Saving Seafood

Justice Department says Trump can cancel national monuments that protect landscapes

June 11, 2025 — Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s administration say he has the authority to abolish national monuments meant to protect historical and archaeological sites across broad landscapes, including two in California created by his predecessor at the request of Native American tribes.

A Justice Department legal opinion released Tuesday disavowed a 1938 determination that monuments created by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act can’t be revoked. The department said presidents can cancel monument designations if protections aren’t warranted.

The finding comes as the Interior Department under Trump weighs changes to monuments across the nation as part of the administration’s push to expand U.S. energy production.

Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said that at Trump’s order, “his Justice Department is attempting to clear a path to erase national monuments.”

Trump in his first term reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah, calling them a “massive land grab.” He also lifted fishing restrictions within a sprawling marine monument off the New England Coast.

Former President Joe Biden reversed the moves and restored the monuments.

The two monuments singled out in the newly released Justice Department opinion were designated by Biden in his final days in office: Chuckwalla National Monument, in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park, and Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, in Northern California.

The Democrat’s declarations for the monuments barred oil and natural gas drilling and mining on the 624,000-acre Chuckwalla site, and the roughly 225,000 acres Sáttítla Highlands site near the California-Oregon border.

Chuckwalla has natural wonders including the Painted Canyon of Mecca Hills and Alligator Rock, and is home to rare species of plants and animals like the desert bighorn sheep and the Chuckwalla lizard. The Sáttítla Highlands include the ancestral homelands of the Pit River Tribe and Modoc Peoples.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

ALASKA: Trump’s cuts to fisheries science have industry and conservation groups sounding the alarm

June 10, 2025 — Alaska’s fishing industry and environmental groups don’t always agree. But this week, they were on the same side — both warning that recent cuts to federal fisheries science could jeopardize Alaska’s oceans.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which helps set fishing rules in federal waters, wraps up its meeting Tuesday in Oregon.

According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials attending the meeting, the Alaska Science Center has lost 51 employees since February — about a quarter of its staff.

“You can’t lose 51 people and not have that impact our ability to provide our products in a meaningful and timely way,” said Bob Foy, who directs NOAA’s science operations in Alaska. “It’s been a challenging process.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

‘Ticking time bomb’: Ocean acidity crosses vital threshold, study finds

June 10, 2025 — The deep oceans have crossed a crucial boundary that threatens their ability to provide the surface with food and oxygen, a new study finds.

Nearly two-thirds of the ocean below 200 meters, or 656 feet, as well as nearly half of that above, have breached “safe” levels of acidity, according to findings published on Monday in Global Change Biology.

The fall in ocean pH is “a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies,” Steve Widdicombe, director of science at the United Kingdom’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), said in a statement.

The study was funded in part by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that has been targeted for steep cuts by the Trump White House, in large part because of its role in investigating climate change.

Some of the biggest changes in deep water are happening off the coast of western North America, home to extensive crab and salmon fisheries, the study found.

Read the full article at The Hill

Federal judge raises issues with states’ lawsuit against Trump offshore wind freeze

June 6, 2025 — More than a dozen states, including Massachusetts, have an uphill battle if they’re to succeed in their legal efforts to lift President Donald Trump’s memorandum against offshore wind development.

Attorneys for the states of Massachusetts and New York appeared on Thursday before federal Judge William G. Young, prepared to argue that he should grant a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s effective freeze of offshore wind permitting. But the hearing didn’t happen, with the judge “collapsing” the injunction motion.

Young said he needed more specificity from the states on the harm they’ve incurred and the alleged legal violations by federal agencies. The case will be heard again next week, but instead, with a hearing on a motion to dismiss it. (The judge is treating the Trump administration’s filing opposing a preliminary injunction as a motion to dismiss the case.)

“I’m not clear again… that I understand what the specific harm is,” Young said, noting he understands there have been economic impacts on “an important industry.” “But in the context of litigation, I need, I think, some more specificity as to what are the specific harms to specific projects in specific states.”

“It would appear both from the record and from the president’s public statements that he’s opposed as a matter of policy to offshore wind farm energy generation. I think that’s indisputable,” Young continued.

In that vein, Young asked whether the requisite licenses would be issued by the federal government following a court ruling, given the administration’s position on wind. Experts interpreted “licensing” to regard permitting and permits.

Timothy Fox, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, said Young’s remarks “strongly suggested that the Trump Administration may prevail.”

“Perhaps most significant,” Fox said by email on Thursday, the judge appeared to declare that ‘the power to license is the power to withhold a license.’”

Young’s points echoed some of those raised by the Trump administration in its May 29 filing opposing the preliminary injunction request.

“Plaintiffs and Intervenor fail to show standing, fail to identify any final agency action on which to base their claims, fail to identify statutory violations on the part of Defendants, disregard the considerable agency discretion and flexibility in the relevant statutory regimes, and otherwise fail to state a claim,” stated the U.S. Department of Justice.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Spanish-owned group part of lawsuit against Trump over U.S. wind energy decision

June 5, 2025 — A new lawsuit filed this week pits a group of fishing businesses and environmental activists against the Trump administration after federal officials reversed course and allowed construction on the Empire Wind offshore project to resume. One of the plaintiffs is owned by a Spanish company.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, opposes the Interior Department’s decision to lift a stop-work order on Equinor’s Empire Wind farm – an offshore project expected to power roughly 500,000 homes by 2027. The administration had paused work in April, citing concerns about environmental impacts and political opposition. However, it reversed course in May.

The plaintiffs include a mix of longtime offshore wind critics: Protect Our Coast New Jersey, Clean Ocean Action, and ACK for Whales. A dozen commercial fishing companies have joined the offshore wind opponents in the lawsuit.

One of the more notable players is Seafreeze Shoreside Inc., a Rhode Island-based seafood company that’s been a fixture in anti-wind coalitions.

Read the full article at The Center Square

Lawmakers and experts question Trump’s plan to make American seafood competitive during hearing

June 5, 2025 — During a Republican-led hearing touting U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on restoring American seafood competitiveness, Democrats and assembled witnesses questioned whether the administration’s actions align with its stated purpose.

“I hope to work with the administration and my colleagues and the majority to achieve that goal, but I don’t see how the administration is going to succeed when it spent the last four months haphazardly cutting the funding and workers that our fisheries rely on,” U.S. Representative Val Hoyle (D-Oregon) said during a House Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee hearing title “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

WPRFMC clarifies impacts of Trump’s decision to reintroduce fishing in Pacific national monument

June 5, 2025 — In April, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order allowing commercial fishing from 50 to 200 nautical miles off the shore within the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.

The national monument was founded as the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in 2009 under President George W. Bush and then expanded in 2016 under President Barack Obama.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Trump administration proposes cutting off funding for Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund

June 4, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating funding for the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund – a program that directs tens of millions of dollars annually toward supporting salmon populations along the West Coast.

The cut is part of the Trump administration’s planned cuts to NOAA; preliminary fiscal year 2026 budget documents outlined a USD 1.3 billion (EUR 1.1 billion) reduction to NOAA’s overall budget. Now, additional budget documentation released by the federal government shows which programs will be impacted by that cut, and salmon recovery efforts are one of the major government programs on the chopping block.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Empire Wind opponents sue Trump administration, Equinor to stop work again

June 3, 2025 — Two weeks after the Trump administration abruptly allowed the Empire Wind project to resume, a coalition of project opponents and commercial fishermen filed a new federal lawsuit June 3 calling for the Department of Interior to block the project again.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum – who imposed a stop-work order on Equinor’s project off New York April 16, then lifted it in mid-May – is named among as a defendant along with Equinor and the government of Norway, as a majority shareholder of the energy company.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Can a bipartisan offshore wind caucus survive Trump?

June 3, 2025 — Republican support for offshore wind has flatlined across the federal government, but Capitol Hill’s only bipartisan caucus dedicated to the energy source is hoping to reverse that trend.

The House Offshore Wind Caucus, created in 2022, was pitched as a way to find bipartisan solutions to address the industry’s challenges and create policies to spur further growth of the renewable energy source.

It’s main leader, Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), said in a recent interview that the caucus will remain active in the coming year to achieve those goals.

Read the full article at E&E News