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

Monumental Issues

February 13, 2025 — One of the requests made by the authors of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the Trump administration, is that President Donald Trump again shrink national monuments.

Whether he will remains to be seen, though the most likely candidates are Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, from which Trump sheared a combined 2 million acres during his first term, only to watch President Joe Biden restore the original boundaries as set by Presidents Barack Obama (Bears Ears) and Bill Clinton (Grand Staircase).

The authors of Project 2025 don’t want him to stop there. Indeed, the section on the Interior Department, written by William Perry Pendley, who was a longtime president of the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation that worked to see federal lands turned over to states, maintains that Trump didn’t go far enough during his first term.

“Although President Trump courageously ordered a review of national monument designations, the result of that review was insufficient in that only two national monuments in one state (Utah) were adjusted,” wrote Pendley. “Monuments in Maine [Kathadin Woods and Waters] and Oregon [Cascade-Siskiyou], for example, should have been adjusted downward given the finding of Secretary Ryan Zinke’s review that they were improperly designated.”

The 5,000-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument encompasses a biologically robust area located about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod National Seashore. It became the Atlantic Ocean’s first national monument when Obama established it. President Trump during his first term removed restrictions that kept commercial fishermen out of the monument.

Read the full article at National Park Traveler 

Biden protects Delaware’s coast from offshore drilling

January 14, 2025 — With the clock ticking down on his time in office, President Joe Biden announced Jan. 6 that he has permanently protected more than 625 million acres of the U.S. ocean from offshore drilling.

Delaware’s coastline falls within this ban. In all, the area includes the entire eastern U.S. Atlantic coast and the eastern Gulf of Mexico; the Pacific coast along California, Oregon, and Washington; and the remaining portion of the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area in Alaska.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” said Biden in a statement announcing the ban.

This isn’t the first action to protect Delaware’s coastline from offshore drilling. Back in 2018, state legislators passed two bills prohibiting oil and natural gas drilling in state waters.

Read the full article at the Cape Gazette

Biden announces new protections against offshore drilling

January 8, 2025 — U.S. President Joe Biden has implemented new protections limiting offshore oil and gas drilling operations across broad swaths of the U.S. coast, preserving 635 million acres of ocean from future oil or gas leasing.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: Drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement. “It is not worth the risks. As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Biden signs FISHES Act to improve fisheries disaster relief

January 7, 2025 — In one of his last acts as president, U.S. President Joe Biden has signed legislation designed to speed up the delivery of fishery disaster relief funding to fishers.

The legislation was spurred on by growing frustration among lawmakers over how long it takes the U.S. Department of Commerce to certify fishery disasters took place and approve state and Tribal spending plans to distribute federally funded financial relief to affected fishers and affiliated businesses. Often, years will pass between the initial request for a fishery disaster determination and checks being delivered to struggling fishers.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Relief comes for Alaskan fisheries via FISHES Act

January 7, 2025 — The FISHES Act, which expedites the distribution of federal disaster relief following fishery disaster declarations, was signed into law over the weekend by President Joe Biden.

The FISHES (Fishery Improvement to Streamline Untimely Regulatory Hurdles Post Emergency Situation) Act establishes procedures for reviewing spending plans submitted to the Department of Commerce by those seeking fishery resource disaster assistance funding.

Previously, the Office of Management and Budget had a 15-step process when overseeing a fishery disaster.

“Rapidly changing ocean conditions in recent years has led to significantly more federal fishery disaster declarations in Alaska, and it takes years to receive disaster monies,” Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Executive Director Rebecca Skinner said in a statement.

Read the full article at Alaska News Service

Biden issues ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in most federal waters. Trump vows to undo it

January 6, 2025 — President Joe Biden is moving to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, a last-minute effort to block possible action by the incoming Trump administration to expand offshore drilling.

Biden, whose term expires in two weeks, said he is using authority under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from future oil and natural gas leasing.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement Monday.

“As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren,” he said.

Biden’s orders would not affect large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico, where most U.S. offshore drilling occurs, but it would protect coastlines along California, Florida and other states from future drilling.

Read the full story from the AP

Biden Expected to Permanently Ban Oil Drilling in Some Federal Waters

January 3, 2024 — President Biden is expected to permanently ban new oil and gas drilling in large sections of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as other federal waters, in a way that could be difficult for the Trump administration to unwind, according to two people familiar with the plans.

Mr. Biden intends to invoke an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, that would give him wide latitude to withdraw federal waters from future oil and gas leasing, said the people. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the policy publicly.

The ban would be a significant victory for environmental advocates who have long argued that new drilling is inconsistent with the need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions from burning oil and gas that are dangerously warming the planet. The year that just ended was the hottest in recorded history.

The move would also cement Mr. Biden’s legacy on climate change as he prepares to leave the White House after a single term. President-elect Donald J. Trump has pledged to reverse virtually every law and regulation aimed at curbing carbon dioxide emissions, and to make it easier for companies to produce and burn more coal, oil and gas.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Senate approves fisheries, critical mineral bills

December 23, 2024 — The Senate on Friday approved legislation to address fishery disasters and critical mineral supply issues. Both bills will go to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.

The chamber passed by unanimous consent H.R. 5103, the “Fishery Improvement to Streamline untimely regulatory Hurdles post Emergency Situation (FISHES) Act,” from Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.).

The bill, which already cleared the House, would speed up the process of doling out fishery disaster relief. It would set deadlines for the Office of Management and Budget to respond to NOAA fishery funding requests.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Lame-duck Biden flooded with monumental requests

December 17, 2024 — President Joe Biden is facing a wave of campaigns to create new national monuments in his final weeks in office, but people both inside and outside the administration expect the outgoing president to select just a handful of key sites that have already been thoroughly vetted.

During his sole term in office, Biden has repeatedly used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate new national monuments, ranging from preserving sweeping natural landscapes to sites important to Native Americans to those that memorialize Black history in this country.

Earlier this week, he declared his seventh new national monument, recognizing the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, and acknowledging the government’s role in attempting to eradicate tribal culture through a boarding school system run by the Interior Department.

Read the full article at E&E News