June 10, 2020 — President Trump used the occasion of a visit to Maine last week to do right by an industry that hasn’t had much good news lately when he reopened to commercial fishing nearly 5,000 square miles of ocean south of New England that President Barack Obama closed in 2016.
Stay tuned. In the process of righting a wrong, Trump’s action, announced at a Bangor roundtable, has once again set hair on fire in the environmental community, tested the limits of presidential power and set the stage for litigation.
Obama created the area, known as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, just a few months before he left office. He portrayed the monument, the only one in the Atlantic, as a hedge against climate change.
Spanning four canyons and three seamounts, the monument is home to cold-water corals, endangered whales and turtles and numerous fish species.
If Trump’s action was controversial, it should be seen as no less so than the process that created the monument. Fishing in U.S. territorial waters is managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is charged with providing productive and sustainable fisheries based on the best available science. NMFS works with regional councils to ensure all stakeholders are heard and that its regulations have “ground truth.”