Saving Seafood

Monumental Issues

February 13, 2025 — One of the requests made by the authors of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the Trump administration, is that President Donald Trump again shrink national monuments.

Whether he will remains to be seen, though the most likely candidates are Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, from which Trump sheared a combined 2 million acres during his first term, only to watch President Joe Biden restore the original boundaries as set by Presidents Barack Obama (Bears Ears) and Bill Clinton (Grand Staircase).

The authors of Project 2025 don’t want him to stop there. Indeed, the section on the Interior Department, written by William Perry Pendley, who was a longtime president of the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation that worked to see federal lands turned over to states, maintains that Trump didn’t go far enough during his first term.

“Although President Trump courageously ordered a review of national monument designations, the result of that review was insufficient in that only two national monuments in one state (Utah) were adjusted,” wrote Pendley. “Monuments in Maine [Kathadin Woods and Waters] and Oregon [Cascade-Siskiyou], for example, should have been adjusted downward given the finding of Secretary Ryan Zinke’s review that they were improperly designated.”

The 5,000-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument encompasses a biologically robust area located about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod National Seashore. It became the Atlantic Ocean’s first national monument when Obama established it. President Trump during his first term removed restrictions that kept commercial fishermen out of the monument.

Read the full article at National Park Traveler 

Biden administration may reinstate Northeast marine monument restrictions

June 16, 2021 — The Biden administration could reinstate commercial fishing restrictions on the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument – and bring a new court challenge from the fishing industry, just months after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts indicated he would be open to hearing a new case.

Reports Monday in the Washington Post and New York Times described a recommendation from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to restore boundaries of the Bear Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, which were established by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and cut back by former president Donald Trump in December 2017.

At the urging of ocean environmental groups, Obama imposed commercial fishing restrictions after establishing the 5,000-square mile Northeast marine monument in December 2018. In June 2020, Trump issued a new proclamation lifting those rules.

Within hours of President Biden’s inauguration Jan. 20, environmental groups pressed him to reimpose fishing restrictions, and fishing advocates mobilized, hoping to head that off.

How Biden decides this could set the stage for a new challenge to presidential authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which critics say has expanded far beyond its original intent.

“A commercial fishing ban serves no conservation benefit,” said James Budi of the American Sword and Tuna Harvesters, which has urged the Biden administration to hold off on renewing restrictions.

Officials at NMFS themselves say “pelagic longline gear used to catch swordfish has no impact on habitat,” said Budi. “Fishing impact on the monument below us is like a bird flying over the Grand Canyon.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Fishing industry moves to head off Northeast canyons monument reversal

January 27, 2021 — Northeast fishing advocates mobilized as President Biden moved fast to reverse executive orders from the Trump administration — possibly including Trump’s move to back off fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument.

Biden ordered a broad review of more than 100 actions by the Trump administration on environmental issues, including the former president’s attempts to alter national monuments. Fishing advocates moved to get in early and persuade the new administration that the U.S. fisheries management system that’s been in place for more than 40 years can handle protecting the Northeast offshore habitat without executive intervention.

“We kind of saw it coming, and we sent letters off to politicians,” said Jim Budi, who owns a swordfish and tuna longline vessel that works out of New Bedford, Mass. “We had great fishing there this year. If it wasn’t for that, we’d be in the red.”

Environmental groups pushed Biden on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, to reinstate the Obama administration’s offshore monument declaration, with its potential to foreclose most fishing at the edge of the continental shelf.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

The muddy waters of US ocean protection

August 18, 2020 — At the beginning of June, President Trump issued an executive order to open the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument to commercial fishing, chipping away at one of former President Obama’s last acts in office: the closure, in supposed perpetuity, of 5,000 square miles of ocean off the coast of Massachusetts.

The monument, straddling the edge of the continental shelf, is the only marine reserve on the Eastern Seaboard. The canyons and seamounts shelter 54 species of deep-sea corals and provide habitat to lobster, tuna, deep-diving beaked whales, and the now-critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

“This would be the only place along the entire Eastern Seaboard that has no vertical lines for entangling marine mammals,” said Auster.

The Antiquities Act affords the president unilateral power to protect the ocean. Unlike conservation through restrictive management or multi-use sanctuaries, a national monument protects everything it encompasses.

It does not require a process of approval by stakeholders, which for sanctuaries can drag out for many years—time that is precious for ecosystems on the brink of collapse. That’s precisely why the Councils, while they haven’t taken a stance against the use of the Antiquities Act in the ocean, have lobbied to remove fishing restrictions from the marine national monuments, which together constitute more than 99 percent of all the highly protected marine habitat in the U.S. If there are going to be national monuments in the ocean, they argue, the fisheries within them should be managed with the same multi-stakeholder consensus that applies throughout the rest of federal waters.

“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,” wrote Regional Fishery Management Council representatives in a May letter to the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur L. Ross Jr.

Though few boats fish in the northeast canyons, and none fish on the seamounts, control over the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts is a matter of principle, and precedent, for the New England Fishery Management Council. Shortly after Trump’s executive order in June, the Council created a deep-sea coral amendment that imposed fishery closures and gear restrictions on a substantial portion of the monument.

Read the full story at the Environmental Health News

NFI Statement on Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument

June 5, 2020 — The following was released by the National Fisheries Institute:

The National Fisheries Institute applauds the Trump administration for withdrawing arbitrary fisheries restrictions on the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument off the coast of New England.

We welcome efforts to refocus on fisheries regulation that are transparent, participatory and science-based, and in this case best achieved through the New England Fishery Management Council.

The Magnuson Stevens Act has long provided options for management councils to designate fishing areas and marine habitat for protection. This method includes an opportunity for multi-stakeholder input and a robust review of the applicable science.

Advanced research assessments ensure proper levels of fishing are permitted in designated areas. Simply cordoning off zones on a map to harvesting without regard for the existing, well-constructed system has been duplicative and disadvantaged the men and women who work these fisheries and ultimately consumers.

Seafood sustainability means a commitment to quantifiable science and the communities that depend on American fisheries.

Atlantic Marine Monument Withstands Federal Appeals Court Challenge

December 30, 2019 — A federal appeals court has ruled that President Barack Obama acted within his authority when he created the country’s first Atlantic marine monument off the coast of New England in 2016.

“The fishermen have had the ocean all to themselves for centuries.” says Peter Shelley, senior council for the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston.

Shelley says the lawsuit challenging the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, and the presidential authority that created it, failed to acknowledge other “values” such as conservation and preservation as powers granted in the Antiquities Act of 1906.

Shelley says the appeals decision is good news for a very delicate region of the Atlantic Ocean.

“But it’s also good news for other areas of great scientific interest that need to be protected from the destructive effects of fishing and oil and gas drilling and other sorts of development activities,” he says.

Read the full story at Maine Public

April Showdown Looming for Battle Over Atlantic Ocean Monument

March 28, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Fisherman and lobstermen reeled in a temporary victory after a federal court agreed to lift a 10-month stay on a lawsuit that seeks to reverse Obama-era protections for the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

In September 2016, former President Barack Obama used powers under the Antiquities Act to designate the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument.

The 5,000-square-mile monument, rich with deep coral and home to sperm whales, sea turtles and dolphins, is located just off the Georges Bank near Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The Obama-era order closed off the area to commercial fisherman, except for a handful of crabbers who were grandfathered into the deal and allowed to continue trawling for just seven years more until fishing activity would be completely barred in the region.

The plaintiffs who originally challenged the monument designation in March 2017 include the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Atlantic Offshore Lobsterman’s Association, the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, the Rhode Island Fisherman’s Alliance and the Garden State Seafood Association.

In their original lawsuit, the groups claimed Obama “exceeded his power under the Antiquities Act” when cordoning off the ocean acreage.

They argued the sea is not “land owned or controlled by the Federal government and thus not within the president’s proclaiming authority.”

“Unless a permanent injunction is issued to forbid the implementation of the proclamation’s fishing prohibitions, plaintiffs are and will continue to be irreparably harmed … and will continue to suffer a diminution of income, reduced fishing opportunities and depletion of their investment in their boats and permits,” the March 2017 complaint states.

This March 15, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg finally agreed to allow the fisherman’s lawsuit to continue, effectively turning up  pressure on the Trump administration to act.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

 

Members of Congress Call on Trump to Allow Fishing in Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — June 14, 2017 — Yesterday, nine Members of Congress wrote to President Trump, urging the Administration to lift restrictions on fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument and to return fisheries management to the regional fishery management councils. The monument, designated via Executive order by President Obama last September, has prohibited commercial fishing in more than 4,900 square miles of ocean off the coast of New England.

According to the letter, this misuse of executive power will not only put commercial fishermen out of business, but will also harm many ocean communities that depend on a strong fishing economy. The letter calls for fisheries in the area to once again be managed under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which has long ensured the United States has one of the most sustainable and environmentally friendly fisheries management systems in the world.

The letter was co-signed by members Tom MacArthur (R-RJ), Andy Harris (R-MD), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-AS), David Rouzer (R-NC), Lee Zeldin (R-NY), and Walter B. Jones (R-NC).

Read the letter here

Local fishermen upset about new marine monument

September 16, 2016 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — President Obama has created the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean saying it’s an effort to protect the planet from climate change.

The president said the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, located off George’s Bank, will help safeguard the oceans.

The monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles including three underwater canyons and underwater mountains.

While the decision makes environmentalists happy, many fisherman said the announcement is deeply disappointing.

“People have made business plans to use this area and then all of a sudden the rug is getting pulled out from under them,” commercial fisherman Al Cottone told FOX25. “How do you plan for the future when you can be basically be shut down with a stroke of the pen?”

The head of the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership and Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association said these farmers can’t just pick up and move their operation.

“The ocean is huge but fish are not everywhere. Fish live in designated area by nature. Just like we live,” Angela Sanfilippo said.

Read the full story at Fox25