Saving Seafood

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

Delegation Calls for Trump to Restore Restrictions to Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument

July 8, 2020 — Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have urged President Trump to reverse his recent action to remove fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

Trump’s June 5 decision opened up 5,000 square miles in the Atlantic ocean for commercial 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 months in office, as SeafoodNews reported.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Environmental Groups, Fishing Advocates Clash over Marine Monument Suit

June 29, 2020 — In response to a June 5 order by President Trump that would open a national marine monument 150 miles off the coast of New England to commercial fishing, the National Resources Defense Council and other entities have come together to file a lawsuit to protect the region.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was established in an area that was previously open to commercial fishing, supporting fish, red crab, squid, and lobster harvests. The monument was designated in 2016 by President Barack Obama as a way to protect the habitat “for a wide range of species, from endangered whales to Atlantic puffins to centuries-old deep-sea corals,” according to the N.R.D.C.

A group called Saving Seafood has fired back, issuing a June 17 statement of its own that said the marine monument had been established “without appropriate stakeholder consultation” in the first place. The environmental conservation community “chose the politically expedient route, and used their contacts and clout in the Obama administration to circumvent the scientific and public process. What they are now discovering is that what one president might create with the stroke of a pen, another president might take away.”

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

BEN MARTENS: Federal COVID response a missed opportunity to help Maine fishermen

June 26, 2020 — President Trump’s recent roundtable meeting with fishermen in Bangor was a unique opportunity to bring national attention to COVID-19’s catastrophic impact on fishing communities here in Maine and around the country. Most Americans are unaware of the devastation the crisis has inflicted on fishing economies, which support 40,000 jobs in Maine and 1.5 million jobs in the United States. The president’s visit put a spotlight on Maine’s fishermen for a brief moment during this time of crisis.

What resulted from this meeting was the opening of a national marine monument south of Cape Cod to additional commercial fishing, and the creation of a yet-to-be-defined fisheries task force. While significant, this action does not address the underlying economic challenge facing Maine fishermen because of the pandemic – the collapse of domestic and international demand for seafood.

Roughly three-quarters of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is eaten at restaurants. With restaurants closed or severely constrained, prices and demand have dropped dramatically – close to 70 percent for many New England species. As families struggled to find healthy, affordable food, fishermen were being told not to go fishing. Seafood is one of the healthiest food choices you can make for your mind, body and the environment. More access to heathy food should be our shared priority. Unfortunately, the pandemic has illuminated the cracks in our national food system, meaning that now is the time to invest in comprehensive solutions to protect local, sustainable seafood for our nation.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

NEFMC deep-sea coral amendment provides sweeping habitat protections

June 19, 2020 — A new amendment from the New England Fishery Management Council, which has been approved by NOAA Fisheries, will provide “sweeping protections” for deep-sea corals in areas off the New England coast, including the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

The new amendment, the Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment, is expected to take effect this summer and applies to two regions in the Gulf of Maine and the Continental Slope area south of Georges Bank. The area protecting the Continental Slope area includes 82 percent of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, begins at a depth of 600 meters, and extends to the 200-mile exclusive economic zone limit.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Environmental groups sue Trump, saying he can’t open marine monument to fishing

June 18, 2020 — Environmental groups are suing President Trump over a decision to open a national marine monument off the coast of southern New England to commercial fishing, arguing the president’s proclamation violates federal law.

The president announced the decision during a June 5 visit to Maine.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says that under the U.S. Antiquities Act a president can only create protections for national monuments and does not have the right to remove them – only Congress can.

In a statement Wednesday, Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities, a fishing industry advocacy group, noted that the proclamation will still require commercial fishing to be managed under the Magunson-Stevens Act, a federal law governing marine fisheries, and does not modify the monument in any other way.

“(The Conservation Law Foundation) argues that President Trump’s modification of the monument created by President Obama is illegal,” Vanasse said. “But President Obama exercised the power to modify monuments created by his predecessors to expand Pacific marine monuments created by President Bush.

“It would seem that CLF’s position is that it is legal for a president to modify monuments created by a predecessor when CLF agrees with the modification, but illegal when CLF disagrees with the modification.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Return of Fishing in Atlantic Marine Monument Spurs Legal Challenge

June 18, 2020 — Two weeks after President Donald Trump opened the door to commercial fishing in scientifically important ocean waters off the coast of Cape Cod, environmentalists shot back Wednesday with a federal complaint.

“From our perspective, President Trump seemed to know, actually, very little about what the purpose of the monument was or what it was trying to accomplish when he signed his proclamation,” Conservation Law Foundation senior counsel Peter Shelley said in a phone call Wednesday.

“We’ve been in there for 40 years,” Jon Williams, owner of the Atlantic Red Crab Company, told Trump. “And so if the environmental groups can deem the place pristine and we’ve been operating in that area for 40 years and they can’t find any evidence where we’ve done any damage, I would say we’ve been pretty good stewards of that 5,000 miles.”

Coinciding with Wednesday’s lawsuit, the New England Fishing Management Council unveiled new steps it has taken to protect fragile corals, specifically by prohibiting the use of bottom-tending commercial fishing gear in areas where corals are common.

“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,” John Quinn, chairman of the council, said in a statement.

“The monument area will not be ‘wide open to industrial fishing,’” Tom Nies, the council’s executive director, said in a statement.

“The council worked hard to walk that fine line between providing strong habitat and coral protections in the area while balancing the social and economic impacts to the industry,” Nies continued. “We don’t think the recent criticism from the environmental community since the announcement of the second monument proclamation is entirely warranted. Existing fishery management measures provide strong protections for Lydonia and Oceanographer Canyons, and with the coral amendment, we’re preventing commercial fishing from expanding beyond its historical footprint. The council took this step while carefully weighing the associated impacts. We look forward to the implementation our amendment.”

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

Environmental groups sue Trump administration for allowing commercial fishing in protected waters

June 17, 2020 — Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, challenging its recent decision to allow commercial fishing in nearly 5,000 square miles of protected waters off Cape Cod.

The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation and other groups said President Trump’s decision to open the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument — the only such protected waters off the East Coast — violated the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that President Obama used to create the monument in his last year in office.

Fishing groups had lobbied for the change, saying the restrictions had cost the industry millions of dollars. In a meeting with fishermen in Bangor, Trump told them: “This action was deeply unfair to Maine lobstermen. You’ve been treated very badly. They’ve regulated you out of business.”

Critics of Obama’s decision to use the Antiquities Act said the move circumvented federal law established in the 1970s to regulate fisheries.

“President Obama swept aside our public, science-based fishery management process with the stroke of a pen,” said Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington, D.C.-based group that represents commercial fishermen. “That was a mistake, and whatever anyone thinks about President Trump is irrelevant.”

He also criticized the Conservation Law Foundation for its interpretation of the law.

“The record is clear that the highest political bidder during the Obama years was the environmental community, and that is why they succeeded in including a prohibition against commercial fisheries,” Vanasse said, noting that Obama did not ban recreational fishing in the protected area.

He and others in the fishing industry called Trump’s decision overdue. Before the ban, fishermen estimated that as many as 80 boats had regularly fished the area for lobster, crab, scallops, swordfish, and tuna. Fishermen said the closure has harmed their livelihoods.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe