Saving Seafood

Justice Department says Trump can undo monument designations

June 18, 2025 — The president has broad legal authority to fully revoke national monument designations, the Justice Department says in a memorandum that could become the basis to withdraw millions of acres from protected status.

The department’s Office of Legal Counsel disavowed a 1938 DOJ determination that presidents can’t revoke a monument designation by a predecessor under the 1906 law known as the Antiquities Act. The May 27 memo, made public last week, noted that Congress gave presidents the power to declare monuments, but that lawmakers never explicitly said he couldn’t decrease the size of one.

President Donald Trump could use the opinion to go farther than he did in his first term, when he reduced the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, and allowed commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the coast of New England.

The Biden administration later restored the two Utah monuments to their original size and restored the original protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument.

The Justice Department said that if the president has the power to remove protections for a portion of a monument, then he could do so for the entirety of the monument.

Read the full article at Roll Call

A monumental win for American Samoa’s tuna industry on the 125th Anniversary of Cession

April 22, 2025 — Governor Pulaalii Nikolao Pula today [April 17, 2025] issued a statement of strong support and appreciation following President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order amending the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to allow commercial fishing between 50 and 200 nautical miles.

The decision restores access to historic U.S. fishing grounds in the central Pacific—areas critical to the continued operation of the American Samoa-based U.S.-flagged purse seine fleet and vital to the economic security of the Territory.

“Today is a monumental day for the people of American Samoa,” said Governor Pula. “On the 125th anniversary of the Deed of Cession, when our forefathers chose to join the American family; President Trump has reaffirmed that partnership by honoring his commitment to support American industry and stand with small, remote communities like ours.”

Read the full story at Samoa News

 

Trump opens Pacific marine monument to fishing

April 21, 2025 — An executive order issued by President Trump opens the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to fishing, asserting that U.S. environmental laws and regulation can adequately protect the islands’ marine ecosystem.

The move would allow fishing on more than 400,000 square miles west of Hawaii, declared a monument in 2009 by former president George W. Bush and expanded in 2014 by former president Barack Obama. It includes an array of reefs and seamounts around Wake, Baker, Howland, and Jarvis islands, the Johnston and Palmyra atolls and Kingman Reef.

U.S. Pacific fishermen and American Samoa officials and businesses have sought to lift restrictions on fishing, critical to the territory’s economy.

“As a result of the prohibitions on commercial fishing, American fishing fleets have lost access to nearly half of the United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone in the Pacific Islands,” according to the order Trump signed Thursday. “This has driven American fishermen to fish further offshore in international waters to compete against poorly regulated and highly subsidized foreign fleets.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

President Trump Returns Fishing to US Fishermen in the Pacific Islands

April 21, 2025 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:

“By doing this, we are giving you back your lives.” President Trump’s words echoed across the Pacific as he signed a Presidential Proclamation to restore access for American fishermen to the waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles offshore within the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (PIHMNM). 

A third of American Samoa’s workforce and 99.5% of its exports are dependent upon access to these waters by U.S. tuna purse seine vessels. Tuna is the most valuable commodity in the Pacific Islands and this Proclamation will help increase U.S. relevance in the Pacific economy. Thirteen U.S. purse seine and approximately 150 U.S. longline vessels compete on the high seas with more than 450 foreign purse seine and more than 1,200 foreign longline vessels in the Western and Central Pacific. In 2023, the catch value was $113 million in the port of Honolulu and $97 million in Pago Pago, ranking sixth and seventh in the nation, respectively (Source: NOAA Fisheries One Stop Shop).

“The Council welcomes the President’s Proclamation that will allow two major U.S. fisheries in the Pacific Ocean back into U.S. waters,” said Taulapapa William Sword, Chair of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council. He went on to say this decision is aligned with the Council’s long-held stance that sustainable U.S. fisheries can coexist with marine conservation goals. 

The Proclamation recognizes the effectiveness of U.S. fisheries management under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and reopens parts of the PIHMNM to commercial fishing. The President recognized that well-regulated, U.S.-flagged commercial fisheries are not only compatible with conservation goals but are also vital to national food security, economic resilience and maritime presence in the Pacific. 

The expansion of the Monument in 2014 denied U.S. fishermen access in the entire 200-nautical mile U.S. exclusive economic zone around Johnston and Wake Atolls and Jarvis Island. It did little to prevent overfishing of highly migratory species like tuna, which move freely across international waters. Meanwhile, foreign fleets—often poorly regulated and heavily subsidized—continued to fish near the monument boundaries where they compete with well-managed U.S. tuna fisheries. 

This action restores access to fishing grounds of the Hawai‘i longline fishery, one of the most sustainable and highly regulated fisheries in the world that supplies fresh bigeye and yellowfin tuna to Hawai‘i and the U.S. mainland. These stocks have been maintained above sustainable levels with little risk of overfishing.

This region is sustainably managed under the Council’s Pacific Pelagic and Pacific Remote Island Areas Fishery Ecosystem Plans and associated federal regulations. U.S. longline fisheries have quotas, are required to report their fishing activity and catch, use real-time satellite-based vessel monitoring systems, carry federal observers and use specific gear to minimize impacts to protected species. The Council is also developing new measures for crew training for protected species handling and release and modernizing the fishery’s monitoring program to include camera-based electronic monitoring. 

“The Council remains committed to sustainably managing ocean resources while ensuring that U.S. fishermen are treated equitably in federal policies,” said Kitty Simonds, Council executive director. “Waters from 0 to 50 nautical miles offshore and the corals, fish and sea turtles there continue to be protected by the Council, NOAA Fisheries and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and are off limits to commercial fishing.” She added that “this is a positive step for our island fishing communities, local economies and the broader Pacific region!”

For more information, visit the Marine Spatial Management page on the Council website.

Maps:

United States Exclusive Economic Zones of the US Western Pacific Region

Fleet Sizes of Longline and Purse-Seine Vessels in the Western and Central Pacific (Oct. 31, 2024)

Fishing Effort in the Pacific Ocean (Dec. 1, 2021 – March 1, 2022)

MASSACHUSETTS: Monument fishing ban will hurt New Bedford businesses

October 13, 2021 — Just over 30 days ago, the fishing vessel Eagle Eye left federal waters more than 130 miles southeast of Massachusetts to make the 15- to 20-hour trip home to New Bedford Harbor. Its sister vessel, Eagle Eye 2, returned even more recently, with each carrying thousands of pounds of fresh tuna and a bit of swordfish.

John Cafiero, captain of one of the Fairhaven-based vessels, said he and his crew sometimes take multiple trips in the summer to fish in waters that in 2016 were established as a national marine monument. Tuna and swordfish are highly migratory species so sometimes “you don’t want to be in there,” he said, but for the past few years, it has been “really good.”

Cafiero said he didn’t know it then, but that trip might have been his last in the area.

On Oct. 8, President Joe Biden issued a presidential proclamation under the Antiquities Act of 1906 prohibiting commercial fishing in an area of water the size of Connecticut.

The administration cited conservation efforts needed to preserve the “vulnerable” deep marine ecosystems and endangered marine species that inhabit or migrate through the waters. The proclamation restores the commercial fishing restrictions first established by former President Barack Obama in 2016, when he declared two areas of water from surface to seabed as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

Environmental groups lauded the decision. But local fishermen, business owners and industry advocates said the closure deals yet another blow to a highly regulated industry and is unfair as recreational fishing in the monument may continue.

“These boats are more like your uncle’s pizza shop or your dad’s gas station,” said Mike Machado, lead buyer at Boston Sword & Tuna and a former New Bedford fisherman. “They’re small individual companies. They’re not like this big, evil fishing juggernaut.”

Read the full story at The New Bedford Light

 

Biden’s decision to restore marine monument off Cape Cod is praised and criticized in Maine

October 12, 2021 — President Biden’s decision to restore the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off Cape Cod got mixed reactions in Maine on Friday. 

But while the decision restores a prohibition on commercial fishing in the area, it is not expected to have much direct impact on the state’s industries because few, if any, Maine boats fish there.

Last year, President Trump opened the 5,000-square-mile area that had first been designated as a national monument by President Obama in 2016. Some Maine commercial fishing groups applauded the decision, even though the area wasn’t frequented by Maine-based fishermen and women. The monument had been seen as a symbolic affront to the industry.

Gov. Janet Mills criticized the Biden administration for taking such a major action without input from stakeholders, including the fishing industry.

“While I support environmental protection and conservation, this major action – which comes just mere weeks after advancing a right whale rule that that will seriously harm New England fishermen – is misguided and premature,” Mills said in a statement. “This decision was made without the appropriate engagement and consultation of stakeholders who deserve to have their voices heard. Fishermen are already reeling from heavy-handed Federal action and this further erodes faith that the Biden Administration will seek consensus from all stakeholders on important decisions impacting the marine environment.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Biden is set to restore monuments. What happens next?

October 12, 2021 — As tribal leaders and environmentalists celebrate President Biden’s scheduled restoration today of more than 2 million acres of public lands to a pair of Utah monuments, activists stress that the pomp and circumstance is a precursor to extensive work that remains to be done to shore up those sites.

Biden is scheduled this afternoon to sign new proclamations, which have yet to be published, restoring millions of acres to both Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.

He will also reinstate commercial fishing restrictions to Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean (Greenwire, Oct. 7).

The action will reverse cuts President Trump made in 2017 at the behest of GOP lawmakers who had long criticized the monuments as a form of federal overreach by the Democratic presidents who established them.

It will also restore protections to the marine monument that Trump removed in 2020, opening the 5,000-square-mile site about 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass., to commercial interests.

Saving Seafood Executive Director Bob Vanasse criticized the Biden administration’s decision for allowing recreational fishing to continue in the area, even as members of his industry advocacy group are locked out.

“While the Biden-Harris administration has claimed decisions will be based on science, and not on who has the stronger lobby, this decision shows otherwise,” Vanasse said.

“Prohibiting hardworking commercial fishermen from sustainably harvesting while allowing owners of luxury yachts to spear fish for the same species in the same location is hypocritical and calls into question this administration‘s commitment to working families over wealthy donors,” he added.

Read the full story at Greenwire

New guide to help evaluate marine protected areas

September 29, 2021 — A new “MPA Guide,” resulting from a collaboration of 42 authors led by Kirsten Grorud-Colvert of Oregon State University, aims to facilitate communication and common understanding about marine protected areas.

The guide was introduced in a paper in the 10 September issue of Science magazine, “The MPA Guide: A framework to achieve global goals for the ocean.” In it, the authors review the consistency, of MPAs and propose a framework by which levels of protection can be evaluated and improved.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

U.S. Regional Councils Call for Removal of Fishing Restrictions in Marine National Monuments

June 5, 2020 — In a letter to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross last week, the nation’s eight regional fishery management councils reiterated their recommendation that President Trump restore management of fishing throughout U.S. federal waters, including Marine National Monument waters, to the councils as implemented by the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

In the letter, the councils wrote, “The ban on commercial fishing within Marine National Monument waters is a regulatory burden on domestic fisheries, requiring many of the affected American fishermen to travel outside U.S. waters with increased operational expenses and higher safety-at-sea risks.” They further wrote, “Marine National Monument designations in their present form hinder the Councils’ ability to sustainably manage fisheries throughout their range, and they restrict the Councils and the National Marine Fisheries Service from acquiring invaluable knowledge about the stocks and the marine ecosystem made available through catch-and-effort and observer data.”

The letter also reiterated previous council letters from 2017 and 2016, and the councils’ 2016 Outcomes Statement and Recommendations, calling for fisheries management in all U.S. federal waters to be conducted through the public process of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

In 2017, the councils wrote, “Designations of marine national monuments that prohibit fishing activities–especially those that did not receive adequate economic and social impact review and did not allow for a robust public review process–have disrupted the ability of the Councils to manage fisheries throughout their range as required by MSA and in an ecosystem-based manner.”

In its 2016 letter, the councils wrote, “We believe fisheries management decisions should be made using the robust process established by the MSA and successfully used for over forty years.”

Last week’s letter was the result of a Council Coordination Committee meeting that brought together leaders of the nation’s eight regional councils by videoconference for the first of their biannual meetings.

Read the full letter here

Seamounts monument lawsuit appeal rejected by federal court

January 3, 2020 — A lawsuit against a national monument created by U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has been defeated once again after an appeal to an earlier ruling was denied.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has rejected the appeal of an earlier ruling that dismissed a lawsuit brought by fishermen against the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The monument, created in 2016, will be 4,913 square miles of ocean roughly 130 miles off of the coast of New England that will be closed to commercial activity, including fishing.

Read the full story at Seafood Source