Saving Seafood

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

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

MASSACHUSETTS: Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries Hiring Recreational Fisheries Surveyors for 2026 Season

February 12, 2026 — The following was released by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries:

The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries is currently hiring Recreational Fisheries Surveyors for the 2026 season. We are seeking seven (7) surveyors for the South Shore, Cape Cod and Islands, and three (3) for the North Shore.

Links to the postings in MassCareers are provided below:

These seasonal positions run from April through November, with training scheduled for the last week of March. While we will review applications on a rolling basis until the roles are filled, first consideration will be given to candidates who apply within the first 14 days of the posting.

MASSACHUSETTS: Before the herring return, Cape Cod needs people to count them

February 10, 2026 — On a still April morning, one of the most important things happening on Cape Cod is easy to miss unless you’re really looking. No crowds. No signs. Just narrow ribbons of water where silver flashes push upstream, muscle and instinct carrying river herring from the saltwater back to the ponds and wetlands where their lives began.

For decades, those fleeting migrations have told a quiet story about the health of the Cape’s ecosystem. Now, local researchers and conservationists say the story needs more listeners.

The Association to Preserve Cape Cod is recruiting volunteers for the 2026 river herring count season, a citizen science effort that relies on something everyone knows how to do: count. All it requires is people willing to show up consistently, watch carefully, and write down what they see.

The commitment is not a heavy lift, but the payoff is anything but lightweight.

“Ten minutes at a run, a few times a week, adds up to information we can use to track the run, spot problems, and see whether restoration work is paying off,” said Mike Palmer, an ecologist at the APCC who coordinates volunteer monitoring across the region.

Read the full article at the Cape Cod Times

Trump ends Obama-era restrictions on commercial fishing in protected area off New England

February 9, 2026 — President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on Friday reopening a huge swath of protected sea in the Atlantic Ocean to commercial fishing.

Trump said the move would reestablish fishing in Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the New England coast, a nearly 5,000-square-mile preserve east of Cape Cod that was created by former President Barack Obama. Trump rolled back protections in the area in 2020 and President Joe Biden later restored them.

Commercial fishing groups have long sought the reopening of the protected area and voiced support on Friday.

“We deserve to be rewarded, not penalized,” said John Williams, president and owner of the New Bedford, Massachusetts-based Atlantic Red Crab Company. “We’re demonstrating that we can fish sustainably and continue to harvest on a sustainable level in perpetuity.”

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Trump Opens Marine National Monument in Atlantic to Commercial Fishing

February 9, 2026 — President Trump moved on Friday to allow commercial fishing in the only marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, an area the size of Connecticut that is home to dolphins, endangered whales, sea turtles and ancient deep-sea corals.

Mr. Trump signed a proclamation opening up the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which lies 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. President Barack Obama created the monument in 2016, and Mr. Trump tried to lift the ban on commercial fishing there during his first term, but President Joseph R. Biden Jr. reinstated the restrictions.

“I find that appropriately managed commercial fishing would not put the objects of historic and scientific interest that the monument protects at risk,” Mr. Trump wrote in the proclamation.

This was the second time that Mr. Trump opened a marine national monument to commercial fishing. In April 2025, he ended protections for the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, which lies about 750 miles west of Hawaii and was established by President George W. Bush in 2009.

Fishing industry groups praised the move and rejected the notion that their activities in the area would cause environmental damage.

“America’s commercial fishermen are among the world’s most responsible ocean stewards,” Bob Vanasse, the executive director of the industry group Saving Seafood, said in a statement. “Their work is tightly regulated, environmentally conscious and vital to the economies and food security of coastal communities.”

Read the full article at The New York Times

Trump vows to ‘unleash’ commercial fishing off New England, reversing Obama-era Atlantic restrictions

February 9, 2026 — President Donald Trump said he issued a presidential proclamation reopening thousands of square miles of protected Atlantic Ocean waters off New England to commercial fishing, saying the move would reestablish fishing access and reduce what he called burdensome restrictions on fishermen.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social late Friday, writing that the move was “another BIG WIN for Maine, and all of New England.”

The proclamation would reestablish fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the New England coast, a nearly 5,000-square-mile preserve east of Cape Cod that was created by former President Barack Obama. Trump rolled back protections in the area during his first term, and President Joe Biden later restored them.

Read the full article at Fox News

22 Right Whale Calves Born So Far This Winter

February 5, 2026 — An aerial survey of Cape Cod Bay conducted by the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) on Jan. 10 found 33 North Atlantic right whales here — the highest number on a single day in January in the center’s 27 years of such surveys. Normally the whales are just starting to trickle into the area at this time of year, said Daniel Palacios, director of the center’s right whale ecology program.

“It was a surprise,” said Palacios. “There are good plankton resources in the bay right now, and that’s drawing them here earlier than usual.”

Over more than 40 years of research, the CCS has established that Cape Cod Bay is the greatest known aggregation point for the roughly 380 members of the endangered species. In the winter, more than half of the remaining population comes here to feed on dense patches of plankton, said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, who founded the center’s right whale ecology program after conducting the first successful whale disentanglement in 1984.

In the warmer waters between Florida and the Carolinas, calving season, which runs from mid-November through mid-April, has been good. Twenty-two calves have been born so far, compared to 11 in last winter’s season and 20 the year before.

The most recent calf to be identified was just off the coast of Flagler Beach, Fla. on Jan. 30, according to the New England Aquarium.

The sighting of so many calves is “a very positive sign,” Mayo said. “We should be encouraged. But this population, at less than 400 animals, is still in tough shape.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the right whale is in the midst of an “unusual mortality event” that began in 2017, when 17 whales are known to have died in one year.

There are only about 70 breeding females in the entire population, and the number of calves born per season can range dramatically, with the highest recorded number being 39 in 2009 and the lowest zero in 2018.

The average number of calves born from 1980 to 2022 was 16, so 22 calves is considered a good season. Nonetheless, population biologists at NOAA Fisheries have said that 50 or more calves need to be born every year for many years to reverse the species’ decline and set the stage for recovery.

The original cause of the right whales’ decline was whaling — the entire population was reduced to 100 or fewer animals off the coast of the U.S. and Canada in the early 1900s. An international ban on hunting all right whales went into effect in 1935, but the population has struggled to recover due to mortality and serious injury from vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent

MASSACHUSETTS: Six decades of change on Cape Cod’s working waterfronts

December 17, 2025 — Over the past 60 years, Cape Cod’s fisheries have undergone dramatic change, mirroring broader shifts across coastal New England, wrote longtime fisherman William Amaru in a retrospective for The Cape Cod Chronicle. Amaru notes that his own fishing career spans the same six decades as the newspaper, a period when “virtually all aspects of life on Cape Cod saw more change than had occurred in the previous centuries on this peninsula.”

 The region’s fisheries had evolved from hemp line and handmade hooks to synthetic netting, spectra rope, and stainless-steel wire, while once dominant cod and haddock fisheries gave way to “robust catches of dogfish, skates, and monkfish.” At the same time, grey and harbor seal populations have surged. When The Chronicle first published, Amaru wrote, “even seeing a seal was rare. Today they number in tens of thousands in our waters,” a shift he shared has hindered fish stock recovery.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Endangered giants at risk off Cape Cod. Why these animals die here more than anywhere else

October 13, 2025 — Leatherback sea turtles visiting the waters off Cape Cod each year face a higher risk of fatal boat strikes than in any region along the Atlantic or Gulf coasts, according to a new study that includes contributions from three Cape researchers.

Between 2010 and 2022, watercraft struck 88 leatherbacks in waters off the Cape and Nantucket — more than a quarter of the 337 recorded collisions nationwide during the same period.

The largest marine turtle species in the world, leatherbacks are listed as endangered by the state and federal government. Under the Massachusetts Wildlife Action Plan the turtles are a species of greatest conservation needs.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times