June 26, 2018 — Sea levels are rising, fish are chasing warmer waters north, $300 billion worth of goods are coming into or departing from American ports every year. It’s a dynamic time for coastal communities.
But with the stroke of a pen last week, President Donald Trump put the brakes on a comprehensive plan — years in the making — to balance the environmental, recreational and economic interests competing for the future of the oceans surrounding the U.S.
The Trump Administration is presenting a new executive order as a fundamental adjustment away from unnecessary levels of bureaucracy and toward an ocean policy that puts national security, job creation and corporate aspirations above all else.
The shift has been warmly received by fishermen and other business groups. Conservationists, however, are anxious that attitudes about ocean use will regress.
It’s quite a change of direction from the two terms under President Barack Obama.
Commercial fishermen have been strong critics of the previous policy and were happy to see it sink.
John Connelly, president of the seafood industry’s National Fisheries Institute, said in a statement that the Obama plan “excluded the perspective of the men and women who work the water.”
The National Ocean Policy created “additional levels of bureaucracy and uncertainty that threatened to reduce the overall productivity of our industry by forcing small business owners to divert limited resources away from their operations in order to deal with this unnecessary and ambiguous regulatory maze,” said Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, which is based in Bass River.
Garden State Seafood Association executive director Greg DiDomenico told the Press that “it’s safe to say we are encouraged” by Trump’s attitude toward ocean policy.
Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press