Saving Seafood

Biden’s lavish lobster dinner doesn’t change his hostility to seafood industry, fish groups say

December 3, 2022 — The following is an excerpt from an article by Fox News:

A pair of fish and seafood associations weighed in on President Biden’s upcoming lavish lobster dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Biden faced backlash on Twitter on Wednesday night from Democratic Maine Rep. Jared Golden over his upcoming Thursday seafood dinner with Macron featuring Maine lobster.

Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, commended Golden for calling out Biden on the issue and said that his organization has had trouble meeting with the current administration.

Vanasse said that it’s not just lobster, but other seafood industries like tuna and swordfish are having issues meeting with the White House.

“I applaud the congressman for calling out the administration’s hypocrisy when it comes to our domestic fisheries and their policies,” Vanasse said.

“This is not the first time that something like this has happened, but it is good to see, and particularly a Democrat pointing it out because this administration has frankly not been friendly or helpful to our domestic fishing industry,” he continued.

Vanasse said “the most egregious example of that was last summer with regard to the Atlantic Marine Monument, which President Obama created with very little scientific backing using the Antiquities Act.” He noted that the monument move prevents tuna, lobster and swordfish fishing and that America’s “sustainable red crab industry is being kicked out of that area,” as well.

“We spent three years working with the Trump administration to reverse President Obama’s ban on commercial fishing in that area,” Vanasse said. “And they did a very diligent job of looking at science before they agreed to remove the ban and allow our fishermen in that area.”

Vanasse said that the Biden administration has not followed through on its policymaking with science over politics, and that when they “were fighting for our offshore lobster industry, our red crab industry, our fishermen and our tuna fishermen” last summer, they “got one hour to defend the industry with staff at the Department of the Interior before there was even a Senate-confirmed secretary in place.”

He said that on Columbus Day last year, the Biden administration cut off their “fishermen’s right to fish for lobster, crab, swordfish and tuna” in the [Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument], adding that “this administration has been very much in bed with the more extreme environmentalists.”

“And I mean, with regard to the monument, it’s not surprising because the champion of the monument in the Obama administration was Monica Medina, and she’s married to Ron Klain, who’s the White House chief of staff,” said Vanasse. “So when we were fighting for those fisheries, we couldn’t get any Democrats to stand up to the White House. Basically, they just told us that they had tried. They called [the Department of the Interior], they called the White House. They were essentially told that there was no way, because if Trump did it, it had to be bad, and so they were going to reverse what Trump did. No science, no study. One hour of communication with the entire… with all of the people who represent those commercial fisheries that were affected.”

Vanasse said that the White House has likely served tuna and swordfish in addition to lobster, and he thinks Golden’s speaking out “will actually get the president’s attention and perhaps maybe we can actually get the kind of attention from the Biden administration that we were able to get from the Trump administration and not have our fishermen be treated as second-class citizens.”

Vanasse said he does not believe Biden “has personally done much of anything for the fishing industry” and has “delegated it to appointees in his administration.”

Regarding the dinner, Vanasse praised the White House for “thumbing their nose” at “the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program and at Whole Foods for blindly following Seafood Watch” and that he was “delighted to see them do that and for them to take a New England domestic fishery and serve it.”

He continued, “That’s what the White House should do. They should be doing this more. But it’s a bit hypocritical at the same time to be moving forward with regulations that are harming our domestic fisheries and also serving the product. You know, they’re trying to have their lobster and eat it, too, so to speak.”

Read the full story at Fox News

Biden pitches Atlantic coast ‘Grand Canyon’ as marine sanctuary

June 8, 2022 — The White House today endorsed designating the Atlantic coast’s largest undersea canyon as one of the nation’s next underwater parks, but stopped short of enacting immediate protections that could guard the “ecological hotspot” from commercial fishing, energy development or other threats.

The Biden administration announced it will begin the process for safeguarding the Hudson Canyon — which sits 100 miles off the coasts of New York and New Jersey and rivals the Grand Canyon in scale — in a series of actions to mark today’s World Oceans Day.

In addition to kicking off the designation of a new national marine sanctuary, the White House vowed to develop a “whole-of-government Ocean Climate Action Plan” on ocean-based climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

NOAA will oversee the designation process for the Hudson Canyon, which would become part of an existing group of 15 underwater parks that includes both freshwater and ocean sites.

But that process, which includes public comment, the drafting of environmental impact statements and management plans, and potential rulemaking, is not a swift one, with a final decision taking two to three years.

Bob Vanasse, executive director of industry group Saving Seafood, praised the decision to utilize the sanctuaries act rather than take executive action.

“I appreciate that they are using the Marine Sanctuaries Act to do this, which allows input from affected ocean users and will allow for actual science to be considered, which is exactly why we objected to and continue to object to the marine monument designation,” Vanasse said, referring to the ongoing legal battle over the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts site (E&E News PM, Oct. 8, 2021).

Last fall, Biden restored commercial fishing prohibitions to the Atlantic Ocean monument that former President Donald Trump had struck down in 2020.

Read the full story at E&E News

 

Local Fishing Industry Upset Over Biden Restoring Marine National Monument

October 12, 2021 — President Biden re-established an area off of the coast of Cape Cod as a marine national monument Friday, a move that has the local fishing industry angry.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was originally created during the Obama administration to preserve the sea life in that region. During the Trump administration, restrictions in the area were scaled back, which allowed for commercial fishing.

Under the new executive action from President Biden, commercial fishing in the area is banned but recreational fishing is allowed. The monument is more than 100 miles southeast off the shore of Cape Cod.

Bob Vanasse of Saving Seafood told WBZ’s Karyn Regal (@karynregal) the trip to the area is one only a chartered fishing boat or mega yacht could make.

“The privileged few are going to allowed to go out and spearfish on the same species that working families in the swordfish and tuna industry will not be able to do,” Vanasse said.

Read the full story at WBZ News

 

Biden expands Bears Ears and other national monuments, reversing Trump cuts

October 8, 2021 — President Biden on Friday restored full protections to three national monuments that had been slashed in size by former president Donald Trump, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah — known for their stunning desert landscapes and historical treasures of Native American art and settlements, as well as a rich fossil record.

Biden used an executive order to protect 1.36 million acres in Bears Ears —slightly larger than the original boundary that President Barack Obama established in 2016 — while also restoring the 1.78 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante monument. Biden also reimposed fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England that Trump had opened to commercial fishing.

Biden signed the proclamations in a ceremony outside the White House, in front of tribal leaders and others. He used his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Bob Vanasse, of Saving Seafood, a seafood industry advocacy group, called Biden’s designation an “unfortunate decision.”

“Anyone who likes fresh local swordfish, tuna, lobster and crabmeat should be very angry with the Harris-Biden administration today,” he said. “And I know some environmental advocates will claim that the statistics show that no harm has been done to the fisheries from this closure. They think that because they don’t understand fisheries and misunderstand the statistics.”

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Concern about endangered whales cited in suit over wind farm

August 25, 2021 — The construction of dozens of wind turbines off the coast of Nantucket threatens the survival of a dwindling number of endangered Northern Atlantic right whales that inhabit the waters, a group of residents on the affluent resort island in Massachusetts argue in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.

ACK Residents Against Turbines said Vineyard Wind’s proposed project of some 60 turbines 14 miles (22 kilometers) south of the island is located in a crucial area for foraging and nursing for the species, which researchers estimate number less than 400.

Mary Chalke, a Nantucket resident and member of the opposition group, said the lawsuit isn’t just about Vineyard Wind, but other turbine projects also in the pipeline up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Bob Vanasse, who heads the fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood, said Vineyard Wind and other projects proposed in the region could impact a range of significant fisheries, including squid, clams and scallops.

“There are a number of groups in various fisheries who have raised concerns about the insufficiency of the planning and review effort,” he said Wednesday. “This group is far from alone in that.”

Vineyard Wind also comes years after the infamous Cape Wind project, which failed after bitter litigation from another group that included Nantucket property owners.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Protect species? Curb warming? Save money? Biden’s big conservation goal means trade-offs

February 3, 2021 — President Joe Biden last week unveiled an ambitious conservation goal, unprecedented for the United States: conserving 30% of the country’s lands and waters by 2030, which would require more than doubling the area of public and private holdings under heightened protections.

Conservation scientists welcomed the so-called 30-by-30 goal, announced in an executive order on climate released 27 January. “The ambition is fantastic,” says ecologist Joshua Tewksbury, interim executive director of the nonprofit Future Earth.

But Biden’s order also raises a thorny practical question: Which swaths of land and sea should be the top targets for enhanced protection or management? The order says the effort should aim for a number of outcomes, including preserving biodiversity, curbing climate change, and even creating jobs and reducing social inequality. But researchers warn that difficult trade-offs lie ahead, because few chunks of territory are likely to provide all of the desired benefits. “The balancing act [will be] the hardest part of this work,” Tewksbury says.

Observers say the Biden administration could make rapid progress and contain costs by enhancing protections for territory already owned by the federal government. “We can make really huge gains on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands,” says Jacob Malcom, a conservation biologist with Defenders of Wildlife. That could mean reducing logging, mining, drilling, and grazing. “There will be vested interests who are not happy about that,” Malcom notes. “So I don’t want to make it seem like it’s going to be easy.” Fishing associations, for example, have already reacted with concern to proposals to ban commercial fishing in 30% of U.S. waters. “Thirty-by-thirty is a campaign slogan, not a scientific proposal,” Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, wrote last year.

Read the full story at Science Magazine

President Biden’s flurry of actions to protect the environment reignites a controversy about the Atlantic’s only marine monument

January 22, 2021 — Last June, as part of a concerted campaign to dismantle the environmental policies of the Obama administration, Donald Trump met with fishermen in Maine and signed a proclamation that allowed commercial fishing in nearly 5,000 square miles of federally protected waters southeast of Cape Cod.

But elections have consequences, and on Wednesday President Joe Biden signed an executive order that could overturn Trump’s decision and restore the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean to its former status, part of a flurry of executive actions Biden took on his first day in office to reverse many of the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks.

Environmental advocates called the first steps promising, a welcome change from the policies of the past four years.

In response to Biden’s order, representatives of fishing groups urged the new administration to consult them before overturning Trump’s policies.

“The hope of the fishing industry is that if the Biden administration is endeavoring to unite the country, then the Biden administration will actively reach out to fishing communities and not only discuss the marine monument with them but listen to the fishing communities’ concerns and act upon those concerns,” said Andrew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington, D.C.

He and others urged the Biden administration to respect the traditional fishery management process, which allows for councils composed of fishermen, environmental advocates, and regulators to determine where and how much fishing can occur.

“I believe, as long as this is reviewed fairly, in terms of the science and law, there’s no reason that fishing shouldn’t be allowed there,” said Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents commercial fishermen. “It’s sustainable. But if it’s a political decision and about Obama’s legacy, then it’s going to be a problem.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Environmental groups sue Trump, saying he can’t open marine monument to fishing

June 18, 2020 — Environmental groups are suing President Trump over a decision to open a national marine monument off the coast of southern New England to commercial fishing, arguing the president’s proclamation violates federal law.

The president announced the decision during a June 5 visit to Maine.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says that under the U.S. Antiquities Act a president can only create protections for national monuments and does not have the right to remove them – only Congress can.

In a statement Wednesday, Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities, a fishing industry advocacy group, noted that the proclamation will still require commercial fishing to be managed under the Magunson-Stevens Act, a federal law governing marine fisheries, and does not modify the monument in any other way.

“(The Conservation Law Foundation) argues that President Trump’s modification of the monument created by President Obama is illegal,” Vanasse said. “But President Obama exercised the power to modify monuments created by his predecessors to expand Pacific marine monuments created by President Bush.

“It would seem that CLF’s position is that it is legal for a president to modify monuments created by a predecessor when CLF agrees with the modification, but illegal when CLF disagrees with the modification.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

NCFC Executive Director Bob Vanasse Responds to CLF Lawsuit Over Restoring Commercial Fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument

June 17, 2020 – The following was written by Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities, in response to CLF’s announcement that it is filing suit over a presidential proclamation restoring commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument:

The creation of an Atlantic Marine monument without appropriate stakeholder consultation has been a centerpiece of the Conservation Law Foundation’s (CLF) political agenda for over five years.

In 2015, a public records request filed by Saving Seafood revealed emails showing that the CLF was working with the Center For American Progress, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Earth Justice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the National Geographic Society in an attempt to convince President Obama to announce the monument plan at the Our Ocean Conference in Chile in October 2015. In the emails, CLF’s Peter Shelley wrote, “I hope no one is talking about Chile to the outside world. It’s one of the few advantages we may have to know that it could happen sooner rather than later.” The email discussion included Monica Medina, who had served as Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere during President Obama’s first term.

In a subsequent interview with E&E News, Mr. Shelley made clear that the effort was aimed at getting the monument proclaimed before the fishing industry could fully engage in the public process. “The time was pretty short to pull it off. We thought there might be an opportunity we could get them to think about these areas for an announcement in conjunction with the Our Ocean Conference,” Mr. Shelley said. “We were trying to keep that quiet because we didn’t want to give the opposition more of an advantage. The more time they had, the more opportunity they would have to lobby, to fight it, to organize against it.”

The inclusion of prohibitions against commercial fishing was controversial throughout the process of creating the monument. A NOAA internal document in 2015 noted that the Atlantic deep-sea red crab and commercial and recreational pelagic fisheries for highly migratory species “have a substantial portion of their landings from within the proposed area.” The same document noted that “any designation within the jurisdiction of the New England or Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Councils, as well as the Secretary of Commerce as delegated to NMFS/HMS Management Division, that restricts fishing activities will be seen as usurping their authorities. These processes are rigorous and provide for significant public input which this process does not.”

Managing commercial fishing sustainably under the Magnuson-Stevens Act is not controversial. CLF falsely states that President Trump “eliminated critical natural resource protections” in the monument. In fact, the Presidential proclamation explicitly states that commercial fishing inside the monument will be managed under Magnuson-Stevens. The proclamation “does not modify the monument in any other respect.”

On the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of Magnuson-Stevens in 2016, CLF praised fisheries management under the Act, stating that Magnuson-Stevens is “the primary reason why the United States can say that it has the most sustainable fisheries in the world,” and “it has traditionally represented a bipartisan effort toward responsible management of our fishery resources, economically and environmentally.”

CLF was correct in noting that fisheries management has traditionally been bipartisan, and opposition to the prohibition of commercial fishing inside the monument was not a partisan issue. The commercial fishing industry is deeply grateful to Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey for the work he did with the Obama White House to ensure that the offshore lobster industry and the red crab industry – the first Atlantic fishery to be certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council – received a seven-year moratorium before fishing for those species inside the monument would have been prohibited. It is because of Senator Markey’s efforts that those sustainable fisheries have been preserved. Senator Elizabeth Warren has also been a longtime champion of fisheries management under the successful Magnuson-Stevens Act.

CLF argues that President Trump’s modification of the monument created by President Obama is illegal. But President Obama exercised the power to modify monuments created by his predecessors to expand Pacific marine monuments created by President Bush. It would seem that CLF’s position is that it is legal for a president to modify monuments created by a predecessor when CLF agrees with the modification, but illegal when CLF disagrees with the modification.

CLF President Brad Campbell states that President Trump’s action puts “national monuments on the block for the highest political bidder.” The record is clear that the highest political bidder during the Obama years was the environmental community. That is why environmentalists succeeded in including a prohibition against commercial fisheries in President Obama’s monument proclamation, but not against their friends in recreational fishing. If Mr. Campbell is interested in finding the historical “highest political bidder” on the designation of marine monuments, he should look in his own office.

The environmental community had ample opportunity to create a protected area using the Marine Sanctuaries Act, and they have actively worked with both the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the New England Fishery Management Council on actions to protect those areas under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.  But, as NOAA noted, those “processes are rigorous and provide for significant public input.” Instead, they chose the politically expedient route, and used their contacts and clout in the Obama administration to circumvent the scientific and public process. What they are now discovering is that what one president might create with the stroke of a pen, another president might take away.