Saving Seafood

Trump’s proposed NOAA cuts meet Senate appropriators’ opposition

July 16, 2025 — Members of Congress are expressing renewed support for the nation’s weather forecasting system after deadly flooding in Texas and elsewhere put the focus on cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Trump administration proposed cutting NOAA’s fiscal 2026 budget to $4.5 billion — a 27 percent, nearly $1.7 billion reduction from the estimated fiscal 2025 spending.

But Senate appropriators from both parties highlighted the importance of NOAA, and particularly the National Weather Service housed within it, in a meeting last week.

Read the full article at Roll Call

Seafood workers, supporters rally at Fulton market against Empire Wind

July 16, 2025 — The Fulton Fish Market Cooperative hosted a July 15 rally at its Hunts Point facility in the Bronx to protest the Empire Wind energy project, now under construction around traditional fishing grounds off New York.

“Offshore wind is not a supplement to our industry, it is a direct replacement,” Nicole Ackerina, CEO of the Fulton cooperative, said in a joint statement after the rally with union workers, commercial fishermen from New York and New Jersey, and coastal advocates.

“These projects will eliminate access to vital fishing grounds, destabilize our seafood infrastructure, and trade American jobs for short-term foreign-backed construction contracts.”

Fulton employs 1,200 full-time workers, including 500 Bronx residents, most of them union members, said Ackerina.

“Our industry feeds America. NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) reported that in 2022, New York’s seafood industry supported nearly 70,000 jobs and over $9.2 billion in sales. New Jersey supported more than 72,000 jobs and $12.9 billion in sales. This is not expendable.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Trump’s EPA flags a problem with offshore wind permit issued by Maryland

July 16, 2025 — Federal officials are calling on the state to reissue a permit for a wind farm planned off the Ocean City coast, to correct what they say is an error in the original document.

In a July 7 letter to the Maryland Department of the Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took issue with the process that MDE laid out to appeal the final construction permit awarded to US Wind.

The state said any challenge to the state permit would have to go through state courts, but EPA Region 3 Administrator Amy Van Blarcom-Lackey said that any appeal would have to be filed with the clerk of the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board.

“Failure to rectify this error could result in invalidation of the permit on appeal and confusion among relevant stakeholders with respect to where to bring such an appeal,” Blarcom-Lackey wrote.

MDE spokesperson Jay Apperson said in a statement that the agency is reviewing Blarcom-Lackey’s letter and is “committed to ensuring all our permit processes are transparent and in accordance with the law.” An official with US Wind said the company is “confident that all of our project’s permits were validly issued.”

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

NEW YORK: Long Island fishermen fight to stop offshore wind farm

July 16, 2025 — The head of the Fulton Fish Market Cooperative rallied alongside local fishermen and joined a decade-long fight to stop an offshore wind farm now under construction off Long Island’s coast.

Construction on the wind project began in April and was soon halted by a Trump Administration stop-work order. That order was lifted in May, and the project continues despite the ongoing lawsuit from the fishing industry.

Read the full article at Pix 11

US delays rule on Gulf of Mexico whale protections by two years

July 15, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will delay by two years a final rule designating protections for the endangered Rice’s whale in the oil and gas drilling region of the Gulf of Mexico, according to an agreement with environmental groups filed in a federal court.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service agreed with green group Natural Resources Defense Council to finalize by July 15, 2027 the geographic area deemed critical for the Rice’s whale survival. The previous deadline had been Tuesday, July 15, of this year.

The agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 3 was seen by Reuters on Monday.

Read the full article at Reuters

In court filing, Trump administration hints at a lifeline for embattled Pebble project

July 14, 2025 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took a rare step under former President Joe Biden to block development of the Pebble mine, Alaska’s largest known copper and gold deposit, which for years has fueled controversy over its potential impacts on one of the world’s largest salmon runs.

Now, under President Donald Trump, the agency is giving its past Pebble decisions another look and negotiating a deal that could end a lawsuit filed by Pebble’s developer — an announcement that’s boosted the company’s stock price this week.

Administration officials “have been actively considering the agency decisions” and are “open to reconsideration,” according to a recent court filing submitted by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers. The three-page document does not elaborate, though it references the past decision by the EPA and a separate decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny Pebble a key permit.

Read the full article at the Northern Journal

MASSACHSUETTS: Immigration raids have spread anxiety for some in New Bedford fishing industry: ‘We don’t know what’s gonna happen’

July 9, 2025 — Hector Grave has worked in the seafood business since he came to this historic fishing city from a small town in Guatemala in the late 1990s.

He worked at fish houses, cutting scallops and shrimp, cleaning fish that came in from nearby waters. Later, a friend introduced him to net making, and he felt it was like solving a puzzle.

He found a job making fishing nets for local companies, typically stitching and braiding the nets together and adding floats, and then founded his own net company in 2012, which now includes a buoy business.

Grave is part of a long line of immigrants who help sustain the fishing industry in New Bedford, the most valuable fishing port in the country. But immigration crackdowns by the Trump administration across New England and in New Bedford, where about a fifth of the city’s residents are foreign born, have spread anxiety in recent months. Some workers are limiting their time outside of their homes and work to avoid potential ICE activity. Many industry leaders said they work hard to ensure they are hiring documented immigrants, but they also hope the Trump administration will take steps to give foreign-born workers pathways to continue earning a living in the sector.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Dealing with Trump’s megabill remains a work in progress

July 9, 2025 — On July 3, the U.S. House narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, sweeping federal legislation that extends tax cuts and reduces social safety net programs. President Trump signed the bill into law during a ceremony held the following day.

For coastal fishing communities endeavoring to protect access to their fisheries and fisheries habitats, efforts to deal with the legislation remain a work in progress.

One possible saving grace was that before it went to the House, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, dropped from the H.R. 1 package in the Senate a contentious plan to sell between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public lands in 11 western states for the construction of housing.

“Public land sales or privatization could cut off lifelines to water, or at the very least, create disruptive and unnecessary uncertainty,” said Michelle Stratton, a fisheries scientist and executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council in Anchorage. “Without reliable public access to harbors, fish camps, and boat ramps, especially on or near federal lands, Alaska’s small boat fishermen can’t operate or know how to prepare for their season.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Trump moves to restrict wind power tax credits

July 8, 2025 — Days after the Republican majority in Congress sharply reduced incentives for wind and solar energy projects, President Trump issued a new executive order to set new timeline limits for developers to qualify for tax credits.

“For too long, the Federal Government has forced American taxpayers to subsidize expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar,” states the order issued late Monday. “Reliance on so-called ‘green’ subsidies threatens national security by making the United States dependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Senate budget vote set mixed prospects for offshore wind

July 3, 2025 — The U.S. Senate’s squeaker 51-50 vote to approve the Trump administration’s program agenda appeared to strike a huge blow against offshore wind energy and other renewable energy development.

But opponents of offshore wind insist the legislation does not go far enough. The final version pulled back a proposed excise tax that would have penalized wind energy developers, after Iowa Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, both R-Iowa, opposed it for their state’s wind energy generation and manufacturing industry.

“The Senate bill looks like it has a 2027 ‘placed in service’ cutoff for new solar/wind subsidies,” wrote Alex Epstein, a prominent activist and fossil fuels advocate, in a fiery July 1 social media post widely shared among offshore wind opponents. “But one last-minute paragraph makes it worthless – because projects making a recoverable 5% investment in the next 12 months are exempt!”

President Trump pledged to stop all projects in U.S. waters “on day one” of his second presidency and issued an order hours after his Jan. 20 inauguration to implement that ban. In mid-April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered a halt to work on Equinor’s Empire Wind 814-megawatt project off New York, thrilling project opponents.

But a month later, the Trump administration relented, after making a deal with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for permitting new natural gas pipelines from the Marcellus gas fields in Pennsylvania through New York State.

With the July 1 Senate vote, offshore oil and gas interests appeared to be clear winners. With final passage still required in the House – and continued criticism by the hardline Republican conservatives’ caucus – industry advocates pushed for support.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman