Saving Seafood

Trump extends existing ban on Russian seafood

April 14, 2026 — U.S. President Donald Trump has extended a ban on several products produced by the Russian Federation, including a ban on seafood harvested or produced by Russian-flagged vessels.

In a post to the Federal Register, Donald Trump signed a continuation of the National Emergency that was initially declared under the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden in 2022. That order was then expanded under U.S. Executive Order 14068, which added any seafood harvested in Russian waters or by a Russian-flagged vessel, even if that product was transformed in a third country.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Trump budget attacks renewables, boosts ‘energy dominance’

April 3, 2026 — The White House released its fiscal 2027 budget request Friday morning, unveiling plans to continue waging its longstanding war against renewable energy and climate initiatives while boosting support for artificial intelligence and fossil fuels.

The spending blueprint also includes a proposed reorganization for core Interior Department energy offices — the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

President Donald Trump’s budget would take a sledgehammer to Biden-era energy and environment programs that the administration has not already decimated, proposing tens of billions of dollars in cuts to everything from electric vehicle chargers to efforts to prosecute certain environmental crimes.

Read the full article at E&E News

As offshore wind projects begin operations, cause of Vineyard Wind blade incident remains unknown

March 31, 2026 —  The Biden administration set out to spread 30 gigawatts of offshore wind on the coasts of the United States. While that goal wasn’t reached before President Donald Trump took office, several projects were approved and continued with construction.

Earlier this month, Vineyard Wind off the coast of Nantucket finished construction, The Nantucket Current reported. Shortly after, offshore wind developer Orsted announced that the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island began providing intermittent power to New England. This week, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach began providing intermittent power to the grid, Virginia Business reported.

Despite concerns about the impacts of offshore wind to electricity rates and whales, Biden’s wind projects move rapidly ahead. The federal analysis of what caused a catastrophic blade failure on Vineyard Wind in July 2024 still hasn’t been published.

Read the full article at Just The News

ALASKA: Trump administration defends Biden-era rejection of Pebble mine by EPA

March 9, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Justice is defending a Biden-era veto of the Pebble copper and gold project, saying the Environmental Protection Agency properly exercised its authority to prevent adverse impacts to a “globally significant” fishery in Bristol Bay.

The Feb. 17 court filing by the Department of Justice continues the Trump administration’s opposition to the proposed mine, a departure from the president’s aggressive pro-development agenda that includes support of U.S. mineral production in Alaska.

The Pebble project sits on state land about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, near the headwaters of Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

Mine developer Pebble Limited Partnership brought the case in 2024, suing EPA over its decision to block the mine under a little-used provision in the Clean Water Act. The agency had said the mine would cause “unacceptable, adverse” harm to the valuable Bristol Bay salmon fishery.

The Justice Department said in its filing that the Pebble mineral deposit exists under streams, wetlands and other waters that are critical for supporting salmon in the watershed, “a largely undisturbed, globally significant economic, ecological, and cultural resource.”

“(Pebble Limited Partnership’s) mine plan calls for the disposal of large quantities of fill into waters of the United States that would destroy or comparably damage large areas of salmon habitat that are fishery areas,” the filing said.

Ron Thiessen, president of Pebble’s parent company, Northern Dynasty Minerals, said in a statement that the filing is “surprisingly short-sighted” and legally flawed.

Read the full article at Alaska Journal of Commerce 

Free to Fish a Marine Monument

February 27, 2026 — The Trump administration’s move this month to allow commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, 130 miles off Cape Cod, was welcomed by commercial fishing interests last week.

The monument’s creation was a recent development, established by President Barack Obama in the last months of his administration in 2016, with a multiyear phaseout allowed only for American lobster and Atlantic deep-sea red crab fisheries. The area in question covers nearly 5,000 square miles and includes three underwater canyons and four underwater mountains, or seamounts. In 2020, during his first term, Mr. Trump lifted the ban on commercial fishing there, but President Joseph Biden restored it the following year.

“Because of the complex topography and oceanography within the monument, and the resulting high food production, there is a rich diversity of fishes” there, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the site with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Scientists consider the monument a biodiversity hotspot for deep-sea fishes.” Fish and Wildlife cites a 2003 study that found almost 600 fish species living below 650 feet in the New England shelf region of the monument.

Its canyons are home to various species of flounder, hake, skate, ocean pout, cusk, grenadier, and eel, some occurring in dense aggregations. “Larger pelagic fish like swordfish, tuna, and sharks also use the monument,” according to Fish and Wildlife.

Read the full article at The East Hampton Star

ALASKA: Trump administration defends Biden-era rejection of Pebble mine by EPA

February 26, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Justice is defending a Biden-era veto of the Pebble copper and gold project, saying the Environmental Protection Agency properly exercised its authority to prevent adverse impacts to a “globally significant” fishery in Bristol Bay.

The Feb. 17 court filing by the Department of Justice continues the Trump administration’s opposition to the proposed mine, a departure from the president’s aggressive pro-development agenda that includes support of U.S. mineral production in Alaska.

The Pebble project sits on state land about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, near the headwaters of Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

Mine developer Pebble Limited Partnership brought the case in 2024, suing EPA over its decision to block the mine under a little-used provision in the Clean Water Act. The agency had said the mine would cause “unacceptable, adverse” harm to the valuable Bristol Bay salmon fishery.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Trump reopens vast swath of waters off northeastern coast to commercial fishing

February 25, 2026 — One of the nation’s richest fishing grounds — put off-limits to commercial use by the Obama and Biden administrations — is once again open for business, courtesy of a proclamation issued by the Trump White House.

The Feb. 6 proclamation — “Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Atlantic” —revokes an Obama- and Biden-era policy that prohibited commercial fishing within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. Created in 2016 by the Obama administration, the marine national monument covers nearly 5,000 square miles on the edge of the continental shelf about 150 miles east of Cape Cod. The monument designation included a ban on commercial fishing, which Trump lifted in his first term. The Biden administration reimposed the ban in 2021, a step Trump 2.0 is now reversing.

When it reimposed the prohibition on commercial fishing within the marine monument’s boundaries, the Biden White House, like the Obama administration before it, cited the need to protect sensitive marine life in the area. “Restoring the prohibition on commercial fishing,” the Biden administration said, “will ensure that the unique, fragile, and largely pristine canyons and seamounts, and the dynamic ocean systems and marine life they support … will be safeguarded and will continue to provide an important venue for scientific study and research.”

Read the full article at CFACT

The rare issue uniting Trump and green groups: Blocking Pebble mine

February 24, 2026 — The Department of Justice is defending a Biden-era veto of the Pebble mine in Alaska in what may be one of the Trump administration’s only points of agreement with environmental groups.

EPA’s rejection of a Clean Water Act permit for the mine in 2023 was justified and protective of Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed, home to a globally significant salmon fishery “that is unrivaled in North America,” DOJ attorneys said in a Feb. 17 legal brief.

In doing so, federal attorneys rebuffed arguments from Pebble Partnership, a company wholly owned by Northern Dynasty that’s suing the U.S. government for blocking its plans to build a massive copper, gold and molybdenum mine. The southwest Alaska open-pit mining project would be developed in the pristine Bristol Bay watershed, prime salmon habitat.

Read the full article at E&E News

Peter Navarro: Trump lifts Biden’s fish ban to lower your grocery bill

February 23, 2026 — Inflation isn’t an abstraction. It’s the monthly bills piling up — and whether a family can pay the mortgage, fuel the car, and put food on the table. That is why President Donald Trump is attacking Joe Biden’s legacy inflation sector by sector, product by product — and, as his latest executive action shows, fish by fish.

With this action, President Trump is reopening 5,000 square miles of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. These productive waters were first fenced off by Barack Obama in 2016 and, after Trump reopened them in 2020, Biden shut them right back down in 2021.

Obama’s 2016 commercial fishing ban came wrapped in lofty rhetoric about preservation. But for working waterfronts, it was a gut punch and a shutdown.

When President Trump lifted that ban, I was at the signing ceremony in Bangor, Maine. That Trump signature meant boats would once again sail, crews could fish and earn, processors could buy American catch, and — yes — American consumers could eat some of the freshest fish on the market.

Then came the Biden reversal in October 2021. My heart broke when I read the news — because policy whiplash is not an academic exercise. Fishermen live by the tides, not a think-tank memo. And it’s not just the fishermen that get hurt. It’s welders, dockhands, icehouses, bait dealers, truckers and an entire waterfront ecosystem.

When federal policy strangles opportunity, there is no backup plan, no second labor market to absorb the shock. The boats stop sailing, the paychecks stop coming, the damage is immediate.

Read the full article at Peter Navarro

Trump opens massive Atlantic marine monument to commercial fishing

February 10, 2026 — President Donald Trump revoked a ban Friday on commercial fishing inside a 3.1-million-acre marine national monument, opening up a previously protected swath of the Atlantic Ocean to industry.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument — the only one of five marine monuments located in the Atlantic Ocean — was created to conserve four underwater extinct volcanoes, called seamounts, and three canyons, some reaching depths of more than a mile. The monument located about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is also home to unique deep-sea corals, endangered whales and scores of other marine species.

Since returning to office last year, Trump has pushed to open up marine monuments to commercial fishing, saying overregulation has disadvantaged the American fishing industry compared to foreign competitors. In April, Trump overturned a fishing ban in a sprawling Pacific Ocean monument, a move fought by environmentalists who have argued that increasing access to protected areas will harm fishing stocks.

Read the full article at E&E News