Saving Seafood

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

MAINE: This Atlantic salmon has returned to the Penobscot more than once. Here’s why it’s special.

June 4, 2020 — Atlantic salmon are returning to the Penobscot River at a steady pace thus far. Fisheries staffers from the Maine Department of Marine Resources said the 176 salmon that have been counted thus far are the fifth most to have reached the counting facility by May 29 in the 42 years that salmon have been counted on the river.

Among those fish was a rarity: A male that was making a return trip to the river to spawn.

Jason Valliere, a fisheries resource scientist for the DMR’s Division of Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat, said not many salmon are able to head to the open ocean twice and return to the Penobscot successfully, and called the fish “extra special.”

“We previously captured this fish on June 10, 2018, when we tagged him and sent him to Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery [in Orland] as a brood fish to support the smolt stocking program, a program that he is a member of. He was stocked out as a smolt in 2016,” Valliere said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Trump to hold roundtable on commercial fishing while in Maine

June 4, 2020 — President Donald Trump will hold a roundtable discussion with parties involved in the commercial fishing industry during his visit to Maine on Friday, according to a White House official.

The president is slated to come to the Pine Tree State to visit the Puritan Medical Products facility in Guilford, which manufactures medical swabs used in coronavirus testing. The Guilford company is one of the two largest swab manufacturers in the world and is opening a new swab manufacturing facility in Pittsfield this summer to meet the surging demand for swabs.

The company is using $75.5 million in federal funds under the Defense Production Act to open that facility.

The president is expected to discuss regulations and how to expand economic opportunities for the commercial fishing industry, according to the official.

Details of when exactly the visit will take place have not been disclosed.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News