Saving Seafood

April Showdown Looming for Battle Over Atlantic Ocean Monument

March 28, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Fisherman and lobstermen reeled in a temporary victory after a federal court agreed to lift a 10-month stay on a lawsuit that seeks to reverse Obama-era protections for the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

In September 2016, former President Barack Obama used powers under the Antiquities Act to designate the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument.

The 5,000-square-mile monument, rich with deep coral and home to sperm whales, sea turtles and dolphins, is located just off the Georges Bank near Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The Obama-era order closed off the area to commercial fisherman, except for a handful of crabbers who were grandfathered into the deal and allowed to continue trawling for just seven years more until fishing activity would be completely barred in the region.

The plaintiffs who originally challenged the monument designation in March 2017 include the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Atlantic Offshore Lobsterman’s Association, the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, the Rhode Island Fisherman’s Alliance and the Garden State Seafood Association.

In their original lawsuit, the groups claimed Obama “exceeded his power under the Antiquities Act” when cordoning off the ocean acreage.

They argued the sea is not “land owned or controlled by the Federal government and thus not within the president’s proclaiming authority.”

“Unless a permanent injunction is issued to forbid the implementation of the proclamation’s fishing prohibitions, plaintiffs are and will continue to be irreparably harmed … and will continue to suffer a diminution of income, reduced fishing opportunities and depletion of their investment in their boats and permits,” the March 2017 complaint states.

This March 15, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg finally agreed to allow the fisherman’s lawsuit to continue, effectively turning up  pressure on the Trump administration to act.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

 

Fishermen suit against Atlantic marine monument moves ahead

March 27, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — Organizations suing to eliminate the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean have gotten the OK to proceed with a suit designed to reopen the area to commercial fishing, which environmentalists fear could jeopardize preservation efforts.

The fishing groups sued to challenge the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument created by President Barack Obama in 2016. It’s a 5,000-square-mile area off of New England that contains fragile deep sea corals and vulnerable species of marine life such as right whales.

The fishermen’s lawsuit had been put on hold by a review of national monuments ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration in April 2017. Court filings at U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia say the stay was lifted in mid-March and the litigation can proceed.

Marine national monuments are underwater areas designed to protect unique or vulnerable ecosystems. There are four of them in the Pacific. The Northeast monument, the only one off the East Coast, is also an area where fishermen harvest valuable species such as lobsters and crabs.

“To lose a big area that we have historically fished has quite an impact on quite a lot of people here,” said Jon Williams, a New Bedford, Massachusetts, crabber and a member of plaintiff group Offshore Lobstermen’s Association. “It’ll raise attention to it a little bit, which it needs.”

The court ordered the federal government, which is the defendant in the case, to respond by April 16. A spokeswoman from the federal Department of Commerce declined to comment.

The lawsuit’s ability to move forward will hopefully prod the federal government to make a decision about the future of the monument, which is unpopular with commercial harvesters, Williams said. But a coalition of environmental groups is also intervening in the case in an attempt to keep the monument area preserved.

Read the full story at the AP News

 

U.S. House Republicans – minus Don Young – needle EPA on Pebble mine decision

March 23, 2018 — WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders are weighing in on the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest efforts to restrict the proposed Pebble mine project in Alaska — and they aren’t happy about it.

The chairmen of two committees, which oversee mining and the EPA, and the head of the Western Caucus wrote to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt this month to issue concern and condemnation over a surprise January announcement that left an Obama-era decision standing.

The letter came from Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology; Rob Bishop, R-Utah, chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, and Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, chairman of the congressional Western Caucus. But there was no signature from Alaska Rep. Don Young, though he is a top member of Bishop’s committee.

A spokeswoman for Young did not answer questions about the letter or the congressman’s position on the matter.

At the start of the year, Pruitt backed off a review of an Obama administration decision to restrict the potential scope of the proposed mining project. (The congressman did not issue a statement at the time of the EPA’s change of heart in January.)

The Pebble Partnership wants to dig a massive deposit of gold, copper and molybdenum in and around the sensitive headwaters of Bristol Bay. Pebble says it can accomplish the feat without damaging the salmon fishery. The company recently applied for an Army Corps of Engineers permit for the project.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

National marine monument suit moves forward

March 22, 2018 — President Barack Obama is long gone from office, but the legal fight lives on against his use of the Antiquities Act to create the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument off the coast of southern New England.

A federal judge in Washington D.C. has lifted a 10-month stay on the lawsuit filed against the federal government by fishing stakeholders — including the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association — seeking to roll back recent uses of the Antiquities Act and block using the statute to create new national marine monuments in the future.

The order lifting the stay by U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, who granted the stay at the request of the federal defendants last May 12, will allow the lawsuit to continue.

The lifting of the stay was greeted warmly by fishing stakeholders.

“We’re optimistically excited about the prospect of moving forward so the fishing industry can regain fishing grounds it’s lost without fear of being evicted again,” Beth Casoni, executive director of the Masssachusetts Lobstermen’s Association said Wednesday.

Also, according to one of the lawyers for fishing stakeholders, the lifting of the stay places the Trump administration in a position where it either must act on recommendations from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to reopen the area of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument to commercial fishing or defend Obama’s decision in court.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Under President Trump, changing political tide opens water for anglers

March 21, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is known for hitting the golf course but his administration is now putting the power of the presidency behind another favorite American pastime: fishing.

During his little more than a year in office, the president has promoted the iconic, multi-billion-dollar recreational fishing industry that felt marginalized under the previous administration. Barack Obama routinely sided with environmental advocates concerned about long-term damage from overfishing but Trump, the father of two avid anglers, has tacked in a new direction.

“President Donald Trump was the best thing that ever happened to fishermen,” said Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance which fought the Obama administration to overturn limits on what private anglers could catch in federal waters. “Some of them don’t realize it but they will.”

Almost from the beginning, Trump made it clear the ocean was a frontier to be exploited not only for its energy potential but also for recreational and food sources.

“The fisheries resources of the United States are among the most valuable in the world,” the president declared last year in a White House proclamation designating June 2017 as National Ocean Month. “Growing global demand for seafood presents tremendous opportunities for expansion of our seafood exports, which can reduce our more than $13 billion seafood trade deficit.”

In contrast, a similar proclamation by Obama in 2016 warned about “jeopardizing marine populations and degrading oceanic habitats.”

The Trump administration also increased recreational fishing access to three fish stocks protected under tight catch limits.

  • Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross personally approved a plan in June extending the recreational fishing season for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico from three to 42 days last summer even though his own agency warned it would lead to significant overfishing.
  • In July, Ross once again intervened. This time, he sided with New Jersey to loosen restrictions on the harvest of summer flounder, known as fluke, over the objections of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Commission Chair Douglas Grout said he was “very much concerned about the short and long‐term implications of the Secretary’s decision on interstate fisheries management.”
  • In the fall, the South Atlantic  Fishery Management Council working closely with the Trump administration allowed recreational snapper fishing from Jupiter Inlet Florida to the North Carolina- Virginia for the first time since 2014. Kellie Ralston, Florida Fishery Policy Director of the American Sportfishing Association, called it “a victory” for anglers while Environmentalists called it a “risky move” given that red snapper in the South Atlantic is still recovering.

Read the full story at USA Today

 

States: US government to rewrite 2 endangered species rules

March 16, 2018 — NEW ORLEANS — The Trump administration will rewrite rules governing how to choose areas considered critical to endangered species to settle a lawsuit brought by 20 states and four trade groups, according to state attorneys general.

The endangered species director for an environmental nonprofit says that’s terrible news. Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity says the administration has “shown nothing but hostility toward endangered species.”

The attorneys general for Alabama and Louisiana said in news releases Thursday that the administration made the agreement Thursday to settle a lawsuit brought by 20 states and four national trade groups, challenging two changes made in 2016.

According to the lawsuit, the rules are now so vague that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service “could declare desert land as critical habitat for a fish and then prevent the construction of a highway through those desert lands, under the theory that it would prevent the future formation of a stream that might one day support the species.”

A spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife referred a request for comment to the U.S. Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to phoned and emailed queries. A NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman did not immediately respond Thursday.

“We are encouraged that the Trump administration has agreed to revisit these rules, which threaten property owners’ rights to use any land that the federal government could dream that an endangered species might ever inhabit,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in his news release. “These Obama-era rules were not only wildly unreasonable, but contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the Endangered Species Act.”

Greenwald said, “Their case didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Seattle Times

 

Massachusetts: Cape Cod drilling protesters dress to express

February 28, 2018 — BOSTON — They came dressed to make a public statement.

Brewster’s Christopher Powicki’s bearded face poked out of a plush full-length lobster costume. Kevin O’Brien of Boston was head-to-toe great white shark, and Don Mallinson of East Falmouth wore a cardboard tricorn hat — think homemade “Cheesehead” — with each side bearing an anti-oil and gas drilling message like “Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, New England.”

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management didn’t allow oral testimony at its public meeting Tuesday at the Sheraton Boston Hotel on a Trump administration proposal to open New England’s ocean waters to gas and oil exploration and extraction. While speakers lining up to give testimony at public hearings has been a familiar sight for other controversial proposals, like the defunct Cape Wind project, that practice ended for the bureau five years ago under the Obama administration.

That didn’t stop people from making their voices heard Tuesday. A costumed, sign-bearing crowd jammed into a conference room a floor above the agency’s public meeting rooms to listen to representatives from a panoply of environmental organizations, more than 20 nonprofit organizations, state elected officials, and others, speak in opposition to exploration and drilling anywhere off the New England coastline.

Their concerns ranged from the effects on everything from plankton to whales of seismic testing, which is used to pinpoint likely oil and gas deposits, and the possible effects of an oil spill on fisheries, marine life and our valuable coastline and tourist economy.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Coastal leaders speak out against offshore oil drilling plans

Many states want to be left out of new oil leases entirely

February 23, 2018 — Politicians and fishing industry representatives from across the country have been speaking out against a proposal from the Department of Interior that would end an Obama-era ban and open up coastal states for offshore drilling operations.

“I find the whole thing to be really quite alarming,” said Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, who requested an interview with the Providence Journal to speak out on the proposal. “This might happen if we don’t oppose it loudly enough.”

The New England Fishery Management Council voted to urge federal regulators to take the whole Atlantic coast out of consideration during its first meeting of 2018.

“Spills don’t happen all that often, but there clearly have been a number of cases that we all know about… where those activities have resulted in some significant impacts to our marine resources,” said Doug Grout, chief of New Hampshire’s Marine Division.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Trump’s plans to expand offshore drilling face headwind on Atlantic coast

February 22, 2018 — WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s bid to open Atlantic waters to offshore drilling has sparked bipartisan opposition in the states with the largest oil and gas reserves off their coasts, presenting unexpected obstacles to the long-held designs of the energy industry.

In recent years, political leaders in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina had supported oil and gas drilling off their coasts, envisioning high-paying jobs and increased tax revenues. But new governors in the three states – two Democrats and a Republican – have all reversed the positions of their predecessors, fearing the potential impact on beaches, fisheries and tourism industries.

“This last election we’ve seen a significant shift at the leadership level,” said David Holt, president of the Consumer Energy Alliance, a trade group representing large energy users and producers. “If you look at the last 10 years, the majority of the governors and the public had been supportive.”

For oil executives in Houston, an international center of the offshore oil and gas sector, the Atlantic coast is a new frontier that could potentially mean significant profits in the decades ahead. Most of the world’s biggest oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, have a major presence here, employing thousands of people, as do firms specializing in offshore drilling and services, including TechnipFMC, National Oilwell Varco, McDermott International and Transocean.

But the recent shift in political and public sentiment represents a very real threat to their plans.

The oil and gas industry has sought access to U.S. Atlantic waters for years, hoping to find rich oil and gas fields similar to those off the coasts of Nigeria and Ghana. In Trump – who proclaims “energy dominance” almost as frequently as “Make America great again” – the industry believed it had found the key to achieving its goal.

Energy companies came close two years ago when former President Barack Obama considered allowing oil and gas development in Atlantic waters. They had the support of Republicans and Democrats, including Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2016, and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and fund raiser for Hillary and Bill Clinton, but Obama ultimately decided against an expansion of offshore drilling.

Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle

 

New Yorkers rally against offshore drilling plan

February 16, 2018 — ALBANY, N.Y. — Wearing fish-shaped caps and armed with a megaphone, New York state’s leading environmental advocates protested President Donald Trump’s plan to open offshore areas to oil and gas drilling on Thursday as federal energy officials held an open house on the proposal near the state Capitol.

The group, wearing caps shaped like sturgeon, salmon and other vulnerable ocean species, included Aaron Mair, past president of the Sierra Club, and Judith Enck, the regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator under former President Barack Obama. They said Trump’s plan could devastate the environment while leaving potential renewable energy sources untouched. They called on Congress to pass a law blocking the proposal.

“We all remember the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe,” Enck said into a megaphone, referring to the 2010 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that triggered the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. “We cannot afford that reckless activity in the Atlantic.”

Inside, federal energy officials handed out information packets and briefed members of the public on the president’s decision last month to open most of the nation’s coast to oil and gas drilling as a way of making the U.S. less dependent on foreign energy sources. Several dozen people had trickled through at the midpoint of the four-hour open house. Members of the public were encouraged to submit written comments.

William Brown, chief environmental officer at the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said he welcomed comments from opponents to the plan.

Read the full story from Associated Press at the Seattle Times