Southeast Geographic Strategic Plan 2020-2023.

This Strategic Plan reflects the United States approach to conserve our living marine resources and supporting the Blue Economy in the Southeast Region that covers four ecologically diverse large marine ecosystems with hundreds of species of fish and aquatic animals. This Strategic Plan aims at ensuring productive and sustainable fisheries, safe sources of seafood, the recovery and conservation of protected resources, and healthy ecosystems; improving domestic marine aquaculture production; supplementing U.S. wild-caught fisheries while promoting business and employment opportunities. The Strategic Plan defines three strategic goals: strengthening the economic value of commercial and recreational fisheries; conservation of protected species, while supporting responsible fishing and resource development; improving organisational excellence and regulatory efficiency. According to these three strategic goals, the Strategic Plan specifies the implementing actions and measures: stock management for optimum yield; modernisation of fishery information collection, management, and dissemination systems; enhancing cooperative data collection and sharing; combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and seafood fraud; investing in research to improve protection of species; minimising bycatch and entanglement of protected species; balancing water management for protected species with other uses; increasing the use of innovative technologies.