Saving Seafood

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

Commercial Fishermen Question Obama’s Ocean ‘Monument’ Preserve

September 29, 2016 — Commercial fishing boat owners and groups are reacting to the executive action taken by President Obama that created a marine national preserve in the North Atlantic on Sept. 15. They say that banning commercial fishing there is unnecessary, since the fishing industry has already been working with government agencies on conservation measures. Plus, they fear the preserve will be expanded in the future, like the recent quadrupling of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off the Hawaiian islands.

The new 4,193-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is located about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

Environmentalists praise the fact that the preserve will also protect marine life from all drilling. However, the fishing angle is another matter, according to industry organizations such as the Garden State Seafood Association.

“All commercial fishing is excluded from the area, but fisheries in the top 10 to 20 feet, no way in the world they’re going to impact the bottom,” pointed out Nils Stolpe, communications director of the association.

Such is the case for a lot of the Barnegat Light-based boats, he said, for example, longliners and some hook-and-line tuna boats. “They’re fishing 3 miles up above all of this on the ocean floor.”

“Longliners are probably affected more than any of our other fisheries up there” by the declaration, said Ernie Panacek, general manager at Viking Village Commercial Seafood Producers in Barnegat Light. “Our bottom longlining boats and surface longlining for sword and tuna boats are going to be affected up there.”

Read the full story at The Sand Paper

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

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: Seamounts didn’t need protection from fishermen

September 20, 2016 — President Barack Obama is certainly sensitive enough to know the difference between, say, Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and Republican Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts.

So we assume partisan politics had nothing to do with the declaration last week of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which leaves us scratching our heads.

Gov. Baker sees the monument designation of nearly 5,000 square miles of ocean as undermining commercial fishermen. We imagine that he, like many of us, wonders why the action came while federal regulators and regional ocean planners were developing a plan that balances environmentalism with impacts on the fisheries.

Commercial fishermen have contributed a remarkably miniscule amount to climate change, yet they understand remarkably clearly “the changes that are taking place that will affect their livelihood.”

The president’s statement seems incongruous according to the actual fishing activity taking place in the canyons and seamounts area, where it takes place relatively high in the water column, not the “pristine underseas.”

Read the full editorial at the New Bedford Standard-Times

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 

Fishermen upset over creation of Atlantic’s first monument

September 19th, 2016 — Fishermen in New England say President Obama needlessly dealt a big blow to their industry when he created the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine national monument and circumvented the existing process for protecting fisheries.

The new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the New England coast. The designation will close the area to commercial fishermen, who go there primarily for lobster, red crab, squid, whiting, butterfish, swordfish and tuna.

After Thursday’s announcement, fishermen pondered their next move: sue, lobby Congress to change the plan or relocate. It’s hard to move, they said, because other fishermen would likely already be fishing where they would want to go.

They said the designation process wasn’t transparent and the administration should have let the New England Fishery Management Council, which is charged with regulating the region’s fisheries, finish working on the coral protection measures it’s considering.

“There seems to be a huge misconception that there are limitless areas where displaced fishermen can go,” said Grant Moore, president of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association. “Basically with the stroke of a pen, President Obama put fishermen and their crews out of work and harmed all the shore-side businesses that support the fishing industry.”

Read the full story from The Concord Monitor