Saving Seafood

State of Maine: Presidential order lacks public process

June 15, 2020 — President Donald Trump came to Maine last Friday to visit Puritan Medical Products, the Guilford manufacturer producing swabs for COVID-19 tests. The century-old company has a right to be proud. 

They took a traditional Maine resource—wood—and turned it into highly successful products that, like Maine itself, are more practical than glamorous. The humble toothpick, with a touch of mint flavoring added? Genius. And the tongue depressor, familiar to every child when it was time to say “aaah.” 

Puritan added “tipped applicators” to their production line in 1978. They now make 65 different types of swabs, over 12 million per day. They are an accredited medical device manufacturer, perfectly positioned to respond to a critical need in a pandemic.  

Presidential visits are planned in excruciating detail. This one was announced on the Monday prior and on Wednesday, just two days before it took place, the Guilford Town Manager said the town office had not been officially contacted about the visit. Nevertheless, it went off without a hitch.  

If the visit to Puritan was a standard “grip and grin,” albeit without the gripping, the meeting preceding it was anything but. Air Force One landed at the Bangor airport where the president met with Maine fisheries representatives. Typically, the governor hosts a presidential entourage. This time it was the former governor, Paul LePage, who did the honors. Current Governor Janet Mills was not invited.  

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Measuring Atlantic Bluefin Tuna with a Drone

June 10, 2020 — This novel use of drones is a promising way to remotely monitor these hard-to-see fish

Researchers have used an unmanned aerial system (or drone) to gather data on schooling juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Maine.

This pilot study tested whether a drone could keep up with the tuna while also taking photographs that captured physical details of this fast-moving fish. The drone was equipped with a high-resolution digital still image camera. Results show that drones can capture images of both individual fish and schools. They may be a useful tool for remotely monitoring behavior and body conditions of the elusive fish.

Individual fish lengths and widths, and the distance between fish near the sea surface, were measured to less than a centimeter of precision. We used an APH-22, a battery-powered, six-rotor drone. The pilot study was conducted in the Atlantic bluefin tuna’s foraging grounds northeast of Cape Cod in the southern Gulf of Maine.

“Multi-rotor unmanned aerial systems won’t replace shipboard surveys or the reliance on manned aircraft to cover a large area,” said Mike Jech, an acoustics researcher at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and lead author of the study. “They have a limited flight range due to battery power and can only collect data in bursts. Despite some limitations, they will be invaluable for collecting remote high-resolution images that can provide data at the accuracy and precision needed by managers for growth and ecosystem models of Atlantic bluefin tuna.”

Read the full story at Environment Coastal & Offshore

Environmental groups fight rollback of marine monument protections

June 10, 2020 — Environmentalists are vowing they will sue to reinstate fishery closures to a marine national monument 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod that President Donald Trump removed by executive order last Friday at a meeting held in Maine.

 

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was created by President Barack Obama in 2016 using the Antiquities Act of 1906, a process President George W. Bush used to create a national marine monument off Hawaii in 2006, as well as 15 presidents dating back to Theodore Roosevelt. The Antiquities Act was used, proponents said, because it can be put in place more quickly than fisheries regulations that can take years, if not decades, to be implemented. Also, the protections are in theory permanent, whereas other fisheries regulations are often amended.

“We’re taking them to court,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation. “It’s a matter of putting the paperwork together and getting the strongest case possible.”

“It’s very clear that the president can establish these areas, but he has no authority to modify or remove them,” said Gib Brogan, fisheries campaign manager at Oceana.

Similar cases are being fought around two other national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, both in southern Utah. Trump stripped both monuments of federal protections by dramatically reducing them in size in December 2017 to allow for mineral extraction, mining, and off-road use.

Brad Sewell, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s oceans division, said his organization also intends to challenge the Northeast Canyons rollback in court.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Maine Voices: Trump rights a wrong by reopening marine monument to fishing

June 10, 2020 — President Trump used the occasion of a visit to Maine last week to do right by an industry that hasn’t had much good news lately when he reopened to commercial fishing nearly 5,000 square miles of ocean south of New England that President Barack Obama closed in 2016.

Stay tuned. In the process of righting a wrong, Trump’s action, announced at a Bangor roundtable, has once again set hair on fire in the environmental community, tested the limits of presidential power and set the stage for litigation.

Obama created the area, known as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, just a few months before he left office. He portrayed the monument, the only one in the Atlantic, as a hedge against climate change.

Spanning four canyons and three seamounts, the monument is home to cold-water corals, endangered whales and turtles and numerous fish species.

If Trump’s action was controversial, it should be seen as no less so than the process that created the monument. Fishing in U.S. territorial waters is managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is charged with providing productive and sustainable fisheries based on the best available science. NMFS works with regional councils to ensure all stakeholders are heard and that its regulations have “ground truth.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Trump Removing Fishing Restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument

June 8, 2020 — President Donald Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he will be removing fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, opening up 5,000 square miles in the Atlantic Ocean for fishing. The order to designate that area of the Atlantic Ocean as a national monument was signed by former President Barack Obama during his final few months in office.

“We’re opening it up,” said Trump. “Today I’m signing a proclamation to reverse that injustice, to reverse that order from the previous administration. And we are opening the Northeast Canyons and the Seamounts Marine National Monument region to commercial fishing. Is that OK? Is that what you want? That’s an easy one.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

President Trump signs proclamation to end fishing restrictions in marine monument waters

June 8, 2020 — When President Trump landed at Bangor International Airport he was greeted by leaders of Maine’s commercial fishing industry and a familiar face.

The President visiting Maine for the first time since he was elected into office back when Paul LePage was governor – who was there to greet Trump as he made his way off the aircraft.

Inside the hangar, Mainers from the fishing community, members of the President’s administration and Paul LePage bounced around topics including the national marine monument designated by the Obama Administration in 2016.

“I ordered the formation of a trade task force that will identify opportunities to open foreign markets to our seafood exports. We’re going to talk about the European Union. They simply take advantage of us on trade,” said President Trump.

Trump signing a proclamation to reverse the restrictions on fishing in the protected waters.

Read the full story at WABI

Trump Opens Atlantic Marine Monument To Fishing During Maine Roundtable

June 8, 2020 — President Donald Trump signed a proclamation in Bangor on Friday that he says will undo most of the fishing restrictions President Barack Obama ordered for a 5,000-square-mile swath of submerged canyons and mountains off the Atlantic coast that’s prized for its biological diversity. A legal battle is expected.

Obama established the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in 2016. It’s an area 130 miles off Cape Cod, within an much larger underwater formation called Georges Bank that plays a big role in commercial fisheries based in New England.

At the Bangor roundtable with several representatives of Maine and Massachusetts fishing interests — as well as former Republican Gov. Paul LePage — Trump said he would take the “no fishing” sign down from the Monument’s waters.

“And we’re going to send our fishermen out there — you’re going to go fishing out there in areas that you haven’t seen for a long time, I want to just congratulate you,” he said.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Trump to Allow Commercial Fishing in Northeast Canyons Nat’l Monument

June 8, 2020 — On Friday, President Donald Trump announced that his administration will remove fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, drawing praise from fishermens’ groups and criticism from environmentalists.

The reserve was designated by President Barack Obama in late 2016, and it is the first marine national monument in the Atlantic. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the monument contains “fragile and largely pristine deep marine ecosystems and rich biodiversity, including . . . many rare and endemic species, several of which are new to science and are not known to live anywhere else on Earth.”

Recreational fishing was allowed in the reserve, and crab and lobster fishing were permitted until September 2023. Other commercial fishing – or even possessing commercial fishing gear on deck – was not permitted within the 5,000-square-mile region. The Trump administration’s decision has removed all fishing restrictions.

“What reason did [Obama] have for closing 5,000 miles?  That’s a lot of miles. Five thousand square miles is a lot.  He didn’t have a reason, in my opinion,” said Trump at a forum in Bangor on Friday. “For me, I can’t even believe they can do a thing like that. That’s a terrible thing.  That’s a terrible thing.”

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

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