Saving Seafood

Fight Over New England Marine Monument Continues

November 27, 2017 — On April 26, President Donald Trump ordered a review of two dozen national monuments created or expanded since 1996, which includes the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts that was created in the last days of the Obama administration. The monument, the first of its kind in the Atlantic Ocean, bans fishing, and oil, gas and mineral exploration within its boundaries.

In September, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended to Trump that the monument, located about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, be opened to commercial fishing. Zinke’s memo stated that instead of prohibiting commercial fishing, the government should allow it in the area under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which is the primary law governing the United States’ marine fisheries and meant to prevent overfishing and guarantee a safe source of seafood.

Conservationists opposed Zinke’s recommendation, while fishing groups supported it.

“They act like this area is all pristine and never touched,” said Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association President Arthur “Sooky” Sawyer of the current protections. “Lobstermen have been fishing in those areas for the last 50-plus years with no negative effect on the marine species.”

The association is one of a handful of commercial fishing groups in an ongoing lawsuit that claims the Antiquities Act of 1906 only allows the president to create or expand monuments on land, not in the marine environment as Obama did.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Maine Lobster, The Most Valuable Species In US Seas, Hit By Trump’s Trade Stance

November 22, 2017 — Maine lobster has become more valuable than any other single species commercially fished in the United States, but trade policies pursued by President Donald Trump could reduce its annual worth for the first time in nearly a decade.

Of the more than $600 million worth of North Atlantic lobster caught in the U.S. in 2016, nearly 90 percent, or $538 million, was harvested and brought ashore in Maine, according to a report on nationwide fisheries released this month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

No other single commercially fished species, even those harvested in multiple states, exceeded $500 million in landings in 2016 or in 2015, according to the report. Maine lobster first earned the most-valuable distinction in 2015, when $501 million worth of American lobster was harvested in the state, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

The value of Maine’s lobster catch has risen every year since 2009. But it’s on track to drop for 2017, in part because of U.S. trade policies that put Maine’s lobster industry at a disadvantage to Canada in selling abroad.

Trump is pursuing efforts to renegotiate trade deals with Mexico, Canada, and South Korea, the fifth-largest importer of Maine lobster. He also pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation free-trade agreement, and has talked tough on trade with Europe.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Should Papahanaumokuakea Be Open For Business?

November 22, 2017 — Republican House members are urging President Trump to “think big” in his ongoing review of 27 national monuments, including opening up the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument not just to commercial fishing — but to oil, gas and mineral exploration.

The Trump administration has been pondering the future of the monuments for months, with a final announcement expected in December.

The proposal to open Papahanaumokuakea to commercial uses came in a Nov. 9 letter from a group of 24 Republicans who are active in the western caucus.

The letter writers want the boundaries of three of the four Pacific reserves —  Pacific Remote Islands, Rose Atoll and Papahanaumokuakea — to be reduced in size and fishing restrictions to be lifted in all of the reserves.

But they only mentioned the possibility of energy extraction for Papahanaumokuakea and the Pacific Remote Islands reserve.

Problem is, there is no oil and gas development potential at Papahanamokuakea. The fight in Hawaii has been over whether to loosen commercial fishing restrictions in the monument

“It’s not applicable,” said William Aila Jr., former chairman of the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources who’s now deputy director of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. “There is no oil or gas at Papahanaumokuakea.”

He said the only possible resource of that kind is something known as “manganese nodules,” metallic minerals found in rock-like formations in deep water on the seabed. But Aila said that it is so costly and difficult to obtain minerals in such remote locations that it is more “futuristic” than a viable economic opportunity.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

 

Trump Administration Dives Into Fish Fight

November 21, 2017 — WASHINGTON — An unprecedented Trump administration decision over the summer that overruled an interstate fishing commission has drawn the ire of critics who worry that keeping a healthy and viable supply of flounder in the Atlantic Ocean is being sacrificed to commercial profits.

While the fight over fish largely has been out of the public eye, it has implications for Maryland and other coastal states. Critics charge the controversy further underscores environmental backsliding by a White House beholden to business interests seeking fewer restrictions on the potentially harmful exploitation of natural resources.

In July, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross overruled a recommendation by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission finding New Jersey out of compliance with proposed 2017 harvest limits of summer flounder along the Atlantic coast.

The reversal marked the first time since passage of the Atlantic Coastal Act in 1993 that the Department of Commerce overruled the commission’s finding of noncompliance, said commission spokeswoman Tina Berger.

“It was a big surprise that the commission’s authority would essentially be disregarded by the Commerce Department,” said Maryland Del. Dana Stein, D-Baltimore, one of the fisheries commissioners. “I was very disappointed upon hearing about this.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News and World Report

NOAA Fisheries head: Trump administration values regulatory flexibility, regional approach

November 21, 2017 — SEATTLE — The head of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) fisheries management arm, Chris Oliver, offered a crowd of Alaska fishermen some insight into the Donald Trump administration’s approach toward fisheries management.

Generally speaking, the assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries said at Seattle’s Pacific Marine Expo on Nov. 17, the administration values flexibility and a regional approach toward regulating commercial fishing of federally managed stocks, an approach that meshes with his own background and views.

“You’re looking at an administration that recognizes that fisheries by nature require a lot of regulation, but I also think they’re looking at councils to take a step back and look at ways to not have a tendency toward micromanagement but to look at the big picture,” Oliver, who took up the job in June, said.

Learning curve

Prior to that, Oliver served as executive director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council during at a 16-year run that also included stints as a fisheries biologist and its deputy director. That council, one of eight regional bodies created under the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), which regulates US commercial and recreational fishing, is arguably the country’s busiest, as it covers Alaska, home to half of all US seafood production.

His experience, he said, left him as a supporter of the council system. His new national-level job — he’s received over 200 briefings to date on the issues facing NOAA Fisheries — affords him a wider perspective.

“It’s been an incredible learning experience and an incredible learning curve. It’s been hectic at times, frenetic at times, and a bit overwhelming at times, but it’s been extremely exciting all the time and never boring,” he said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Why Does Barry Myers Make Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz Nervous?

Barry Myers is Trump’s nominee to head NOAA but the Hawaii senator says he is a “questionable choice.”

October 19, 2017 — WASHINGTON — Hawaii relies heavily on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — in some ways, for its very safety.

NOAA, which oversees the National Weather Service, is the agency that helps predict and anticipate hurricanes, tsunamis and dangerous floods, issuing warnings that help people prepare or get out of the way.

But in this case, it’s President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the agency, a business executive from Pennsylvania, who is causing a political storm.

Barry Myers, chief executive officer of AccuWeather, a private weather and data services company based in State College, Pennyslvania, has been named by Trump to serve as U.S. Commerce Department Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere, a job traditionally held by biologists and climate scientists. This position is usually also called the Administrator of NOAA.

Brian Schatz, Hawaii’s senior senator, has been one of the most vocal critics of the nominee, calling Myers a “questionable choice.”

Myers, the brother of the meteorologist who started the family-owned firm, has a background in business and law. He is definitely not a scientist, as he made clear at a congressional hearing last year.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

In Congress, an effort to curtail national monuments

October 18, 2017 — WASHINGTON — On Oct. 11, the House Natural Resources Committee approved a proposal from its chairman, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, to overhaul the Antiquities Act. Bishop’s “National Monument Creation and Protection Act” would severely constrain the power of the president to designate national monuments. It would limit the size of monuments a president could designate as well as the kinds of places protected.

The 1906 Antiquities Act allows a president to act swiftly to protect federal lands facing imminent threats without legislation getting bogged down in Congress. Many popular areas, including Zion, Bryce and Arches national parks in Bishop’s home state, were first protected this way.

Under Bishop’s legislation, any proposal for a monument larger than 640 acres — one square mile — would be subject to a review process: Areas up to 10,000 acres would be subject to review under the National Environmental Policy Act, while those between 10,000 and 85,000 acres would require approval from state and local government. The bill would allow emergency declarations, but they would expire after a year without Congress approval. It would also codify the president’s power to modify monuments — a power that has been contested in light of the Interior Department’s recent recommendations that President Donald Trump reduce the size of several monuments, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah.

Read the full story at High Country News

Fight over national monuments intensifies

October 16, 2017 — WASHINGTON — Conservatives have opened a new front in the fight over the future of America’s national monuments.

House Republicans are moving forward with a bill to reform a century-old conservation law, raising the stakes in their ongoing effort to curtail the president’s’ ability to set aside wide swaths of federal land as national monuments and protect them from future development.

The new legislation, from Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), comes as the White House mulls reductions to several previously declared monuments. That’s an effort environmentalists consider an affront to the Antiquities Act, a law signed by conservation champion Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

Conservatives, industry groups and Westerners have long pushed for changes to the Antiquities Act, saying presidents of both parties have abused the law, handcuffing local communities who could look to create jobs on public land. President Trump is an ally in that effort.

Environmentalists and most Democrats consider the Antiquities Act a bedrock American conservation law and have vowed to fight any effort to water it down.

The reform effort has its impetus in what conservatives consider an abuse of federal monument designation powers.

Sixteen presidents have used the Antiquities Act to lock up federal land over the last century. But President Obama used it the most often, and protected by far the most acreage — 553.6 million acres of land and sea monuments — inspiring a fresh round of legislative proposals.

Read the full story at The Hill

Rep. Bishop Statement on Appointment of Kathleen Hartnett White as CEQ Chair

October 13, 2017 — WASHINGTON — The following was released by the House Committee on Natural Resources:

Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to chair the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) released the following statement:

“Kathleen Hartnett White is a great choice to help the administration realign priorities at CEQ. Over the past eight years, this executive office has attempted to use the National Environmental Policy Act as a tool to stonewall any project with a federal nexus. I look forward to working with her on a long overdue streamlining of NEPA and other efforts to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the administrative state to people.”

Trump nominates AccuWeather CEO to run NOAA

October 12, 2017 — President Trump has chosen Barry Myers, the CEO of the private weather forecaster AccuWeather, to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In that role, Myers, who has served as the chief executive of AccuWeather since 2007, would head the agency charged with executing a broad portfolio of responsibilities ranging from providing severe storm warnings to managing the nation’s fisheries.

If confirmed by the Senate, the nomination would install a business executive at an agency more recently headed by scientists. Former President Obama’s last NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan, for example, was a geologist and former astronaut.

Ray Ban, the co-chair of the weather industry advocacy group the Weather Coalition, praised Myers’  success in growing AccuWeather’s business, and said he would bring that expertise to the Trump administration.

“[I]n an administration that places high value on business acumen, Barry brings a strong track record in growing one of the most successful companies in the weather industry,” Ban told The Washington Post.

Read the full story at The Hill