Saving Seafood

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

Maine Looking for New Ways to Save Whales From Fishing Gear

June 3, 2020 — Maine is in the final year of funding for a project that seeks to better protect endangered whales in the Gulf of Maine from entanglement in fishing gear.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources is using the project to collect data about vertical line fishing in the gulf, and develop a model to determine the fishing industry’s current use of the lines. The department is also hoping to use the model to predict the conservation benefits of new proposed regulations.

The state is slated to receive more than $200,000 in federal funds for the project this fiscal year, bringing the total federal money it has received to more than $700,000, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement.

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

Enviros Want Salmon Listed on Maine Endangered List

June 2, 2020 — A coalition of Maine conservation groups is calling on the state to add the Atlantic salmon to its list of endangered species.

Maine’s rivers were once full of the salmon, but their population was decimated by overfishing, damming and environmental factors. They return only to a few rivers, and are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The environmental groups, including Downeast Salmon Federation, the Maine chapter of the Native Fish Coalition, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay and several others, sent their request to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife on Monday. They said the salmon belong protected by the Maine Endangered Species Act because “the only viable Atlantic salmon population in the United States is the Gulf of Maine distinct population segment.”

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