New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts Archives

National Marine Monument off New England coast?

September 12, 2016 — The third installment of the Our Ocean forum will convene in Washington, D.C., this week and the betting window is open on whether the Obama administration will use the event to announce the designation of new National Marine Monuments.

No one — neither conservationists nor fishing stakeholders — claims to know exactly what will happen when the two-day, international event opens Thursday. But it has not escaped anyone’s attention that the Obama administration has used the same forum in the past to make similar announcements.

[In March], in a victory for fishing stakeholders, the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality removed Cashes Ledge, which sits about 80 miles off of Gloucester, from consideration as a possible site for a new National Marine Monument.

The Obama administration’s decision not to use the Antiquities Act to designate any portion of Cashes Ledge as a monument validated fishing stakeholders and others who characterized the proposal — which originated with the Conservation Law Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pew Charitable Trusts — as an end-run around the existing fisheries management system and wholly unnecessary given the existing protections already afforded the area.

Cashes Ledge currently is closed to commercial fishing.

In the wake of that defeat, conservationists redoubled their lobbying efforts, urging Obama to invoke the 1906 Antiquities Act to unilaterally designate a number of potential sites, including canyons and seamounts off southern New England and off the coast of Monterey, California, as Maritime National Monuments.

“All eyes are on the canyons and seamounts,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Undersea monument plan advocates hear fishermen’s concerns

August 31, 2016 — MYSTIC, Conn. — One hundred and fifty miles east of Cape Cod, a unique undersea landscape of deep canyons and high mountains supports a diverse ecosystem, abundant with colorful corals, fragile sponges, beaked whales, dragonfish and mussels adapted to living in methane hydrate seeps, that is being considered for protection as a National Monument.

Two leading advocates for the designation, which would be given by President Barack Obama under the American Antiquities Act before he leaves office in January, explained why they are lobbying for the designation Tuesday to an audience of both conservation advocates and commercial fishing representatives concerned about losing valuable fishing grounds.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Peter Auster, retired University of Connecticut marine science professor and currently the senior research scientist at the Mystic Aquarium, made their case for declaring the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts as a Marine National Monument during a program Tuesday evening at the aquarium.

But commercial fishing groups say the designation would cut off their access to productive areas for red crab, swordfish, tuna and offshore lobster harvests, among other species.

“Those areas have been used for hundreds of years,” said Joe Gilbert, owner of Empire Fisheries, which has operations in southeastern Connecticut and elsewhere along Long Island Sound.

He and other fishing representatives argued that if Obama uses the executive authority afforded him in the Antiquities Act to designate the area a monument, the federal and regional fisheries regulatory processes that require public input would be circumvented.

“We feel disenfranchised at this point,” Gilbert said.

Eric Reid of North Kingstown, R.I., who represents commercial fishing interests on the New England Fishery Management Council, said creating the monument would cause “localized economic damage” to the already stressed fishing industry, and advocated for a compromise being recommended by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Read the full story at The Day

Environmentalists push for Atlantic Marine Monument

August 30, 2016 — President Obama made history last week when he more than quadrupled the size of a protected marine area off the coast of Hawaii, safeguarding fragile coral reefs and thousands of species that depend on the Pacific Ocean habitat.

Now conservationists hope the administration will protect the Atlantic Ocean’s deep-sea treasures.

Conservationists have called on the president to use his executive power to designate 6,180 square miles encompassing eight canyons and four seamounts as the New England Coral and Seamounts National Monument.

If the president heeds their advice, fishing groups warn the move would shut down portions of a productive $15 million lobster and crab fishery along the edges of the offshore canyons—and unnecessarily outlaw fishing within the zone’s borders for tuna and other open-ocean species that pass through the water column but don’t dwell on the seabed.

“What’s at issue is the lack of transparency in establishing a national monument,” said Robert Beal, executive director of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is in charge of managing near-shore fishery resources for 15 coastal states. “If these large boxes are drawn and large areas of the ocean are deemed off-limits, than there is going to be a lot of fishing opportunities displaced or stopped altogether.”

Typically, state and interstate fishing councils are part of the public debate on determining fishery closures and habitat protection zones. That’s how the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council moved to ban bottom trawling in 2015 along more than 35,000 square miles of seafloor from Long Island to North Carolina, just south of the proposed national monument area.

But with the Antiquities Act—a law presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have used to protect iconic landscapes such as Mount Olympus in Washington, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and Muir Woods in California—Obama could decide to fully protect the region without input from the fishing industry.

Past presidents have mostly used the authority to preserve land from development. The first president to use the power offshore was George W. Bush, who established the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in 2006.

“It’s frustrating because that power is meant to close off the smallest amount of area as possible that needs protecting, and that’s not the case here,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a fishing industry advocacy group.

He said the proposed national monument boundaries outlined by Connecticut’s congressional delegation and led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., bans fishing far away from the most sensitive coral habitat and could unnecessarily hinder fishing industries that don’t target bottom-dwelling species. Vanasse’s group, along with the fisheries commission, is asking that if the regions are declared a national monument, fishing be allowed up to depths of 3,000 feet.

“If they really just want to protect the seamounts and the canyons, why would you want to stop fishing over them?” Vanasse said. “You don’t tell planes to stop flying over Yosemite.”

Read the full story at Take Part

Battle over Cashes Ledge continues between fishermen, environmentalists

August 29, 2016 — Despite the Obama administration’s declaration that Cashes Ledge has been taken off the table as a possible location for a marine national monument, the divisive issue of the monuments continues to percolate nationally between fishermen and conservationists.

From Hawaii to New England, the lines are clearly drawn.

Conservation groups have sustained a steady lobbying campaign to convince President Obama to employ the Antiquities Act to create new marine national monuments in the waters around Cashes Ledge, about 80 miles off Gloucester, and the seamounts off southern New England and Monterey, California.

On Friday, Obama ended a contentious process in the Pacific Ocean when he expanded an existing marine national monument area in the northwest Hawaiian Islands to create the largest protected area on Earth — 582,578 square miles.

Fishing stakeholders and fishing communities have countered with their own public campaign that sharply criticizes the collateral impact of closing more areas to commercial and recreational fishing, as well as the method of using the Antiquities Act as an end-run around the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act.

“The Antiquities Act does not require transparency or a robust analysis of the science,” the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition said in a statement. “It does not require any socioeconomic considerations be taken into account. No process is required other than an executive action by the president of the United States.”

The coalition and others, including several members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation and Gov. Charlie Baker, have tried to drive home the point that the current system of federal ocean management requires fishing businesses and communities to follow the established and intricate regulatory procedures established under Magnuson-Stevens.

To allow the creation of marine national monuments by what amounts to presidential fiat, they say, is unfair to those who have operated under the established rules and makes a mockery of Magnuson-Stevens.

“The New England Fishery Management Council is in charge of carrying out this requirement in our region,” the NSC said. “Last year, the council approved Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2 and is presently working on an Omnibus Deep Coral Amendment. These areas include the very areas now proposed and under consideration for a national monument.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

New Bedford Standard-Times: Stakeholders deserve open process in monument designation

August 26, 2016 — Today, the Standard-Times in New Bedford, Mass., the highest grossing seaport in the country, dedicated its opinion section to the issue of marine monuments designated by executive authority under the Antiquities Act. This was done in conjunction with today’s announcement that President Obama will quadruple the size of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii.

In its editorial, the Standard-Times noted that a monument designation off the coast of New England “lacks checks and balances that would deliver a better policy” and that environmental groups have pushed for a monument in secret “in order to gain an advantage over industry and other stakeholders.”

Together with today’s editorial, the Standard-Times published letters to the White House by two coastal mayors, Jon Mitchell from New Bedford and Clyde Roberson from Monterey, Calif., questioning the efficacy of offshore monument designations and asking for a more transparent process. The following is excerpted from the Standard-Times’ editorial:

The National Park Service was established 100 years ago when President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Organic Act.

The 84 million acres under the NPS is a treasure that belongs to all of us, and we applaud efforts to expand the protection of our natural resources, but we also recognize some such efforts go too far, including in the push to establish a national monument off the New England coast.

The Canyons and Seamounts are indeed precious resources, but the scope and the current process being advanced by environmental organizations lack checks and balances that would deliver a better policy.

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell last week sent a letter to the acting director of the Council for Environmental Quality, a White House agency that advises the president on such issues, noting the push for the seamounts monument has kept stakeholders from participating in the process.

Indeed, we have previously reported on efforts by environmentalists to keep their advocacy for the monument designation a secret in order to gain an advantage over industry and other stakeholders.

The president did not go along with the environmentalists last fall, and it is our fervent hope that if he isn’t advised by CEQ to pursue the more open process, the duty to represent and hear all stakeholders will prevail.

See today’s opinion page in the New Bedford Standard-Times

Read the full editorial at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Read Mayor Jon Mitchell’s full letter here

Read Mayor Clyde Roberson’s full letter here

Fishing industry fears Obama’s power over coastal waters

August 25, 2016 — The prospect that President Barack Obama could designate as marine monuments areas off the Massachusetts and California coasts is being met with resistance from various fishing groups and port-town mayors. If Obama uses his authority under the Antiquities Act to name as federal monuments the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts, and many of the seamounts, ridges and banks off California’s coast, commercial fishing would be significantly restricted and the viability of two of the country’s most important fishing ports would be threatened — Monterey, Calif., and New Bedford, Mass., (the nation’s highest-grossing fishing port), the mayors of those ports argued in letters to the White House on Wednesday.

The mayors — Jon Mitchell of New Bedford and Clyde Roberson of Monterey — and industry groups, like the National Coalition for Fishing Communities, also argue such actions would sidestep the fishery management system overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which makes decisions based on scientific analysis and public input to ensure the sustainability of seafood stocks.

Read the full story at POLITICO

Marine Preserve Proposal Ignites Debate Over Fishing

August 22, 2016 — Proposals to create a vast national marine preserve off the New England coast are generating a whirlpool of debate that’s sucking in commercial fishermen, recreational anglers, environmentalists, multistate bureaucrats and politicians.

Environmental groups are calling on President Barack Obama to use his executive powers to establish a 6,180-square-mile New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts national monument. They insist it would protect a unique and ecologically critical marine environment lying about 150 miles off New England’s shores.

If Obama heeds those calls, virtually all fishing and commercial operations such as oil and undersea mining would be banned within the new national preserve.

The controversy has exposed deep fault lines between commercial fishermen fiercely opposed to new federal restrictions on their industry and many recreational anglers who argue the preserve would benefit fishing in the region.

Interstate fisheries councils and commissions involved in regulating fishing along the Atlantic coast are also involved in an effort to protect their jurisdiction over the proposed preserve.

The leaders of eight U.S. regional fisheries management councils have written to Obama warning that creation of the proposed marine monument would ignore federal mandates to “achieve optimum yield from the nation’s fishery resources and may negatively impact jobs and recreational opportunities.”

Read the full story at the Hartford Courant

New Atlantic Marine Monument Poll Presents Misleading Picture of the Issues

July 12, 2016 (NCFC) — Yesterday, a poll released by the Protect New England’s Ocean Treasures Coalition claimed that 80 percent of Massachusetts and Rhode Island residents support national monument designation for certain ocean areas. However, the survey questions selectively presented information to respondents, withholding information about existing protections in the proposed monument areas.

The poll, conducted by Edge Research, a suburban Washington, DC polling company with a specialty in ocean conservation issues, consisted of phone interviews with 400 residents in Massachusetts and 403 residents in Rhode Island. Respondents were presented with questions that minimized the economic impacts of a potential marine monument.

When asked about the monuments, respondents were told, “protecting these areas would prohibit the fishing activity in these limited areas and could result in a small adverse economic impact on commercial fishing.” [emphasis added]

But according to fishermen themselves, the economic impact of a marine monument could in fact be devastating – potentially costing the industry millions of dollars and thousands of jobs. The affected areas are important grounds for the valuable red crab, swordfish, tuna, and offshore lobster fisheries. This has led the affected fisheries, as well as virtually the entire New England fishing industry and its regulatory bodies, to unite in opposition to the current monument proposals.

The pollsters also repeatedly asked whether respondents supported federal protections for the areas in question, without mentioning the protections already in place under the current management system. These protections include the prohibition of federally managed fisheries from using bottom-tending gear in Cashes Ledge, one of the areas under consideration.

Several leading fisheries management bodies have made it clear that they support the current public and transparent process for habitat and fisheries management. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission passed a resolution in May asserting its preference for using the current process, under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, to develop protections for the proposed monument areas.

Also in May, the Council Coordination Committee, comprised of all eight regional fishery management councils in the U.S., stated its support for the “public, transparent, science-based process and management” of fisheries required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law governing fisheries management in the country. Marine protections enacted under this process are not mentioned as a potential alternative in the poll.

The press release accompanying the poll states that Edge Research “is recognized as the chief pollster for ocean issues.”

The Edge Research principal named in the release, Lisa Dropkin, is described as having “conducted research for a host of conservation organizations, including The Ocean Conservancy, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Environmental Defense Fund, and World Wildlife Fund.” She also chairs Green Media Toolshed, “an application service provider supporting media communications for environmental organizations,” which lists among its goals strengthening the “ability of conservation groups to influence national, regional and local media.”

In June 2015, Edge Research “partnered with the David & Lucile Packard Foundation to conduct new research on American Millennials’ attitudes towards oceans, ocean conservation, and pathways for engaging this next generation of ocean leaders.”

There is no indication on the Edge Research website that they have ever done work for the commercial fishing or maritime shipping industries.

The Protect New England’s Ocean Treasures Coalition, which is advocating for a Marine National Monument in the North Atlantic Ocean, is composed of Center for American Progress, Conservation Law Foundation, Earthjustice, Environment America, Mystic Aquarium, National Geographic Society, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, New England Aquarium, Ocean Conservancy, Oceana, and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

About the NCFC
The National Coalition for Fishing Communities provides a national voice and a consistent, reliable presence for fisheries in the nation’s capital and in national media. Comprised of fishing organizations, associations, and businesses from around the country, the NCFC helps ensure sound fisheries policies by integrating community needs with conservation values, leading with the best science, and connecting coalition members to issues and events of importance.

AP: Conservationists keep pressing for Atlantic Ocean monuments

July 11, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by the Associated Press. In it, representatives of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) call for President Obama to use executive authority under the Antiquities Act to designate multiple national marine monuments off the coast of New England.

Last month, eight members of the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC) and the valuable fishing port of New Bedford, Mass., united in opposition to proposed Atlantic monuments. The groups agreed that fishing areas and resources should continue to be managed in the open and transparent manner stipulated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).

Previously, many of the environmental groups calling for Atlantic monuments expressed support for fisheries management under the MSA. In December, Pew called the MSA “the bedrock of one of the world’s best fishery management systems.” In April, the CLF wrote that the MSA is “the primary reason why the United States can say that it has the most sustainable fisheries in the world.” In February, the Environmental Defense Fund said that the MSA “has made the United States a global model for sustainable fisheries management.”

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Environmental conservationists aren’t giving up on trying to persuade the White House to designate an area in the Gulf of Maine as a national monument.

In the final months of President Barack Obama’s term, they’re hoping he’ll protect an underwater mountain and offshore ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine known as Cashes Ledge. They also want him to protect a chain of undersea formations about 150 miles off the coast of Massachusetts known as the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality said in March, and reiterated last week, that while the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts area is under consideration, Cashes Ledge currently is not. There are no marine national monuments in the Atlantic Ocean.

Robert Vanasse, executive director of the fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood, said environmental groups seemed to be “in denial and shock” after the White House first said it wasn’t considering Cashes Ledge in March.

“I think they overplayed their hand. They arrogantly seemed to think that they could dictate to the White House,” he said on Wednesday.

Vanasse said fishing interests are now taking the White House at its word that Cashes Ledge is off the table. The industry is already struggling with quota cuts and climate change.

Commercial fishing groups oppose creating any marine monument in the Atlantic under the American Antiquities Act because the decision is left entirely to the president, Vanasse said. There are existing procedures to protect areas where the public participates in the process under the top law regulating fishing in U.S. oceans, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, he added.

“We’re not the fringe nutcases here,” Vanasse said. “It’s pretty much every non-environmentally subsidized fishery organization that is opposed to the use of the Antiquities Act to create marine monuments. The Magnuson-Stevens process works. It could be better, but it’s working.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald

Seafood Industry Airs Views During Congressman’s Visit to New Bedford Waterfront

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell (left) and Rep. Rob Bishop (right) discuss fishing issues in New Bedford on Thursday, June 2. (Photo: House Natural Resources Committee)

June 3, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by the New Bedford Standard-Times:

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A congressman from the Mountain West got a full dose of a New England coast Thursday, as seafood and fishing industry representatives aired their views on several contentious issues — including the ongoing marine monument debate — during a whirlwind tour of New Bedford’s waterfront.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, visited the city to get a firsthand look at the highest-value commercial fishing port in the country. Numerous industry leaders from across the region took the opportunity to speak to the committee chairman, particularly about the push for monument status in the New England Canyons and Seamounts, about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

Eric Reid, a general manager with Rhode Island frozen fish business Seafreeze, told Bishop during a noontime forum at the New Bedford Whaling Museum that economic impacts from monument status, which would restrict commercial fishing, could cost $500 million and “countless jobs.”

Reid unfurled a map of ocean waters on a Whaling Museum table and pointed out to Bishop where he felt commercial fishing businesses could, and could not, survive if a monument status was put in place. Reid suggested a line of demarcation in the Canyons and Seamounts area, where bottom-fishing would be allowed north of the line but not to the south.

“We can protect the industry, and we can protect the corals,” Reid said, urging that “pelagic” fishing, or fishing that occurs well above ocean floors, be allowed in both zones.

Bishop called the map an “extremely good” start to alternative proposals for which he could advocate as the issue unfolds in coming months, during the final stretch of President Barack Obama’s administration.

Bob Vanasse, a New Bedford native and executive director of Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization Saving Seafood, said Bishop’s visit hopefully was the first of many lawmaker visits facilitated by the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC). Saving Seafood launched the coalition last fall, with members that span the country and include New Bedford’s Harbor Development Commission.

“We want to bring these members of Congress who have jurisdiction over the fishing industry, to visit the ports that their laws regulate,” Vanasse said. “This is the kind of communication effort that the National Coalition is about.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford-Standard Times