Saving Seafood

US House steps into marine monument fray

September 23, 2015 — A House subcommittee will convene in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to discuss the implications of pending marine national monument designations, including conservationist efforts to create the Atlantic seaboard’s first marine national monument off the coast of Massachusetts.

The hearing, scheduled by the House Natural Resources Committee’s subcommittee on water, power and the oceans, comes in the midst of an expanding dispute between fishing stakeholders and the conservationists who want President Obama to use executive decree to designate Cashes Ledge and an area of deep-water canyons and seamounts south of Georges Bank as a marine natural monument, off limits to all fishing.

The conservationists, led by the Conservation Law Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pew Charitable Trusts, are imploring President Obama to use the federal Antiquities Act to unilaterally create the national monument as a means of protecting the two areas from commercial fishing and future sea-floor development.

The proposal is being opposed by fishing stakeholder and advocacy groups, such as the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, who insist the current restrictions to fishing in both areas contained in existing habitat regulations established by the New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery management councils, and approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, afford the necessary protections.

The opponents also charge that the conservationist effort is nothing short of an end-run around the nation’s current fishery management system, which provides for more public comment and participation, as well as a greater measure of transparency and scientific basis.

The New England Fishery Management Council has not adopted a formal position on the monument proposal, but council Chairman Terry Stockwell last week pointed out that the council in April reinforced the existing protections of Cashes Ledge — which sits about 80 miles east of Cape Ann — by continuing its approximately 530 square-mile closure to fishing.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Learn more about the subcommittee hearing here

 

 

Conservationists Push for Atlantic’s 1st National Monument

September 13, 2015 — Undersea ravines deeper than the Grand Canyon, submerged mountains rising thousands of feet from the ocean floor and forests of kelp and coral would become the first marine national monument in the Atlantic if conservationists have their way.

The proposal to protect a pristine ecosystem undamaged by heavy fishing and pollution in the Gulf of Maine and canyons and peaks off Cape Cod — where vivid coral has grown to the size of small trees over thousands of years — would mirror the massive conservation efforts that have already taken place in the Pacific Ocean.

“We have an opportunity to permanently protect two of our nation’s greatest ocean treasures, right off our coast,” said Priscilla Brooks, the Conservation Law Foundation’s director of ocean conservation.

Environmental groups want President Barack Obama to permanently protect Cashes Ledge, the underwater mountain and offshore ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts, the chain of undersea formations about 150 miles off the coast of Massachusetts.

But Maine Gov. Paul LePage and others oppose the effort to protect the two sites, together totaling about 6,000 square miles, because of the potential impact on fishermen.

LePage, a Republican, also takes issue with the president’s authority under the Antiquities Act to designate monuments, calling it a sweeping power that provides few procedural protections to those who are most likely to be affected.

Read the full story at ABC News