November 25, 2024 — Fishing industry leaders are urging President Biden to resist pressure for creating or expanding Marine National Monuments in U.S. ocean waters before he leaves office in January 2025.
“Prohibiting the sustainable utilization of our nation’s waters via unilateral presidential action will harm the Americans we represent, employ, and feed while failing to advance effective and durable marine conservation,” a coalition of more than 150 fishing and seafood industry associations, businesses, and community leaders wrote in a Nov. 21 letter to the White House.
The letter, circulated by the fishing industry advocacy group Saving Seafood, stressed the federal government should stick with the proven national fisheries management system of the Magnuson-Stevens Act law and eight regional fishery management councils.
The law and the regional councils “provide a proven, science-based approach to ocean conservation,” the letter contends, and “offer the flexibility and stakeholder engagement necessary to address dynamic ocean management challenges, which are essential as ocean ecosystems undergo rapid changes.”
Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election could portend a huge upheaval in U.S. government policy, from his campaign promise to kill offshore wind energy projects, to conservative legal activists’ drive to sharply curtail the power of federal regulatory agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.