September 19th, 2016 — America is well-known for its glorious and plentiful national parks, and at a conference taking place in Washington, DC this week, President Obama made the dramatic declaration that he was signing an executive order to create the very first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean. The almost-5,000-square-mile area—called the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument—lies off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts and has been dubbed an “underwater Yellowstone.”
But although conservationists are hailing the president’s move as “phenomenally exciting,” fishermen in the area are not so psyched. To say the least. They’re accusing Obama of legislating from the White House—a power, the lobstermen and crab fishers of Massachusetts say, he simply doesn’t have. There’s also the very real concern among the community that the administration is selling out hundreds and hundreds of sustainable fishermen in favor of environmental grandstanding that ignores the real culprits.
The area in question is a phenomenal expanse of extinct volcanoes, underwater forests, canyons, and reefs filled with endangered and exotic species. But it is also a place that has provided a livelihood for generation after generation of fishermen, especially those focused on red crab and lobster. If all goes according to plan, the area will be off limits to them in seven years and the good times will be over.
MUNCHIES spoke with Bob Vanasse of the National Coalition for Fishing Communities, who said about the designation, “I don’t know anybody in the fishing community who is in favor of it.” Vanasse said that the local fishermen believe their point of view was wholly ignored before the order was enacted. He believes that by creating the monument in an executive order, President Obama sidestepped the process of running the idea through Congress, which would have entailed a “consultative process where environmentalists, the industry, and regulators are involved and what comes out is reviewed by an agency for a year or more before it gets published in the Federal Register. This executive order is a short circuit around all of that—and that’s the reason it’s frustrating.”