Marine Monument, about 150 miles off the coast of New England, is home to lots of marine life, like sensitive deep sea corals and right whales.
Trump permits Marine Monument fishing
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | JUNE 7th 2020
Areas off the coast of New England are to be opened up to commercial fishing by the Trump administration. A decision that will, according to experts, be fairly damaging to the environment as a result.
Oceanic experts have expressed their most cautious concerns regarding United States President Donald Trump’s decision to ease down on protections for a large marine monument off the coast of New England. The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine national monument rollback of protections is bound to prove hurtful to the environment, they said.
They added that the decision, made to assist fishermen who’ve been struggling with their businesses at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, will not be beneficial even to the them simply due to the fact that the decision will not help fishermen find buyers for what they’ve already caught.
The announcement, made by President Trump himself, follows an array of other such announcements made by members of the administration, trying to weaken protective stances on environmental subjects over the course of the pandemic.
“This rollback essentially sells off the future of the ocean and the future of the ecosystem for almost no present economic benefit,” said the ocean policy director at the Centre for American Progress (CAP), Miriam Goldstein. “[That’s] why it’s so puzzling to do it at all and even more puzzling that the president is doing it now, in the middle of the pandemic and with police riots going on around the country.”
Another major announcement by the administration involves the signing of an executive order, signed by Trump himself recently which would allow the bypass of reviews regarding large infrastructure projects, held off previously due to the fact that they were assessed as potential threats to public health.
“Even fishing done well still has an impact, so for that reason it’s important to have special areas of the ocean set aside. And this has been shown through a lot of science, that it is beneficial to ocean ecosystems, to biodiversity, to threatened and endangered species – and beneficial to those fisheries themselves.” Goldstein added.
Goldstein specified that she fully understands the pressures put on fishermen and aquaculture growers in coastal communities as well as the difficulty of their work during the COVID-19 pandemic, the struggles they’re going through. She expressed, however, that there exist better options that the administration could have taken to help these communities.
The area in question is located around 130 miles away from Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. It’s known to contain endangered species, such as the right whales and the sensitive deep sea corals. As well as this, the protected area is only one among five marine monuments in the United States, with the other four areas located in the Western Pacific Ocean.
Threats of lawsuit were quick to be announced by environmental protection groups. This would be another lawsuit atop others, given that the Natural Resources Defence Council is already in the middle of a similar lawsuit against the administration, for the act of opening up two monuments in Utah for the mining industry – Bears Ears, and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
“The ban on commercial fishing within Marine national monument waters is a regulatory burden on domestic fisheries,” reads a letter sent on 29 May to the commerce department from the US Regional Fishery Management Councils, making the same arguments since the year 2016.
“As a recreational fisherman, it troubles me to see the monument opened to commercial fishing,” said Rip Cunningham, the conservation editor at Saltwater Sportsman and former chair of the New England Fishery Management Council. “These are fragile and vulnerable resources, and I am concerned for their future health.”
By Patryk Krych | © The World Daily 2020
