July 25, 2022 — Of great concern to the fishermen that showed up to a public scoping meeting is a guarantee that no extra regulations would be placed on their industry if the Hudson Canyon was designated a National Marine Sanctuary.
They didn’t walk away with one after the meeting with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s sanctuary’s staff at Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute on Thursday. NOAA, however, was not there to make promises or make any management decisions. At this point it’s just looking for public comments, the first part of a multi-year designation process.
NOAA’s sanctuary staff will use the public comments then to put together a management plan for the Hudson Canyon, such as the boundaries for the sanctuary, its permitted uses and protections. If it gets to the point of a sanctuary, an advisory committee would be created where fishermen would have a seat at the table, the staff said.
The canyon is a prolific fishing ground that starts about 90 miles offshore from Manasquan Inlet and is in the crosshairs of a public debate over the sanctuary designation, which would give NOAA more leverage managing the resources of the largest submarine canyon off the Atlantic Coast.
The canyon, which draws warm-water eddies that spin off from the Gulf Stream, is an ecological wonder, supporting large schools of tuna and squids; it’s a foraging ground for whales and porpoises and home to many bottom fish and curious sea creatures such as anemones, crabs, octopi, deep water corals and is dotted with shipwrecks, some dating to the 19th century.
Several federal and international regulatory bodies and acts already manage the fish species that traverse the canyon or reside there, including the Magnuson-Stevens Act, Atlantic Highly Migratory Species, the National Marine Fisheries Service, Mid-Atlantic Marine Fisheries Council and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT.
Officials from Jenkinson’s Aquarium in Point Pleasant Beach attended the meeting and put their support for the sanctuary designation on the public record.