Saving Seafood

NOAA Rescinds Regulation Prohibiting Commercial Fishing in Atlantic Monument Area

April 3, 2026 — NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service rescinded a regulation that prohibited commercial fishing within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument boundaries. This action was necessary to align fishing regulations with President Trump’s Executive Proclamation Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Atlantic to reopen the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing.

NOAA is proud to support the Administration’s pledge to restore US seafood competitiveness through the America First Fishing Policy. The President’s Executive Proclamation and NOAA’s regulatory actions come as a direct result of feedback from the US fishing industry, and they will increase economic opportunities for American fishermen.

Read the full article at ECO Magazine

Trump’s Budget May Target Climate Programs. Here’s What Still Survives.

April 2, 2026 — President Trump has tried to cut funding for virtually every federal program that addresses climate change. But Congress has been pushing back, sometimes with surprising bipartisan support.

This year, lawmakers quietly saved funding for the government’s popular Energy Star program, which ranks appliances based on energy conservation and cost savings. Bipartisan majorities also salvaged weather forecasting, fisheries and climate research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and even some international environmental aid.

Mr. Trump’s new proposed budget is expected to be made public on Friday, and climate advocates said they were bracing for steep new cuts to environmental programs. The White House declined to comment on the budget but noted that Mr. Trump had already eliminated his top targets, like federal support for wind, solar and other renewable energy.

Advocates for climate action said their modest success last time had given them some hope of again retaining popular programs in next year’s budget.

Read the full article at The New York Times

The ‘God Squad’ Waives Environmental Rules for Offshore Drilling

April 1, 2026 — A powerful panel of Trump administration officials voted unanimously on Tuesday to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered whales and other imperiled species.

The panel, the Endangered Species Committee, a high-level group that is often called the God Squad because it essentially holds the power to decide whether a species lives or dies, adopted the move during a brief, closed-door meeting at the Interior Department.

Until Tuesday, the God Squad had convened only three times, and never in the past three decades.

It was the Trump administration’s latest move to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock environmental law intended to prevent plant and animal extinctions. In November, the administration proposed to relax restrictions on drilling, logging and mining in critical habitats for endangered species across the country.

To justify the sweeping decision on Tuesday, administration officials said that protections for endangered species had hindered oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump calls the Gulf of America. They said that lifting these protections would increase domestic energy supplies and bolster national security.

“When development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the meeting.

“Recent hostile action by the Iranian terror regime highlights yet again why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative,” Mr. Hegseth said, although he clarified that these concerns predated the Middle East war and the resulting spike in gasoline prices.

The United States is the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas, and the Gulf accounts for about 15 percent of U.S. crude oil output.

Read the full article at The New York Times

US Department of Transportation investing USD 489 million in nation’s ports

March 31, 2026 —  The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced nearly USD 489 million (EUR 427 million) in grant funding for improving the nation’s ports and shipyards through the Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP).

“The Trump Administration is getting back to basics and investing hard-earned American dollars in restoring the nation’s maritime dominance,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a release. “We’re refocusing on what matters – revitalizing our ports with the latest technology and infrastructure to keep our economy humming.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Why the US will pay a French company nearly $1 billion to give up wind farm plans

March 30, 2026 — This week, the Trump administration announced it had struck an unusual deal. The U.S. government will pay TotalEnergies, a French power generation company, $928 million to scuttle its plans to build two wind farms off the coasts of New Jersey and North Carolina. Together, the projects could have powered some 1.7 million homes.

The deal represents a new wrinkle in President Donald Trump’s campaign to jettison America’s nascent offshore wind industry, which many environmentalists see as key to reducing the country’s carbon footprint. Mr. Trump has criticized wind power as ineffective and costly, and his administration has tried to curtail wind infrastructure development.

“Offshore wind is one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, in a news release announcing the deal on Monday.

Iran war brings higher fuel prices for struggling Gulf shrimpers

March 26, 2026 — U.S. shrimpers are facing higher fuel prices due to the Iran war, leading to higher operating costs for an industry that is already struggling.

“For a recent 30-day trip, I spent USD 47,000 (EUR 40,740) on diesel before I even left the dock. That is USD 20,000 (EUR 17,337) more for a single trip than the previous year,” Coden, Alabama, U.S.A.-based Zirlott Trawlers owner Jeremy Zirlott said in a release. “U.S. shrimpers operate on razor-thin margins, and right now, the increased cost of diesel makes it nearly impossible to turn a profit in the wholesale shrimp market.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NORTH CAROLINA: Wind farm deal off Wilmington coast canceled. Here’s why.

March 26, 2026 — With the political climate, at least in Washington, working against it, a French energy giant has cut a deal with the Trump administration to cancel its offshore wind lease off Southeastern North Carolina for investing an equal amount in fossil fuels.

The agreement by TotalEnergies is another move that brings into stark question the chance of any wind farms rising in the waters off the Cape Fear coast − at least in the short term.

It also is another front opened by the White House on the future of offshore wind, an energy source that President Trump, a Republican, has vocally criticized since his first term in office.

“The Trump Administration is spending nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money to pay off a company to stop investments in the clean energy we need,” N.C. Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, said on a social media post. “This is a terrible deal for the people of North Carolina and our country.”

Read the full article at Star News Online

 

Trump administration’s $1B deal to stop offshore wind shows an evolution in its anti-wind strategy

March 25, 2026 — The Trump administration’s $1 billion payout to a French energy company to walk away from U.S. offshore wind development is a novel tactic against the industry that supporters see as creative — but opponents see as foolish and extreme.

The Interior Department announced Monday that TotalEnergies agreed to what is essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Texas and other fossil fuel projects instead. The department hailed it as an “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant so that the “American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.”

The tactical shift comes after federal courts have thwarted President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop offshore wind through executive action.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the payment “sets a dangerous precedent and is a shortsighted misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Robin Shaffer, president of the anti-offshore wind group Protect Our Coast New Jersey, applauded what he called “out of the box” thinking. Shaffer said after losing in the courts, the administration needed a way to take back leases that never should have been issued because of the harm offshore wind development causes to the marine environment.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

Trump administration to pay French company $1B to walk away from US offshore wind leases

March 24, 2026 — The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy.

TotalEnergies has agreed to what’s essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday.

President Donald Trump’s administration has tried to halt offshore wind construction, but federal judges repeatedly overturned those orders.

The Interior Department hailed the “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant and said, “the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.″

Environmental groups denounced the deal as an alternate way to block wind projects, with one group calling it a “billion-dollar bribe” to kill clean energy.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

Some tariffs may be gone, but wholesale seafood industry is still reeling

March 19, 2026 — Walking into the Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center in Boston, you can smell the seafood. Which makes sense given that it’s hosting the country’s largest wholesale seafood expo. Suppliers from around the world dole out samples of fresh sashimi, crispy fish sticks, and seaweed salad.

“It’s sweet, and it’s a little bit spicy, and it’s a compliment to meat or heavier stuff,” said Camille Zhu, who runs a seaweed company on the coast of Shandong province in Northern China.

She began selling to the U.S. just last year and said it’s been hard with all the trade tensions and tariffs. But she’s confident in her product.

“People are starting to accept seaweed as a source of nutrition, and they’re looking for a healthy diet,” she said. “And with the popularity of Japanese cuisine, yeah, it’s getting pretty big for us.”

About 80% of seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported. Some of the biggest suppliers —including China and India — have seen some of the highest tariffs from the Trump administration in the past year. All that has thrown the global seafood trade into chaos.

Read the full article at Marketplace