Saving Seafood

Outgoing NOAA leaders see ‘solid progress that helps commercial and recreational fishing industries’

January 28, 2021 — As our tenure in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ends, we want to share the progress our agency team has accomplished. Working with the National Marine Fisheries Service leadership, we sought to increase fishing opportunities, reduce unnecessary burdens, expand market access, and continue to improve the status of fish stocks. As NOAA transitions to a new political leadership team, it is important to build upon the achievements of these past four years, and continue to support the commercial and recreational fishing sectors:

Advance fisheries conservation.

NOAA continued to make significant progress working with fishermen to improve the status of U.S. fish stocks. Two additional fish stocks were rebuilt last year, making a total of 47 fish stocks rebuilt since 2000. The overfishing list dropped to 22 stocks, setting an all-time low. Ninety-three percent of the stocks managed by NOAA are not subject to overfishing and 81 percent are not overfished.

Cooperate with the regional fishery management councils to reduce regulatory burden.

A total of 62 deregulatory actions were finalized between fiscal years 2017 and 2020, saving fishermen over $50 million per year. More importantly, there are approximately 30 deregulatory actions currently in the pipeline within NOAA fisheries. Further, under section 4 of Executive Order 13921, Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth, NOAA fisheries is required to review and add new deregulatory actions to its agenda that are recommended by the councils, and report annually for the next 3 years on their status.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Biden plans review of national monuments, including Northeast Canyons and Seamounts

January 22, 2021 — Recently inaugurated U.S. President Joe Biden announced – just hours after he was sworn in – that he plans to perform a review of the Trump administration’s actions regarding a number of national monuments, including the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument is the first national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, and one of just five marine monuments in the U.S. Located off the east coast, the monument was created in 2016 by U.S. President Barack Obama and encompasses 4,913 square miles of ocean.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Saving Seafood Statement on President Biden’s National Monuments Order

January 22, 2021 — Saving Seafood members believe that the lack of benefit from a prohibition on commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument, the harm to domestic sustainable seafood production and coastal communities, the lack of scientific evidence demonstrating any harm from decades of commercial fishing in the region, and the inherent unfairness of the Obama administration’s decision to ban commercial harvesting while permitting recreational fishing have already been well-documented in the press and reviewed by appropriate government agencies.

However, we appreciate that President Biden has requested a review of the Trump administration’s actions on the monument rather than issuing an immediate reversal. Our members look forward to discussing these issues with Rep. Deb Haaland as soon as she is confirmed as Interior Secretary, just as we met with Secretary Ryan Zinke and Secretary David Bernhardt.

Contrary to the dramatic tone of some press releases and online campaigns from conservation groups, the Trump administration action last June did nothing more than create parity between recreational and commercial fishing in the monument, allowing both recreational and commercial fishermen to harvest sustainably in accordance with the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The Magnuson-Stevens Act has been hailed by U.S. conservation groups and by international bodies as one of the most successful laws in the world for managing fisheries responsibly and sustainably.

Sustainable fishing has taken place in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts area for decades. Conservation groups and proponents of the monument have described the area where fishing has taken place as “pristine.” There is no evidence that commercial fishing has ever damaged these canyons and seamounts or the corals and other marine life that exist there.

Our members have worked diligently with officials and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle since secret proposals for an Atlantic Marine Monument were revealed in emails between conservation groups and former Obama administration officials through a public records request in 2015.

The region now encompassed by the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument is important to the offshore lobster, red crab, and swordfish and tuna fisheries. And displacement of the offshore lobster fishery from their historic location would likely harm the highly successful and sustainable Atlantic scallop industry. We appreciated that the Obama administration recognized that an immediate closure would have serious negative consequences to the red crab and offshore lobster fisheries, and were grateful for the seven-year extension which allowed those fisheries to continue to operate. Unfortunately, no such extension was granted to commercial swordfish and tuna fishermen, who were harmed from the time the closure went into effect until last summer when parity and fairness were restored.

President Biden has vowed to make science a central theme of his administration. In an online briefing introducing his team of top five science advisors before the inauguration, he said, “As president, I’ll pay great attention” to science and scientists.

As long as the review ordered by President Biden is conducted fairly and honestly, and in accordance with science and data, we believe the results should be to continue to allow sustainable fishing, both commercial and recreational, under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

President Biden’s flurry of actions to protect the environment reignites a controversy about the Atlantic’s only marine monument

January 22, 2021 — Last June, as part of a concerted campaign to dismantle the environmental policies of the Obama administration, Donald Trump met with fishermen in Maine and signed a proclamation that allowed commercial fishing in nearly 5,000 square miles of federally protected waters southeast of Cape Cod.

But elections have consequences, and on Wednesday President Joe Biden signed an executive order that could overturn Trump’s decision and restore the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean to its former status, part of a flurry of executive actions Biden took on his first day in office to reverse many of the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks.

Environmental advocates called the first steps promising, a welcome change from the policies of the past four years.

In response to Biden’s order, representatives of fishing groups urged the new administration to consult them before overturning Trump’s policies.

“The hope of the fishing industry is that if the Biden administration is endeavoring to unite the country, then the Biden administration will actively reach out to fishing communities and not only discuss the marine monument with them but listen to the fishing communities’ concerns and act upon those concerns,” said Andrew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington, D.C.

He and others urged the Biden administration to respect the traditional fishery management process, which allows for councils composed of fishermen, environmental advocates, and regulators to determine where and how much fishing can occur.

“I believe, as long as this is reviewed fairly, in terms of the science and law, there’s no reason that fishing shouldn’t be allowed there,” said Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents commercial fishermen. “It’s sustainable. But if it’s a political decision and about Obama’s legacy, then it’s going to be a problem.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

President Biden to review Trump’s changes to national monuments

January 20, 2021 — Trump’s decision to downsize the Bears Ears National Monument by 85% on lands considered sacred to Native Americans in southeastern Utah and to shrink Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half earned him applause from Utah’s Republican leaders, who considered the monuments an example of federal government overreach.

Environmental, tribal, paleontological and outdoor recreation organizations have pending lawsuits to restore the full sizes of the monuments, arguing presidents don’t have the legal authority to undo or change monuments created by predecessors.

Pat Gonzales-Rogers, executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said the group has told the Biden transition team the monument should first restored to the size Obama created and later to a larger size tribes originally requested.

The lands are sacred to tribes in the coalition: Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Indian Tribe, he said. The area includes thousands of archaeological sites on red rock lands including cliff dwellings. The Bears Ears buttes that overlook a grassy valley are particularly sacred.

“The Bears Ears is a church and the place of worship for many of our tribes,” Gonzales-Rogers said. “It should be viewed with the same type of gravitas and platform that you would view the Cathedral of Notre Dame.”

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts conservation area comprises about 5,000 square miles east of New England. It contains vulnerable species of marine life such as right whales and fragile deep sea corals. The monument was the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

Read the full White House release here

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Chicago Tribune

Biden to rejoin Paris agreement, revoke Keystone XL permit

January 20, 2021 — President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday will rejoin the Paris agreement, revoke a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and take a slew of other environmental actions after he’s sworn in as president.

Biden plans to sign two executive orders among the 15 he will issue on his first day in office that will have ramifications for the environment as well as numerous rollbacks put in place by the Trump administration.

While one will rejoin the global climate agreement, another directs agencies across government to reconsider a number of actions taken under the previous administration, sending along a nine-page hit list of Trump era actions likely to be reversed under the Biden administration.

iden has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accord on his first day in office, part of his commitment to get the U.S. on a path to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

And in his second order he aims to halt a number of oil and gas activities, revoking the Keystone XL pipeline set to cross the border with Canada and placing a temporary moratorium on oil and gas leasing activities at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The action stops short of Biden’s ultimate goal of halting all new fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and in federal waters, though it’s an action he has pledged his administration will take.

The order also directs agencies to review boundaries for the Grand Staircase-Escalante, Bears Ears and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

Trump shrunk the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments over objections from environmentalists as well as Native Americans, who argued the lands were sacred to their tribes.

In the case of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, Trump lifted protection of the area in a bid to open it to more commercial fishing.

The Wednesday action will also direct agencies to review standards for vehicles, appliances and buildings.

Read the full story at The Hill

A legal war, a Biden win: What’s next for a marine monument?

December 11, 2020 — When Grant Moore first started lobstering, he thought of the ocean as a vast expanse with an endless supply of marine life ripe for the catching.

But when he took to his boat off the coast of Massachusetts, it wasn’t long before he began bumping up against the operations of Canadian fishers. And over the course of his 40-year career, he has seen new restrictions and closures that have further reined in the claims he and his competitors had laid on the seas.

“The ocean got smaller and smaller and smaller,” said Moore, who serves as president of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association.

It’s about to shrink again — unless Moore and other fishers can convince the Supreme Court to get involved in a legal battle over a marine monument that will soon block crab and lobster operations in a Connecticut-sized chunk of the Atlantic Ocean where the two fisheries generate an estimated $15 million in annual revenue.

Read the full story at E&E News

Trump’s pitch to Maine lobstermen falls flat

August 7, 2020 — President Trump is struggling to win over Maine voters with his recent pledge to lift restrictions for the state’s lobster industry.

Trump was beaming when he traveled to the state just two months ago to tell lobstermen he was reversing protections for some 5,000 miles of ocean territory in a bid to open it to fishing.

“You’re going to go fishing in that area now that you haven’t seen for a long time,” Trump said at a roundtable with representatives from Maine’s fishing industry. “Lobstermen and seafood producers, I want to just congratulate you.”

But the state’s lobstermen aren’t celebrating. That’s because the area Trump aims to reopen is 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod — far beyond the reach of Maine’s day-boat lobstermen.

“This doesn’t help the Maine fisherman at all,” Leroy Weed, 79, who has had a lobster license since he was 10 years old, said of Trump’s reversal of protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off of Cape Cod.

Read the full story at The Hill

Lobstermen ask high court to hear monument challenge

July 31, 2020 — The legal battle over the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the coast of Massachusetts is starting to feel like the Hundred Years’ War in Europe of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Commercial fishing interests, with the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association as lead plaintiffs, this week filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its challenge of the use of the federal Antiquities Act by President Barack Obama in 2016 to create the 5,000 square-mile marine national monument about 130 miles off Cape Cod.

The petition represents the third time fishing interests have tried legal challenges to the creation of the only marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean. They were unsuccessful in the first two.

In the petition, attorneys representing the MLA and other commercial fishing stakeholders, question whether the Antiquities Act “applies to ocean areas beyond the United States’ sovereignty where the federal government has only limited regulatory authority.”

The petition charges the use of the Antiquities Act circumvents the National Marine Sanctuaries Act and questions whether Obama evaded the Antiquities Act’s “smallest area requirement” by designating “ocean monuments larger than most states.” It also maintains that the use of the act to create the marine national monument is a threat to the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Read the full story at The Salem News

Fishing the canyons: Coral amendment will expand restrictions of Atlantic monument

July 14, 2020 — A June 5 presidential proclamation ended a prohibition on commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts marine national monument and returned management of the area to the New England Fishery Management Council.

“We’ve said from the beginning that fishery management councils are best suited to address the complicated tradeoffs involved in managing fisheries, and we appreciate regaining our control to do so in the monument area,” said Council Chairman Dr. John Quinn.

The nearly 5,000-square-mile Atlantic monument southeast of Cape Cod was established in 2016 by President Barack Obama. It was the first (and is currently the only) Atlantic monument. Before the designation, key areas were managed as essential fish habitat through the New England council.

On June 17, the council laid out its management of the area and announced the pending implementation of its Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment, which will expand fishing restrictions in the canyons area.

“To the best of our knowledge, zero fishing activity takes place on the seamounts,” said Janice Plante, public affairs officer for the council. “We’re not aware of any real groundfish fishing activity in the canyons portion of the monument area either.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman