WASHINGTON — Building on recommendations from two ocean policy commissions, Sen. Ted Stevens has introduced legislation to make federal fisheries management councils shut down overfishing and listen to their scientific advisers.

Stevens filed the bill Tuesday and held his first hearing on Wednesday. Witnesses and fellow senators gave Stevens’ proposal warm praise but suggested changes, such as even more power for scientific advisers and a greater emphasis on managing ocean ecosystems rather than individual fish species.

The bill reauthorizes and rewrites portions of the 1976 law that already bears Stevens’ name — the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

The act, which established the nation’s claim to all fisheries within 200 miles of the coast, has been in need of reauthorization for nearly five years.

In the meantime both Congress and the Pew Charitable Trusts launched the ocean policy commissions. Commissioners in 2003 and 2004 recommended, among other things, better science and ecosystem-based management.

Stevens, as chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, is in a position now to advance the legislation to the full Senate. He said he would hold a committee meeting in January to vote on changes to his draft. The bill could hit the Senate floor by February, he said.

Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii and the committee’s co-chairman, said Stevens had directed a model public process in developing the bill.

“This is what we call bipartisanship,” Inouye said.

Stevens’ bill would mandate that regional fishery management councils set annual catch limits for commercial fish species. Any catches over the cap would be deducted from the next year’s allowable catch.

Stevens, in remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, said amendments he helped write in 1996 already require the federal government to adopt rebuilding plans for fish species with low populations, but “overfishing of overfished stocks remains a significant problem.”

The Pacific Ocean off Alaska’s shores has no overfished species, Stevens emphasized, and both commissions gave the North Pacific Fishery Management Council high marks for its science-based approach. A few other regions didn’t receive such good reviews, though.

“The legislation we are introducing today requires every fishery management plan to contain an annual catch limit which is set at or below optimum yield, based on the best scientific information available,” Stevens said.

The bill also “strengthens the role of science” by requiring scientific committees to provide members of the eight regional management councils with the necessary information to set those annual catch limits. The councils are largely made up of government officials and fishermen or fishing company executives.

Retired Adm. James Watkins told Stevens on Wednesday that he believed the bill should go one step further and mandate that councils use the information developed by the scientists.

Watkins said he understood Stevens’ objection to mandating such use. So if nothing else, Watkins said, the new law ought to provide strong incentives for all councils to use their scientists’ advice.

“And if they don’t use it, we ought to know about it,” said Watkins, chairman of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy created by Congress.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group, said the bill should “require that catch limits be set at or below the level recommended by the scientific committees.”

“Such a measure was one of the key recommendations by the congressionally established U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy,” the NRDC said.

Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, in a news release, also expressed “strong opposition to councils setting harvest limits above the acceptable catch levels set by the scientists.”

John Katz, head of Murkowski’s Washington office, confirmed that the state would prefer “a statutory prohibition on a council’s ability to exceed the biological recommendations of the science committee.” The North Pacific council has a proven history of doing just that, even though it hasn’t been bound by statute, Katz said.

“However, as yesterday’s hearing demonstrates, there are regional variances and other relevant factors that could be considered in particular circumstances,” he said.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, told Stevens that she appreciated the flexibility that his version preserved for her region’s fisheries. Management based solely on meeting an allowable catch limit can have severe socio-economic impacts, she noted.

The Marine Conservation Alliance, a group of Alaska seafood processors, fishing companies and other groups, endorsed Stevens’ language, saying it would strengthen scientists’ role.

Adm. Watkins also said he believes the law should create a process for selecting well-qualified scientific advisers and should subject their work to peer reviews, two recommendations from his commission that Stevens’ bill doesn’t propose.

Many scientists in recent years have argued that fishery managers should consider the effects that their decisions have on entire ocean ecosystems, not just individual fish species. A number of environmental groups have pushed to mandate ecosystem-based management in the Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization.

Stevens said Wednesday his bill goes halfway there.

“I think we have mandated it. We’ve not narrowly defined it,” Stevens said.

That’s because defining ecosystem-based management in the law could offer environmental groups another way to challenge a federal agency’s actions, he said.

“Am I wrong, Jim?” Stevens asked of Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

“In substance, sir, you are right,” Connaughton responded.

The administration’s proposal, delivered to Congress in September, calls for ecosystem-based management not as a mandate but as “an important operating principle,” Connaughton said.

“This is an age-old idea,” Connaughton said. “What we’re doing is giving it the currency and centrality that we think it needs ...We’ve got a lot of elements that add up to ecosystem-based management.”

Watkins agreed that an additional mandate wasn’t necessary but said the law should at least create incentives for regions to use ecosystem-based management, because some are not.

Stevens’ bill also would set national standards for the creation of limited access programs, such as the individual fishing quotas that split up the allowable catch among a limited set of fishermen.

The ocean commissions recommended the standards to bring consistency to the use of such management methods, which have been extremely controversial.

The bill would allow fishermen in regions to accept or reject limited access programs. George LaPointe, commissioner of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, said the referendum requirement was important.

The North Pacific council already has set individual fishing quotas in several Alaska fisheries. In addition, Stevens secured legislation last year that gave crab quotas not only to individual crabbers but also to processors.

Individual crabbers said that would force them to sell to certain processing companies and thus undermine their bargaining power. Processors and some communities said they need the quotas because otherwise crabbers would form their own offshore processing plants and kill off the existing shore-based plants.

The national standards in Stevens’ bill would not permit more processor quotas.

“We’re very excited to see that,” said Dorothy Childers, program director with the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, which opposes processor quotas.

Gov. Murkowski, in a news release, said the state was strongly opposed to giving processors quota shares “in new rationalized fisheries.” The state administration supports harvester quota shares “of limited duration for use in newly rationalized fisheries,” according to the news release.

Katz, in Murkowski’s Washington office, said the reference to “newly rationalized fisheries” reflected the administration’s policy toward future processor and harvester quota share programs, not those already created.

While the bill also directs councils to cap the amount of quota share one person can hold in a fishery, it doesn’t prevent the leasing of quota shares to other boats, according to Childers. Such leasing consolidated crab fishing and put about 800 people out of work this year, she said.

For that reason, Childers said, her organization wants to see the new law put limits on leasing.

“That’s a front-burner issue in Kodiak, King Cove and Unalaska where a lot of those jobs are located,” she said.

Stevens’ bill also would:

• Make fishery management council members to disclose more information about their financial interests and clarify when a member must be recused from participating in a decision.

• Require recreational fishermen who fish in federal waters to register.

• Require federal officials to create regional programs to develop technology that reduces bycatch—the non-commercial fish that are killed in nets.

• Create a new process to reduce time-line conflicts between the National Environmental Policy Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

• Direct federal officials to combat “illegal, unreported and unregulated” fishing in international waters.

Washington, D.C., reporter Sam Bishop can be reached via e-mail at sbishop@news miner.com.