Saving Seafood

Trump opens sea monument to commercial fishing

June 8, 2020 — We here at FishOn get most of our news from the man with cleft stick that visits our village, barring the monsoon, on a semi-regular basis. It’s a bit cumbersome, but that’s the price you pay for enlightenment. At least he doesn’t do a podcast.

That’s how we learned that President Donald Trump traveled up to our neck of the woods — well, Maine — last Friday and held a roundtable discussion with members of the Pine State’s seafood industry. Though, according to our crack FishEye investigative team onsite, the tables were actually horizontal. We plan a 10-part series.

Trump, as you might have heard, signed a proclamation re-opening the 5,000 square-mile Northeast Canyon and Seamounts — which lie about 130 miles of Cape Cod — to commercial fishing. With one sweep of the pen, Trump heartened commercial fishing interests in Maine and beyond and enraged conservation and environmental groups throughout the solar system.

The marine national monument has been a wren’s nest of contention from the day in 2016 that President Barack Obama signed it into existence. Obama used the 1906 Antiquities Act —not exactly the bedrock legislation for national fisheries management — to create the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Food banks pushed to the brink

June 8, 2020 — The coronavirus pandemic and economic slowdown has left at least 20 million Americans out of work, sending demand skyrocketing at food banks and other feeding programs around the U.S. The Agriculture Department is already spending $3 billion on surplus meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables to help nonprofits meet their needs, but anti-hunger advocates say there’s another way Washington should help: Increase food stamp benefits so hungry families can buy more groceries instead of leaning on food banks.

The president on Friday threatened once again to slap duties on automobiles from the EU because of the bloc’s tariffs on U.S. lobsters. Trump said he’s putting Peter Navarro in charge of resolving the dispute, dubbing his hawkish trade adviser the “lobster king,” reports Pro Trade’s Doug Palmer.

The EU currently has an 8 percent tariff on live Maine lobsters, plus duties ranging from 16 percent to 20 percent on processed lobster. Meanwhile, Canada can export lobsters to Europe without paying any duties, leaving U.S. producers at a disadvantage.

“That’s an easy one to handle,” Trump said at a roundtable with commercial fishermen in Bangor, Maine, on Friday. But his administration has negotiated with Brussels for two years without reaching an agreement, and in November, the EU rejected a U.S. proposal for a mini-trade deal covering lobsters and chemicals.

China, another large market for lobster exports, also imposed retaliatory duties on American lobsters after Trump slapped tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods. Trump on Friday directed Navarro to put pressure on Beijing by slapping even more tariffs on some Chinese goods.

Trump opened up a national marine monument in the North Atlantic to commercial fishing, undoing ecological protections implemented by the Obama administration. Under the proclamation, the New England Fishery Management Council will determine the amount of fishing allowed in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, some 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Mass. Pro Energy’s Ben Lefebvre and Eric Wolff have the details.

Read the full story at Politico

Trump opens marine monument to fishermen, promises trade relief

June 8, 2020 — President Trump announced he was opening a national marine monument off the coast of southern New England to commercial fishing during a visit to Maine on Friday, an administrative rebuke of government regulation that holds big political appeal for the Maine fishing industry but little practical value.

At an hourlong roundtable with Maine fishermen in Bangor, Trump also vowed to use retaliatory tariffs to help the Maine lobster industry get better access to foreign markets, putting former Maine Gov. Paul LePage in charge of a task force on the matter, and vowed to increase the amount of federal funding to help Maine’s fishing industry survive the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You have never been treated properly, at least not for a long time,” Trump told the group. “Today I am signing a proclamation to reverse that injustice. … We are reopening the Northeast Canyon and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. Is that OK? Is that what you want? That’s an easy one.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Reverse course: Trump declaration makes way for commercial fishing in Atlantic monument

June 8, 2020 — At a fisheries roundtable discussion in Bangor, Maine, on June 5, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation to allow commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The change falls short of eliminating the Obama-era designation and will instead be “taking down a no-fishing sign,” according to David Bernhardt, Secretary of the Interior, who was at the table for the discussion.

“Under the last administration, commercial fishermen and Maine lobstermen were suddenly informed that nearly 5,000 square miles of ocean off the coast of New England would be closed to commercial fishing without justification,” Trump said in his opening remarks. “So we’re opening it today. We’re undoing [Obama’s] executive order.”

Trump’s opening remarks included reference to his executive order that seeks to review federal fisheries laws, create a seafood trade task force and clamp down on illegally harvested seafood. But retaliating against European Union tariffs became a recurring theme for the president in the discussion.

“I heard that Canada doesn’t have to pay a tariff going into Europe, but you do?” Trump asked the panel.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Trump vows to escalate lobster trade war with EU, Canada, China

June 8, 2020 — At a fisheries roundtable discussion in Bangor, Maine, U.S.A., on 5 June, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a proclamation to allow commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The change falls short of eliminating the monument entirely, and does not lift a prohibition on gas and oil drilling in the area, but rather is “taking down a no-fishing sign,” according to Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, who was at the table for the discussion.

President Barack Obama created the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument in 2016. President George W. Bush was the first to apply the act to the seafloor, when he declared the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii in 2006.

Read the full story from National Fisherman at Seafood Source

Trump lifts commercial fishing ban in protected areas

June 8, 2020 — In an announcement cheered by the fishing industry and described as an “attack on our ocean” by opponents, President Donald Trump on Friday reversed a four-year-old decision by President Barack Obama that had abruptly ended commercial fishing within a 5,000-square mile area of the Atlantic Ocean deemed a national marine monument.

Trump’s new proclamation will not alter the boundaries of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which is the size of Connecticut, but amends the commercial fishing restrictions on its use that Obama had put in place using powers granted under the Antiquities Act of 1906. At the time, the Obama administration said the protections would “improve ocean resilience in the face of climate change, and help to sustain the ocean ecosystems and fishing economies in these regions for the long run.”

The president announced his decision during a visit to Bangor, Maine on Friday afternoon, where he was joined by former Gov. Paul LePage and fishing industry interests. Obama’s 2016 decision was “deeply unfair to Maine lobstermen” and “cost America’s fishermen millions of dollars,” Trump said.

“We’re opening it today,” the president said, according to a White House transcript. “We’re undoing his executive order.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

President Trump Opens National Monument to Commercial Fishing

June 6, 2020 — President Donald Trump on Friday opened 5,000 square miles of ocean off the New England coast to commercial fishing, reversing an order signed by President Barack Obama shortly before he left office.

“I’m a believer in conservation, but they’ve gone crazy,” he said before an audience of Maine lobstermen, fishermen and crabbers.

The Obama order that declared the area a national monument “was deeply unfair to Maine lobstermen, threatened to cripple family businesses and cost American fishermen millions of dollars,” Trump said. He separately vowed to fight foreign tariffs that hurt the Maine seafood industry.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which is larger than the state of Connecticut, is one of just five marine monuments and the first in the Atlantic Ocean. It is home to endangered right whales, sea turtles, puffins and rare deep-sea cold-water corals.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Trump Opens New England Marine Monument to Commercial Fishing

June 6, 2020 — President Donald Trump said he would allow commercial fishing in protected waters off New England, doing away with Obama-era safeguards meant to conserve deep-sea corals and endangered whales.

The action comes after years of lobbying and legal challenges by commercial fishermen eager to plumb the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument established by former President Barack Obama in September 2016.

Trump announced the news at a meeting Friday in Bangor, Maine, with some of those same fishing industry leaders, former Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

Trump said Obama did “a tremendous disservice” to Maine by making the monument off-limits to commercial fishing.

“They’ve regulated you out of business,” Trump told fishermen at the event.

Bernhardt said the boundaries of the monument won’t change under the proclamation, which Trump signed Friday.

Read the full story at Bloomberg Law

Trump opens Atlantic sanctuary to commercial fishing

June 6, 2020 — President Donald Trump announced on Friday he will open up a 5,000 square mile conservation area in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England to commercial fishing.

The move allows commercial fishing to resume in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a sanctuary created in 2016 during the Obama administration. It also cancels a planned phase out of red crab and lobster fisheries in the area.

Trump signed a proclamation on opening the area during a visit to Maine in his latest move to appeal to working class and blue collar workers in an election year by touting regulatory rollbacks that he says can restore jobs and economic activity.

“We’re cutting regulations from highways and roadways to fish,” Trump said at a roundtable event in Bangor.

Trump, who won in Maine’s rural 2nd Congressional district in the 2016 election, also announced he would create a task force to identify international markets for U.S. seafood.

Read the full story at Reuters

In another step to reduce environmental regulations, Trump allows commercial fishing in nation’s only marine monument in the Atlantic

June 6, 2020 — Overturning one of his predecessor’s more far-reaching environmental measures in New England, President Trump on Friday signed a proclamation allowing commercial fishing in nearly 5,000 square miles of protected waters off Cape Cod.

The decision undermines one of the main goals of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a controversial preserve about 130 miles southeast of Provincetown that President Barack Obama designated in his final year in office. It was the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Connecticut-sized area features a range of unique coral, rare fish, endangered marine mammals, and sea turtles. It contains three underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon and four underwater mountains.

Fishing groups had lobbied for the change, saying the restrictions had cost the industry millions.

“This action was deeply unfair to Maine lobstermen,” Trump said shortly before signing the proclamation during a meeting with commercial fishermen in Maine. “You’ve been treated very badly. They’ve regulated you out of business.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe