Mac, I don't know where you got your information about this but it is some what correct. I am not sure this is why there is a decline in the springer population but it could be a small percentage. You have to realize that there are US and Foreign flagged vessels vishing in the EEZ legally and Illegally today. What you are talking about is the "Magnuson Act", which says:

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is the governing authority for all fishery management activities that occur in federal waters within the United States 200 nautical mile limit, or Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

Originally passed and signed into law in 1976, the Magnuson Act, as it was then called, established the U.S. 200 nautical mile limit and by implication legitimized a 200 nautical mile EEZ for all other maritime nations. It also created a system for the monitoring and management of the fish stocks in these waters and set in motion a process that eventually "Americanized" the fisheries, allowing American vessels and companies to take over harvesting and processing from the fleets of other nations.

The National Marine Fisheries Service - a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce - became the lead agency for managing the new fishery. To provide a forum for state, industry and public participation, the Magnuson Act set up a system of regional fishery management councils. For the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, the management body is the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC).

Following a lengthy public process, the NPFMC writes fishery management plans for the fishery under its jurisdiction and sets the levels of total allowable catch in the fishery. The management plans are either approved or rejected for cause by the Secretary of Commerce. Once approved, NMFS carries them out and the U.S. Coast Guard provides enforcement.

The Magnuson Act requires the U.S. Congress to periodically review or "reauthorize" the Magnuson Act to keep it current and to address new or persisting fishery management and conservation problems.

Initially advocates for the community development quota program tried to have Congress install the program in the 1989 reauthorization of the Magnuson Act. Though they were unsuccessful, some in Congress encouraged them to try to implement a program through the NPFMC process. The NPFMC did so and adopted the Western Alaska Community Development Quota Program in 1991 as an addition to a fishery management plan.

Program advocates and participants, however, still wanted CDQs explicitly authorized in the Magnuson Act. As then-NPFMC member Clem Tillion said in 1995 testimony before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Fisheries and Oceans, "Adding community language to the act will simply remove any concern a lawyer in (Washington) D.C. may have over our ability to do what we're already doing."

When Congress reauthorized the Act in September 1996, they renamed it the Magnuson-Stevens Act and it included several CDQ-related provisions.