The following editorial appeared Monday in the San Jose Mercury News.

Trips to the coast are a chance to experience the natural beauty of the ocean in all its pristine splendor. But we rarely get to look below the ocean’s surface, where nature is anything but pristine.

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission both warned more than two years ago that overfishing and pollution have taken a heavy toll on the nation’s oceans. Off the West Coast, for example, populations of Pacific rock cod, also known as Pacific red snapper, have been cut to less than one-tenth of their historic numbers. And of 600 species of fish managed by the federal government, only 13 percent are considered “healthy.”

In light of this, it’s baffling to see the U.S. House of Representatives poised to weaken the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the decades-old law that regulates U.S. fisheries. The law requires regional fishing councils to end overfishing of declining fish populations and restore depleted stocks to sustainable levels within 10 years. When applied correctly, it has been effective.

The charge against the Magnuson-Stevens Act is being led by (no surprise) Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., whose anti-environmental record is well known. Pombo’s bill includes some sensible amendments to the fisheries law, such as a provision giving scientists a role in determining appropriate fishing limits.

But any good it does is more than offset by loopholes that would allow overfishing to continue and make it harder to rebuild depleted fish populations. The bill would endanger the commercial and recreational fishing industries, damage coastal communities and risk eliminating seafood choices from America’s tables. The bill would also exempt government-approved catch limits from environmental review and shield fisheries data from public view, making oversight more difficult.

The Senate has already passed a far better bill that would strengthen management of our oceans. It’s the work of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, one of the law’s original authors, and was approved by a bipartisan majority.

Ideally, the fisheries law could be strengthened even more by focusing restoration efforts on entire ecosystems rather than single species, and by balancing the makeup of regional councils, which are heavily dominated by the fishing industry.

For now, however, Congress must scrap the Pombo bill in favor of the Stevens bill or risk leaving a legacy of fisheries damaged beyond repair.