Saving Seafood

US Interior Department reverses legal opinion on offshore wind

April 16, 2021 — The U.S. Interior Department formally reversed a Trump-era legal opinion on offshore wind energy, in another step toward the Biden administration’s goal of dramatically expanding the industry in U.S. waters.

A memo from Robert Anderson, the department’s principle deputy solicitor, released on 9 April critiques and reverses findings written in December by Daniel Jorjani, who was the department’s top lawyer when then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt moved to shut down the approval process for the Vineyard Wind offshore project.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Suit seeks to reverse Trump changes to sea turtle protection

April 7, 2021 — Conservation groups sued on Tuesday to reverse changes made under former President Donald Trump to rules protecting sea turtles, even though federal regulators said a week ago that they were reconsidering some of those changes.

The groups hope President Joe Biden’s administration will change the rules, but the possible revisions outlined recently may not go far enough, said Jaclyn Lopez of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the three groups.

“We’re hopeful they will do something and do something soon, but we’re not going to sit back and wait,” she said. “This is decades in the making and our patience has run out.”

“We are aware of this filing and are reviewing it,” Allison Garrett, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries service, said in an email.

The current rule would hurt five endangered and threatened sea turtle species, especially Kemp’s ridleys, the smallest and most endangered, the groups’ news release said. Kemp’s ridleys swim throughout the Gulf and along the Atlantic Coast to New England, nesting in Mexico and along the Texas coast.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

East Coast Fishermen Call for Fair Monument Policy From Biden Administration

March 19, 2021 — Over a dozen representatives of the New England and Mid-Atlantic seafood industry met with members of the Department of Interior and NOAA Fisheries officials, including Sam Rauch, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs last Friday to hear their case for a fair and science-based marine monument policy.

East Coast industry members specifically asked to allow commercial fishing in areas within the monument as stated in an Executive Order from last June. That order, issued by the Trump Administration, was an amendement to the Obama Executive Order that created the monument on the basis of the Antiquities Act. President Obama’s proclamation prohibited commercial fishing, with a phase-out period for American lobster and red crab fisheries, within the monument’s boundaries.

President Biden asked the Secretary of the Interior to “… conduct a review of the monument boundaries and conditions that were established by … Proclamation 10049 of June 5, 2020 (Modifying the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument), to determine whether restoration of the monument boundaries and conditions that existed as of January 20, 2017, would be appropriate.”

Industry members raised concerns about creating marine monuments without input from the regional councils, without a basis of the best scientific advice available, and when the final economic and social impacts on the area’s communities would be negative.

They noted that allowing fishing in the Atlantic monument area is consistent with the Biden Administration’s goals of following the best available science, as well as its commitment to economic and environmental justice.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Huawei Pivots to Fish Farms, Mining After U.S. Blocks Its Phones

March 15, 2021 — Six months after the Trump administration dealt a crushing blow to Huawei Technologies Co.’s smartphone business, the Chinese telecommunications giant is turning to less glamorous alternatives that may eventually offset the decline of its biggest revenue contributor.

Among its newest customers is a fish farm in eastern China that’s twice the size of New York’s Central Park. The farm is covered with tens of thousands of solar panels outfitted with Huawei’s inverters to shield its fish from excessive sunlight while generating power. About 370 miles to the west in coal-rich Shanxi province, wireless sensors and cameras deep beneath the earth monitor oxygen levels and potential machine malfunctions in mine pit — all supplied by the tech titan. And next month, a shiny new electric car featuring its lidar sensor will debut at China’s largest auto show.

Once the world’s largest smartphone maker, the Chinese corporation has seen a series of U.S. sanctions almost obliterate its lucrative consumer business. With the Biden administration keeping up the pressure on Huawei, billionaire founder Ren Zhengfei has directed the company to grow its roster of enterprise clients in transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and other industries. Huawei is the world’s leading supplier of inverters and it’s now banking on growing those sales alongside its cloud services and data analytics solutions to help the 190,000-employee business survive.

Read the full story at Bloomberg News

MAINE: Lobstermen fear new rules as Biden revokes Trump executive orders on regulation

February 18, 2021 — New executive orders are flying off President Joe Biden’s desk.

Many of those orders seek to reinstate regulations lifted by former President Donald Trump or enact new ones.

Mainers who make a living on the water are particularly concerned about new regulations, and Maine’s Congressional delegation is concerned, as well.

They’ve sent multiple letters to federal agencies, attempting to inform the rulemaking process on fishery management plans.

Thousands of lobstermen say they fear that new regulations could leave them trapped.

“It could put a few of the smaller guys right out of business because they can’t compete with it,” lobsterman George Anderson said.

Conservation groups say it’s endangered whales that are feeling the pinch as they get tangled in rope.

Read the full story at WGME

A month after Trump’s veto, Feinstein refiles driftnet ban bill

February 10, 2021 — A bipartisan bill to end the use of drift gillnets to catch swordfish has been reintroduced in the U.S. Senate a month after then-President Donald Trump vetoed similar legislation.

U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) refiled their bill, entitled the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act, on Monday, 8 February. The bill calls for a ban on using the mile-long nets that reach 200 feet below the ocean surface.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishing industry moves to head off Northeast canyons monument reversal

January 27, 2021 — Northeast fishing advocates mobilized as President Biden moved fast to reverse executive orders from the Trump administration — possibly including Trump’s move to back off fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument.

Biden ordered a broad review of more than 100 actions by the Trump administration on environmental issues, including the former president’s attempts to alter national monuments. Fishing advocates moved to get in early and persuade the new administration that the U.S. fisheries management system that’s been in place for more than 40 years can handle protecting the Northeast offshore habitat without executive intervention.

“We kind of saw it coming, and we sent letters off to politicians,” said Jim Budi, who owns a swordfish and tuna longline vessel that works out of New Bedford, Mass. “We had great fishing there this year. If it wasn’t for that, we’d be in the red.”

Environmental groups pushed Biden on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, to reinstate the Obama administration’s offshore monument declaration, with its potential to foreclose most fishing at the edge of the continental shelf.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Biden plans review of national monuments, including Northeast Canyons and Seamounts

January 22, 2021 — Recently inaugurated U.S. President Joe Biden announced – just hours after he was sworn in – that he plans to perform a review of the Trump administration’s actions regarding a number of national monuments, including the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument is the first national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, and one of just five marine monuments in the U.S. Located off the east coast, the monument was created in 2016 by U.S. President Barack Obama and encompasses 4,913 square miles of ocean.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

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

President Biden to review Trump’s changes to national monuments

January 20, 2021 — Trump’s decision to downsize the Bears Ears National Monument by 85% on lands considered sacred to Native Americans in southeastern Utah and to shrink Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half earned him applause from Utah’s Republican leaders, who considered the monuments an example of federal government overreach.

Environmental, tribal, paleontological and outdoor recreation organizations have pending lawsuits to restore the full sizes of the monuments, arguing presidents don’t have the legal authority to undo or change monuments created by predecessors.

Pat Gonzales-Rogers, executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said the group has told the Biden transition team the monument should first restored to the size Obama created and later to a larger size tribes originally requested.

The lands are sacred to tribes in the coalition: Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Indian Tribe, he said. The area includes thousands of archaeological sites on red rock lands including cliff dwellings. The Bears Ears buttes that overlook a grassy valley are particularly sacred.

“The Bears Ears is a church and the place of worship for many of our tribes,” Gonzales-Rogers said. “It should be viewed with the same type of gravitas and platform that you would view the Cathedral of Notre Dame.”

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts conservation area comprises about 5,000 square miles east of New England. It contains vulnerable species of marine life such as right whales and fragile deep sea corals. The monument was the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

Read the full White House release here

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Chicago Tribune