Saving Seafood

Who will lead NOAA under President Trump?

January 18, 2017 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent organization of the National Weather Service, will introduce new leadership when President-elect Donald Trump assumes office.

The agency is at a crossroads and faces many important challenges in the coming years. How these challenges are addressed will help define the next generation of weather and climate forecasts and observations, and also have key implications for the health of our oceans.

In recent weeks, I have spoken to numerous leaders in the weather and climate community, and the three names mentioned repeatedly as candidates to head NOAA are:

  • Scott Rayder, senior adviser for development and partnerships at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
  • Barry Myers, chief executive of AccuWeather in State College, Pa.
  • Jonathan White, president and chief executive of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership

Read the full story at the Washington Post

GOP aims to change Endangered Species Act

January 17, 2017 — BILLINGS, Mont. — In control of Congress and soon the White House, Republicans are readying plans to roll back the influence of the Endangered Species Act, one of the government’s most powerful conservation tools, after decades of complaints that it hinders drilling, logging and other activities.

Over the past eight years, GOP lawmakers sponsored dozens of measures aimed at curtailing the landmark law or putting species such as gray wolves and sage grouse out of its reach. Almost all were blocked by Democrats and the White House or lawsuits from environmentalists.

Now, with the ascension of President-elect Donald Trump, Republicans see an opportunity to advance broad changes to a law they contend has been exploited by wildlife advocates to block economic development.

“It has never been used for the rehabilitation of species. It’s been used for control of the land,” said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop. “We’ve missed the entire purpose of the Endangered Species Act. It has been hijacked.”

Bishop said he “would love to invalidate” the law and would need other lawmakers’ cooperation.

The 1973 act was ushered though Congress nearly unanimously, in part to stave off extinction of the national symbol, the bald eagle. Eagle populations have since rebounded, and the birds were taken off the threatened and endangered list in 2007.

In the eagles’ place, another emblematic species — the wolf — has emerged as a prime example of what critics say is wrong with the current law: seemingly endless litigation that offers federal protection for species long after government biologists conclude that they have recovered.

Wolf attacks on livestock have provoked hostility against the law, which keeps the animals off-limits to hunting in most states. Other species have attracted similar ire — Canada lynx for halting logging projects, the lesser prairie chicken for impeding oil and gas development and salmon for blocking efforts to reallocate water in California.

Reforms proposed by Republicans include placing limits on lawsuits that have been used to maintain protections for some species and force decisions on others, as well as adopting a cap on how many species can be protected and giving states a greater say in the process.

Wildlife advocates are bracing for changes that could make it harder to add species to the protected list and to usher them through to recovery. Dozens are due for decisions this year, including the Pacific walrus and the North American wolverine, two victims of potential habitat loss due to climate change.

“Any species that gets in the way of a congressional initiative or some kind of development will be clearly at risk,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife and a former Fish and Wildlife Service director under President Bill Clinton. “The political lineup is as unfavorable to the Endangered Species Act as I can remember.”

More than 1,600 plants and animals in the U.S. are now shielded by the law. Hundreds more are under consideration for protections. Republicans complain that fewer than 70 have recovered and had protections lifted.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Post Register 

Despite recent tweaks, New England fishermen want more changes in law

January 13, 2017 — Despite tweaks to fishing guidelines in 2016 aimed at increasing regulatory flexibility, some New England groundfishermen and recreational fishermen still support a move to amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act, sources told Undercurrent News.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA’s) recently made changes to a guideline known National Standard One (NS1), but there will still likely be a push from east coast fishermen to amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act as Republican president-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The effort intends to bring more “flexibility” to fishery management, sources told Undercurrent News. 

In October of 2016 NOAA made changes to NS1, which aims to prevent overfishing while achieving the optimum yield from each fishery.

Changes were first proposed in January 2015, and the final rule passed in October 2016 giving regional councils more latitude to set catch limits, a change that was opposed by environmental groups.

Call for flexibility 

Fishermen, particularly on the US east coast, have been critical for several years of what they say are rigid timelines that give regulators ten years to rebuild stocks deemed overfished.

Some sources told Undercurrent that the lack of flexibility sometimes forces regulators to severely — and some say, unnecessarily — cut quotas when fisheries are nearing the 10-year mark. If a fishery has shown improvement and is nearing its goal, they claim, it makes no difference in the long run whether they reach that goal in the allotted ten years or sooner.

“I think that it’s possible that those new guidelines acted as a relief valve for that pressure. I don’t know that you’re going to get as much pressure to create flexibility in the act that you would get two years ago,” Shannon Carroll of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council told Undercurrent.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Red snapper scarcity prompts push to change US fishing laws

January 13, 2017 — Proposed changes to the main US fishing law could alter the way scarce red snapper is regulated, even as a new advisory panel aimed at alleviating long-standing tension between recreational and commercial fishermen prepares its first report.

The incoming administration of Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled congress may make it easier for proponents to achieve changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the law that governs all fishing regulation in the US federal waters, sources have told Undercurrent News.

Some of the most vocal proponents of changes to the current law and their critics are users of the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery, which was once overfished but has recovered amid strict regulation.

With recovery, however, has come controversy, particularly among recreational red snapper fishermen who have seen the number of days they are allowed to fish in federal waters dwindle even as the number and quality of fish in the water improve.

In response, the five gulf states have set their own recreational fishing seasons in near-shore state waters. Keeping this in mind, federal officials have responded by drastically cutting the number of days red snapper fisherman can fish in federal waters. Multiple lawsuits followed.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Trump’s rise may bring big changes to main US fishing law

January 12, 2017 — Previously unsuccessful efforts to reform the US’s main federal fishing law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, are positioned to move ahead under a Donald Trump administration.

New efforts to amend the US Magnuson-Stevens Act are expected from the new Congress, leaving some in industry concerned with any move away from a law judged by many to have worked reasonably well for four decades.

Some in industry have told Undercurrent News that they fear pressures to add more “flexibility” could allow political considerations to undermine science-driven decision-making currently enshrined in the bill, which forms the basis for most federal fishing regulation in US waters.

“Right now you might be looking at potential for a whole lot of changes and revisions,” said an Alaska-based source who wished to remain unnamed. “I would say there should be some anxiety about how far you go giving people flexibility that moves outside the scientific realm.”

But how drastically Magnuson Stevens might change, if at all, remains to be seen, he added.

HR 1335

One such effort, a bill known as HR 1335 sponsored by Alaskan Representative Don Young, faced a veto threat from president Barack Obama, who will be replaced by Trump on Jan. 20.

One of the bill’s central provisions would have reformed Magnuson-Stevens’s mandatory 10-year stock rebuilding timeline, incorporating additional flexibility. Instead of formally defining all stocks in decline as “overfished”, Young’s amendment would allow the term “depleted” when the reason for a stock’s decline is due to depredation or other non-fishing factors.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: Barack Obama’s Midnight Regulation Express

December 23, 2016 — The technical definition of a midnight regulation is one issued between Election Day and the inauguration of a new president. The practice is bipartisan. George W. Bush, despite having promised not to do so, pushed through a fair number of rules in his final months. But Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more aggressive, and Mr. Obama is making them look like pikers.

Mr. Obama has devoted his last year to ramming through controversial and far-reaching rules. Whether it was born of a desire to lay groundwork for a Clinton presidency, or as a guard against a Trump White House, the motive makes no difference. According to a Politico story of nearly a year ago, the administration had some 4,000 regulations in the works for Mr. Obama’s last year. They included smaller rules on workplace hazards, gun sellers, nutrition labels and energy efficiency, as well as giant regulations (costing billions) on retirement advice and overtime pay.

Since the election Mr. Obama has broken with all precedent by issuing rules that would be astonishing at any moment and are downright obnoxious at this point. This past week we learned of several sweeping new rules from the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, including regs on methane on public lands (cost: $2.4 billion); a new anti-coal rule related to streams ($1.2 billion) and renewable fuel standards ($1.5 billion).

This follows Mr. Obama’s extraordinary announcement that he will invoke a dusty old law to place nearly all of the Arctic Ocean, and much of the Atlantic Ocean, off limits to oil or gas drilling. This follows his highly politicized move to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. And it comes amid reports the administration is rushing to implement last-minute rules on commodities speculation, immigrant workers and for-profit colleges—among others.

Any action that is rushed is likely to be shoddy, especially if it’s from the federal government. The point is for Mr. Obama to have his way and to swamp the Trump administration with a dizzying array of new rules to have to undo. That diverts manpower from bigger and better priorities.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal 

Flounder controls set to tighten, despite South Jersey pleas

December 19th, 2016 — A federal regulatory council voted this week in favor of drastically cutting next summer’s flounder harvest, despite strong protest from South Jersey fishermen and politicians.

No final state bag or size limits were decided at the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council meetings in Baltimore, but the organization did approve a 40 percent reduction in the coast-wide summer flounder catch for 2017.

The number is subject to change pending data still coming in from this season’s catch, but fishermen targeting fluke will likely face much stricter controls on the fish they can keep next summer.

“The stock is currently in a state of overfishing,” said Kiley Dancy, a fishery management specialist at the council. “It’s not looking great right now.”

Local government leaders and fishing-related business owners fear the new regulations could hurt South Jersey’s economy.

“Basically, I came out of there understanding that they want to shut down fishing,” said Robin Scott, owner of Ray Scott’s Dock in Margate, who attended the meetings.

Jim Donofrio, executive director of the New Gretna-based Recreational Fishing Alliance, has even vowed to appeal the decision by asking President-elect Donald J. Trump’s incoming administration to strike down the restrictions.

Bob Martin, the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said he was “greatly disappointed” by the decision to tighten controls on flounder.

“In effect, these actions will result in a moratorium on one of our most important recreational fish species,” Martin said in a statement Thursday.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City 

Donald Trump and the Overinflated Presidency

December 19th, 2016 — In an interview in early December, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that President-elect Donald Trump is committed to respecting the constitutional prerogatives of Congress. “We’ve talked about…the separation of powers,” he told “60 Minutes.” “He feels very strongly, actually, that under President Obama’s watch, he stripped a lot of power away from the Constitution, away from the legislative branch of government, and we want to reset the balance of power so that [the] people and the Constitution are rightfully restored.”

If history is any guide, Mr. Ryan’s optimism is misplaced.

During the election of 1912, the Progressive candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, articulated a populist defense of virtually unchecked executive power, declaring that the president is a “steward of the people” who can do anything that the Constitution does not explicitly forbid. Roosevelt’s rival, the Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, defended a far more constrained view of executive power, holding that the president could only do what the Constitution explicitly authorized.

Ever since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Republican and Democratic presidents have embraced Theodore Roosevelt’s view, asserting ever more expansive visions of the president’s ability to do whatever he likes without congressional approval. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama aggressively deployed executive power to circumvent Congress, and their partisans accepted it. During his own campaign, Mr. Trump declared, “I am your voice” and “I alone can fix it.” This is not the rhetoric of a president who intends to defer to the legislative branch.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

Push for 35-mile-long canyon off Virginia coast to become marine sanctuary is suddenly put on hold

December 19, 2016 — For more than a year, the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center built a case for naming a vast canyon in the Atlantic the next national marine sanctuary. There were dozens of meetings held, hundreds of letters written and thousands of signatures gathered from supporters on a petition.

Suddenly and quietly last month, however, an aquarium task force that had been pushing to make the Norfolk Canyon a sanctuary put everything on hold indefinitely.

To make a long story short, what happened was Donald Trump.

The Republican presidential candidate was elected, and the chances for a lot of conservation initiatives suddenly looked much iffier.

“We’re not really sure where this new administration is going to go with environmental protection,” said Mark Swingle, the Virginia Beach aquarium’s director of research and conservation. “The timing just doesn’t look right now. So we just decided to take a pause here to see what’s going to happen.”

Trump has said he favors oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic – something that would be prohibited in and around the 35-mile-long canyon if it were declared a sanctuary. He also has promised to roll back government regulations, particularly those of environmental agencies.

In general, he’s positioned himself to be a president whose administration will be much harder to persuade on environmental initiatives than that of President Barack Obama.

That could make it tougher to build a consensus for widening the government’s protective reach, whether it’s on land or 70 miles out in the Atlantic, where the Norfolk Canyon begins.

“We really did not want to push through this process right now with the uncertainty on whether we’d have the broad type of support we wanted,” Swingle said.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Ocean advocates hope Trump takes climate change seriously

December 9, 2016 — LONG BRANCH, N.J. — For Tom Fote, of Toms River, the decline of the lobster industry in New Jersey is proof that ocean warming is having big environmental and economic effects.

“I manage lobsters, and we saw what happened in the last 20 years. We had a huge population of lobster that grew in the Mid-Atlantic. Now it’s starting to collapse,” said Fote, who is one of three New Jersey commissioners on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

He told panelists at the 12th Annual Future of the Ocean Symposium, focused on priorities for the Trump administration and Congress at Monmouth University on Wednesday, that the water off New Jersey has become too warm for lobsters.

Fishermen need help dealing with the effects of climate change on their industry, he said.

Panelists at the symposium included former New Jersey Governor and federal Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and Donald E. Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge, Md.

“If I were to say one thing to the incoming administration and to the president-elect, it’s, ‘Listen to your daughter.’ Ivanka believes in climate change,” said Whitman of Donald Trump’s daughter and adviser. “It has real everyday implications to our lives, and to national safety. It is a national security issue.”

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City