheries, regional fishery management councils, and relevant states.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Moved nearby, and neither statute was amended. Executive Order 14430, Restoring American Saltwater Angling and Recreation, works on both statutes' subject matter without reconciling them: it orders a review of the Magnuson-Stevens National Standard 1 and 2 guidelines "to ensure they appropriately account for the unique biological, economic, and social characteristics of the recreational fishery" (§2(b)), and a review of the special use permit policies "for the placement and management of artificial reefs within National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine National Monuments" (§6(d)). Nothing in it addresses sanctuary no-fishing zones cutting across council management, which is the conflict the Quote names, and this ask is addressed to Congress in any case. S. 759, the Modernizing Access to Our Public Oceans Act, passed the House on 2026-09-14 and was presented to the President on 2026-09-22; it is a mapping and publication bill that requires NMFS to publish where fishing restrictions and marine protected areas lie, and it provides that nothing in it may be construed "to increase or diminish the responsibility or authority of Federal or State agencies or Indian Tribes to manage fisheries under existing law". Not yet law, and it would not be this ask if it were.

  2. Not started

    Nothing found. Neither the Magnuson-Stevens Act nor the National Marine Sanctuaries Act was amended, and no bill harmonizing them passed either chamber. H.R. 8904, which would amend Magnuson-Stevens to provide for the regulation of fishing in marine national monuments, has had subcommittee hearings and no vote; H.R. 261, which passed the House under a rule in February 2026, amends the Sanctuaries Act about undersea fibre-optic cables and does not touch the conflict the Quote names.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Requires Congress. Under §3b’s four-rung ladder, subcommittee hearings are not a rung: “ordered reported, marked up, or placed on a calendar → still not started”, and hearings are below even that.

Negative search: jq title pass over bills.ndjson for Magnuson (two records — H.Con.Res. 85, a 50th-anniversary resolution, and H.R. 8904) and for Marine Sanctuar (three records, listed in the chapter log); jq over public-laws.ndjson for both statutes (0); and a grep of the FY2026 NDAA (P.L. 119-60) enrolled text, since authorizations ride the NDAA (source-apis.md), for Magnuson-Stevens and National Marine Sanctuaries.

Executive action on the same friction exists and is logged at #1873 and #1877 — EO 14276’s monument review and NOAA’s proposed fisheries categorical exclusions — but under §3b an executive workaround is an event on its own ask, not progress on a Requires-Congress one.

Resolved — Executive Order 14430 and S. 759 (scan triage 2026-09-24; read in the network review 2026-09-23). Both were proposed for no item by the scan report, and the triage could read only their titles.

  1. EO 14430, Restoring American Saltwater Angling and Recreation (signed 2026-09-17, 91 FR 60293, FR 2026-19417), read in full at govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-09-22/html/2026-19417.htm. It is a recreational-fisheries order: data collection and electronic reporting (§3), substituting State catch data for MRIP where MRIP’s error rate is high (§4(b)), rescinding regulations that “overly burden boaters, anglers, and outdoor businesses” (§5(a)), multi-year permits, an Outer Continental Shelf reef-in-place program (§6(a)), and a shark and pinniped depredation task force (§7). It touches this Quote’s two statutes at two points — the Magnuson-Stevens National Standard guidelines review (§2(b)) and the artificial-reef permitting review for sanctuaries and monuments (§6(d)) — and reconciles neither with the other. It does not mention no-fishing zones or the relationship between NOS and the councils. Recorded as a not started event with the order as moved-nearby Evidence (§3b rule 4). Checked against #1873 (review the expansion of the sanctuaries system, partial) and #1877 (NEPA exemption for fisheries actions, attempted): §6(d) reviews permit procedures inside sanctuaries, not the system’s expansion, and nothing in the order touches NEPA; neither moves.

  2. S. 759, the Modernizing Access to Our Public Oceans Act. Govinfo’s bill-status file (govinfo.gov/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/119/s/BILLSTATUS-119s759.xml, updated 2026-09-23) shows Senate passage by unanimous consent on 2025-09-10, House passage by voice vote under suspension on 2026-09-14, and presentment on 2026-09-22, with no law number yet. The enrolled text (govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s759enr/html/BILLS-119s759enr.htm) requires the Secretary of Commerce to set geospatial data standards and publish where fishing restrictions, recreational vessel limits and federal marine protected areas, “including National Marine Sanctuaries”, lie. It amends neither the Magnuson-Stevens Act nor the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and §6(3) provides that it does not “increase or diminish the responsibility or authority” of any agency to manage fisheries. Even if signed it is not this ask; this item stays not started. Named here so the next round does not reopen it when it becomes law.

    Signed 2026-09-25 (latest action in the Corpus, scan triage 2026-09-27; no Public Law number had reached the Corpus by then). Nothing changes. The reading above was made on the enrolled text, which is what became law. It is Public Law 119-116 (scan triage 2026-09-29).

Action
other
Object
Magnuson–Stevens Act and National Marine Sanctuaries Act
ID
1875