Saving Seafood

Fishing industry looks to Trump to undo marine monument designation

November 21, 2016 — When President Barack Obama announced in September the creation of the first ever marine national monument in U.S. Atlantic waters, 50 environmental organizations claimed victory in the long campaign to protect approximately 4,000 square miles of ocean from fishing and other human activities.

Since then, there has been another kind of victory. Donald Trump, once a long shot presidential candidate, will succeed Obama in January. During his campaign, the president-elect made promises to roll back environmental roadblocks to business and to cancel every “unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order” by the sitting president.

While some in the fishing community took heart that Trump might reverse Obama’s decision on the offshore monument, legal experts believe there is little chance of that happening. Instead, opponents of the designation will likely have to use the more difficult and lengthy routes of congressional legislation or litigation to get it changed.

“We certainly hope that the new administration will look at commercial fishermen as working men and women that are in historic family businesses,” said David Frulla, an attorney based in Washington, D.C., who represents the Fisheries Survival Fund, a coalition that includes the majority of scallop vessels from Maine to Virginia.

The Trump transition team did not respond to an emailed request for comment for this story.

“There’s nothing in there (the Antiquities Act of 1906) that says they can’t rescind or modify,” Frulla said.

Some, including fishermen, the New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery management councils, and Gov. Charlie Baker, complained that Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act was an end run around fishery management. Both councils are developing protections for deep-sea corals and the New England council is getting close to completing a plan to protect fish habitat that it has been laboring on for over a decade.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

JIM MEEK: Sure, let’s protect the oceans, but we still need to fish

November 7, 2016 — Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are getting as common as hipster sightings along the south end of Agricola Street.

Just last week, the world’s largest MPA (600,000 square miles) was announced for Antarctica’s Ross Sea.

The new MPA was the result of a multilateral negotiating marathon involving nations that don’t get along — like Russia and the U.S. — so let’s hope it all works out for the environment.

Speaking of the Americans, their outgoing president has burnished his legacy by using executive orders to announce two massive “national marine monuments” off Hawaii and New England.

By massive, I mean 5,000 square miles of MPA territory. We’re not talking the Sailors’ Monument in Point Pleasant Park here, or the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen.

Normally, Americans declare marine sanctuaries instead of marine monuments, but the former would involve pre-consultation with a bunch of noisy people including disgruntled fishermen — who can raise an awful ruckus once they’re riled up.

So Barack Obama got around all that “let’s-listen-to-the-people-first” nonsense by declaring marine monuments under a century-plus old piece of legislation called the Antiquities Act.

So, you’re asking yourself, who can blame a president for using an executive order or two during his last months in office?

New England fishermen, that’s who.

David Borden, who represents offshore lobstermen, goes straight and smart to the heart of the matter.

Environmental groups keep saying the neglected waters are pristine, but ignore the inconvenient truth that they remain blue, serene, and contented after decades of continuous fishing.

Borden’s argument: If the water’s pure, why kick the lobster and crab fishermen out while oil tankers still crisscross the North Atlantic without swearing allegiance to Greenpeace?

Read the full story at The Chronicle Herald

H. STERLING BURNETT: Obama’s Dangerous Use Of The National Monument Law

October 13th, 2016 — Despite objections made by many prominent Hawaiians and a federally designated regional fishing council, President Barack Obama, relying on the authority granted to the presidency in the 1906 Antiquities Act, quadrupled the size of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (PMNM) with one stroke of a pen.

With its August 25 expansion, PMNM became the largest protected reserve on Earth, comprising 582,578 square miles, nearly double the size of Texas. President George W. Bush created PMNM in 2006.

The Antiquities Act is one of the most ill-considered laws ever written. It gives to presidents dictatorial power to declare large swaths of the public’s land off-limits to a variety of uses normally allowed on federal lands. Many presidents have used this power, but none have done so more often or with such recklessness as Obama has. Since 2009, Obama has created or expanded 25 national monuments, more than any other president in history.

The process of creating a national monument under the Antiquities Act does not require approval from the democratically elected Congress, which is especially problematic because the creation of national monuments has often been opposed by many people in the states where the monuments have been established. It’s these people who suffer most directly from the new limits placed on economic and recreational activities.

Read the full op-ed at Forbes 

DONALD J. KOCHAN: Midnight monuments

October 4th, 2016 — The lure of legacy is pulling President Obama to designate national monuments at an unprecedented rate and with even greater vigor in the midnight hour of his last term. President Obama has already designated more than two dozen national monuments, the most ever of any President. Teddy Roosevelt designated 18 monuments; Bill Clinton 19; and George W. Bush just 6.

President Obama’s monuments encompass 548 million acres of federal land and water, double the amount of any preceding President. This includes the recent quadrupling of the size of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off northwestern Hawaii to 582,578 square miles, making it what some have called the largest protected place on Earth. He’s not done yet. Several possible designations loom, including the approximately 1.9 million-acre proposed Bears Ears national monument in Utah.

Some see these acts as excessive. But those who lodge complaints sometimes blame the President too quickly. Fault lies mostly with the U.S. Congress (of 1906) for delegating near plenary authority to a President to unilaterally convert normal public lands into high-level protected zones. The Antiquities Act of 1906 provides, in part, that “The President may, in the President’s discretion, declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated on land owned or controlled by the Federal Government to be national monuments.” This language has been interpreted by presidents as permitting proclamations of monuments for the preservation of places of natural significance, often the most controversial ways the Act is used.

Read the full opinion piece at The Hill 

Will Obama look north for his legacy?

October 3, 2016 — These are the days when a president turns to thoughts of legacy.

As the months tick down on this administration, President Barack Obama has created a marine national monument off New England and last month vastly expanded one near Hawaii.

Alaska interest groups are working to get his attention, too.

Some want him to take bold action in the 49th State before he leaves office, and others are urging him to resist those calls.

A TV ad ran in Washington, D.C., this month that flashed footage of oil tankers bathed in the golden light of a Valdez sunset, an offshore drill rig and Alaska Natives on the tundra.

Its call to action: “Tell the White House to keep the Arctic in the next off shore leasing program. It’s the right thing for Alaska. It’s the right for our nation.”

That’s part of a six-figure ad campaign by a coalition that includes the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, unions and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

They took out a full page ad in the Washington Post, too.

Meanwhile, environmental groups are working just as hard to make sure Obama knows how much they want the Arctic ocean tracts removed from the off-shore leasing plan, due out this fall.

That’s one way the president might choose to leave his mark on the 49th state.

Or he could do something really dramatic, like use his powers under the Antiquities Act to declare a national monument in Alaska, or off its shores.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski dreads a White House announcement like that, which she believes would diminish Alaska’s opportunities.

“We’ve seen some indication that he doesn’t plan on any ocean protection designation,” she said. “But until we’re on the last day of the administration, I’m not going to rest and believe that’s the case.”

Read the full story at KTOO

Lobster fishermen face a monumental problem

October 3, 2016 — NEWPORT, R.I. — The Newport-based fishing vessel Freedom has been Marc Ducharme’s home away from home since it was built in 1984.

And for the better part of those 32 years, Ducharme, the boat’s captain, and his crews of four to five men have spent their time pulling lobster traps from the waters around three underwater canyons near the edge of the continental shelf, about 125 miles southeast of Nantucket. The crew makes 25-30 runs a year — each lasting about a week — to the lucrative lobster grounds formally referred to as the Northeast Canyons on George’s Bank.

Each trip nets them about 6,000 pounds of lobster, Ducharme said Wednesday, standing in the cockpit of the 72-foot-long vessel docked at the Newport state fishing pier.

“I’ve probably spent more time out there in those canyons than I have on land,” Ducharme said, pointing to the fishing area on a nautical chart.

The time he spends in the 25-mile area where his 1,800 lobster pots are located is growing short, and not just because, at 58 years old, Ducharme is nearing retirement from his sea-faring livelihood.

Using executive authority established by the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Barrack Obama on Sept. 15 designated a 4,900-square- mile area the Northeast Canyons and Seamount Marine National Monument. That area includes the sea canyons, where Ducharme plies his trade. The designation will eventually prohibit all commercial fishing there.

In a last-minute compromise, the Obama administration reduced the proposed size of the monument site and granted a seven-year exemption for lobster and red crab fishermen in the monument area.

Even though he is likely to retire before then, Ducharme is not happy about the eventual ban.

“This is exclusively where I fish, because it’s good,” said Ducharme, who added he catches more than 150,000 lobsters a year. “This (area) has been my life. It’s how I earned my living, how I supported my family. I’m more against the way they went about this.”

Read the full story at the Newport Daily News

Marine Reserve Expansion Shuts Out Commercial Fisheries

September 29, 2016 — With the stroke of a pen on a proclamation backed by the authority of the 110-year-old Antiquities Act, President Barack Obama on August 26 created the world’s largest marine reserve off the coast of Hawaii’s northwestern islands.

The process leading to the controversial designation drew pods of politicians, colonies of conservationists and preservationists, schools of commercial fishermen, a siege of lobbyists, and runs of followers on both sides into a territorial showdown. It was hailed as a United States ocean policy triumph, but Hawaii’s commercial fishermen – the longline tuna fishery in particular – lost a sizeable chunk of their traditional fishing grounds.

“This is a hallowed site and it deserves to be treated that way from now on,” Obama said in announcing the expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. “It will be preserved for future generations.”

While the strand of tiny islands and atolls within Papahānaumokuākea are uninhabited, the sweep of ocean surrounding them teems with life, and is vital to native Hawaiian culture.

Originally created in 2006 by President George W. Bush and designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010 – the only such US site and one of only 35 worldwide – the expansion boosts the protected area from 139,797 to 582,578 square miles by extending most of the boundary to the 200-mile limit of the nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). It provides what supporters deem “critical protections” for pristine coral reefs, deep sea marine habitats, and important ecological resources. Researchers say the site is home to more than 7,000 species of flora and fauna, with 25 percent of its creatures found nowhere else in the world’s oceans. The area is also a center of significant traditional and cultural resources for native Hawaiians, and historically contains shipwrecks and downed aircraft from the Battle of Midway, which marked a major shift in the war in favor of the Allies.

Read the full story at Fishermen’s News

Alaska lawmakers on guard for new marine national monuments

September 26, 2016 — WASHINGTON — Alaska lawmakers are on the lookout for potential presidential decrees that could block fishing and drilling in the state’s ocean waters.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski and others have introduced legislation that they hope might stop future presidents from using a 110-year-old law — the Antiquities Act — to carve out lands and waters for new environmental protections. But the chance for new federal legislation to curb executive powers during President Barack Obama’s term has all but passed.

Now, with Obama’s recent expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Monument in Hawaii and designation of the first-ever marine monument on the East Coast, worries about a surprise Alaska announcement have arisen again.

“It seems like we read about a new designation every week — that’s probably an exaggeration, but it just seems like that,” Murkowski said Thursday. The Obama administration has used the 1906 Antiquities Act “as a tool to both sidestep and threaten Congress,” Murkowski said.

“I don’t have anyone in my office talking about monuments in Alaska,” Neil Kornze, who heads the Bureau of Land Management, assured Murkowski at a hearing Thursday.

“I can’t tell you what the president is or isn’t thinking, but in terms of my interaction with these issues, I’m not aware” of any potential new monuments in the making, he said.

Asked by Murkowski if he was aware of any “conversations outside of your particular office where there is discussion about designation, either onshore- or offshore-monument designation in Alaska,” Kornze said “no.”

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

Fishermen considering legal steps to alter marine monument in Northeast US

September 22, 2016 — Fishing organizations, including those representing lobster fishermen in the Northeast United States, have expressed outrage over U.S. President Barack Obama’s designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument on 15 September.

Several groups representing the fishing and seafood industries are investigating the possibility of taking legal action in the hopes of altering the monument’s boundaries or challenging the president’s authority to declare national monuments through executive order under the legal umbrella of the Antiquities Act.

“We’re looking forward to working with Massachusetts’ congressional delegation, and also meeting with the governor next week to get continued support to challenge the monument, even to the point of getting the attorney general’s office to look at the legality of the executive order,” Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts’ Lobstermen’s Association said. “My understanding is that no presidential executive order has been overturned, but it has been amended.”

Casoni said that about 100 members of her association fish in the area designated for the monument, with many hundreds more fishing there from other parts of the U.S. While the monument’s designation allows lobster and crab fishing to continue in the monument’s area for seven more years before the fishery is closed off, Casoni said the loss of a “highly valuable area” will be another harsh blow for New England fishermen.

“We’re not giving up this fight,” she said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Opponents of Atlantic monument say process lacked sufficient analysis

September 19th, 2016 — Opponents of President Barack Obama’s newly designated Atlantic marine monument, which will eventually bar all commercial fishing in a 5,000 square-mile area, say its creation was not preceded by sufficient cost-benefit analysis.

Last week, Obama established a protected area — which will be called the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Marine Monument — of nearly 5,000 square miles 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

The area was established under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows the president to create national monuments without congressional approval, and the method means there was a severe lack of economic and scientific analysis before the decision was made, opponents said.

By contrast, the creation of a national park or changes to fishing policies under the Magnuson-Stevens Act typically trigger extensive public comment and review processes.

Grant Moore, president of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, estimated to Undercurrent News that the economic impact could be over $120 million in lost revenue, but added that making predictions is difficult given how diverse and dynamic the fishery is.

“There was absolutely no analysis done. This was basically behind closed doors,” he said, adding that there were some private meetings, but “nothing that you would have to go through under Magnuson-Stevens”.

According to Moore, many in the industry never expected the monument to pass when they first heard about it a year ago at a meeting in Providence, Rhode Island and is now trying to figure out how it will adjust.

“Basically the industry right now is taking a step back and taking a deep breath. It came at everybody pretty fast,” Moore said.  “It was not until last Friday that certain members of the industry saw the proposal for the first time. That doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to comment and try to work with them. It was basically a done deal.”

Read full story from Undercurrent News