Saving Seafood

Trump to allow commercial fishing in New England marine monument

May 9, 2025 — President Donald Trump on Friday will sign a proclamation restoring commercial fishing access to a marine national monument off New England, according to a White House official.

The move is aligned with the Trump administration’s efforts to cut regulations it believes are burdensome to businesses and economic activity.

The proclamation will reopen the nearly 5,000-square-mile (13,000-square-kilometer) Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which was designated by former President Barack Obama in 2016 to protect species including deep-sea corals, sea turtles and whales.

Trump opened the monument to fishing during his first term in 2020, but that was reversed by former President Joe Biden in 2021.

The decision supports fishing communities, economic activity and jobs, the White House official said.

Read the full story from Reuters

California and 17 other states sue Trump administration over wind energy projects

May 9, 2025 — California and 17 other state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit attempting to stop the Trump administration’s efforts to thwart the development of wind energy projects.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts comes in response to a Jan. 20 executive order by President Donald Trump that issued a temporary withdrawal of all areas on the outer Continental Shelf from offshore wind leasing.

The directive also called for a review of leasing and permitting for all wind energy projects across the country, alleging they “may lead to grave harm” that includes “negative impacts on navigational safety interests, transportation interests, national security interests, commercial interests, and marine mammals.”

The 101-page lawsuit from states led by Democrats says the executive order is unlawful and creates “an existential threat to the wind industry.”

Read the full story at The Mercury News

Trump administration is ending NOAA data service used to monitor sea ice off Alaska

May 8, 2025 — The Trump administration is ending National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration services that monitor Arctic sea ice and snow cover, leading climate scientists said Tuesday.

NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information has decommissioned its snow and ice data products as of Monday, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced.

The data collected by that NOAA office is critical to the daily updates provided by the Colorado-based center, which tracks one of the most obvious effects of climate change: the long-term loss of Arctic sea ice.

It is also critical to the regular sea ice reports produced by Rick Thoman at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, as well as to research done by his UAF colleagues.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Trump Faces Challenge to Offshore Wind Directive

May 8, 2025 — New Jersey is one of nearly two dozen states plus the District of Columbia to sue the federal government over President Donald J. Trump’s executive order halting approvals of wind energy development.

“It is deeply disappointing that the Trump administration is illegally attempting to block our state from developing new sources of power through their across-the-broad freeze on wind energy,” state Attorney General Matthew Platkin said.

With the stroke of his pen, Trump temporarily withdrew offshore wind leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf and implemented a review of the federal government’s leasing and permitting practices for wind energy on Jan. 20, the same day he declared a national energy emergency.

The order went into effect Jan. 21 and will remain in place unless it is repealed. The rights of existing leases in the withdrawn areas are not impacted by the withdrawal, under the memorandum.

Read the full story at The SandPaper

Gulf of Maine may be impacted by Trump’s offshore oil and gas drilling expansion

May 8, 2025 — As part of the Trump’s administration’s effort to expand fossil fuel production in the United States, the Department of the Interior announced recently that it would accelerate the permitting process for a range of energy sources and seek new oil and gas lease sales in offshore waters, including in the Gulf of Maine.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said the permitting changes — which speed up review under the National Environmental Policy and Endangered Species Acts, among others — would cut what is often a multi-year review process down to several weeks.

Environmental groups and Maine lawmakers decried the moves while oil and gas industry representatives celebrated them. Days later, a group of New England Senators, including Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, introduced legislation to ban offshore drilling in waters throughout New England.

“The waters off Maine’s coast provide a healthy ecosystem for our fisheries and are an integral part of our tourism industry, supporting thousands of jobs and generating billions of dollars in revenue each year,” said Collins in a statement. “Offshore drilling along the coast could impact Mainers of all walks of life for generations.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Tariffs could add $500M to cost of Virginia Beach offshore wind farm, Dominion tells investors

May 7, 2025 — Dominion Energy expects to pay more to complete the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project because of the Trump administration’s new taxes on imported goods including monopile foundations and turbine towers.

The $10.8 billion offshore wind farm about 30 miles off the Virginia Beach coast will be the nation’s largest, consisting of 176 turbines that generate about 2.6 gigawatts of electricity, or enough to power up to 660,000 homes.

Dominion CEO Bob Blue told investors last week that if current tariffs continue through construction of the project late next year, the utility would expect about $500 million in added costs.

“Of course, changes to future tariff policy could affect these estimates,” he said. “It’s difficult to fully assess the impact tariffs may have to the project’s final cost, as actual costs incurred are dependent upon the tariff requirements and rates, if any, at the time of delivery of the specific component.”

Read the full story at the Virginia Mercury

Interior Department to Fast-Track Oil, Gas and Mining Projects

May 6, 2025 — The Interior Department said late Wednesday that it would fast-track approvals for projects involving coal, gas, oil and minerals on public lands, arguing that President Trump’s declaration of an energy emergency allowed it to radically reduce lengthy reviews required by the nation’s bedrock environmental laws.

Environmental reviews that typically take a year to complete would be finished in 14 days, administration officials said. More complicated environmental impact statements that usually take two years would be completed in 28 days, they said.

“The United States cannot afford to wait,” Doug Burgum, the Interior secretary, said in a statement.

The shortcuts would apply to projects that increase the production of crude oil, natural gas, critical minerals, uranium, lease condensates, coal, biofuels, geothermal energy, kinetic hydropower and refined petroleum products, according to the department.

Read the full story at The New York Times

States sue Trump administration for blocking the development of wind energy

May 6, 2025 — A coalition of state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday against President Donald Trump’s attempt to stop the development of wind energy.

Attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C., are challenging an executive order Trump signed during his first day in office, pausing approvals, permits and loans for all wind energy projects both onshore and offshore. They say Trump doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally shut down the permitting process, and he’s jeopardizing development of a power source critical to the states’ economic vitality, energy mix, public health and climate goals.

They’re asking a federal judge to declare the order unlawful and stop federal agencies from implementing it.

“This arbitrary and unnecessary directive threatens the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments, and it is delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the coalition, said in a statement.

Read the full story at AP News

Trump administration officially proposes drastic cuts to NOAA, targeting climate-related research

May 5, 2025 — The White House has released its official “skinny budget” for fiscal year 2026, which outlines drastic cuts to NOAA and targets climate-related programs.

“For decades, the biggest complaint about the federal budget was wasteful spending and bloated bureaucracy,” U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said in a statement. “But, over the last four years, government spending aggressively turned against the American people and trillions of our dollars were used to fund cultural Marxism, radical Green New Scams, and even our own invasion. No agency was spared in the Left’s taxpayer-funded cultural revolution.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

More than a quarter of staff gone at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center

May 5, 2025 — The Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC)—a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with an office in Woods Hole—has seen a 27 percent reduction in staff since President Donald Trump took office, according to current and former NOAA employees, who asked not to be named in this story for fear of retaliation.

In addition to the lab in Woods Hole, the NEFSC has four other offices—one each in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maine. It is not yet clear how many of the departed staff worked in Woods Hole, which is described on the NOAA Fisheries website as the “focal point for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s operations, management and information needs.”

The 27 percent reduction in staff includes people who took early retirement or voluntary separations. It also includes individuals who were let go as “probationary” employees—new hires or employees who have moved into a new role.

NOAA declined to comment, citing a policy at the agency not to discuss internal personnel matters. This reduction in staff comes as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal spending.

Read the full story at Maine Public