Seafood Industry Urges Biden to Halt Expansion of Marine Monuments

Several dozen seafood industry, related business entities and coastal communities are urging President Biden to halt proposals to create or expand any marine national monuments in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) during his final days in office.

The group told Biden in a Nov. 18 letter that between 2006 and 2016, five marine national monuments spanning nearly 1.2 million square miles of ocean were created in the U.S. EEZ by presidential proclamations, so that over one-quarter of U.S. ocean territory is now part of a Marine Protected Area where commercial resource extraction is prohibited.

Further reliance upon the Antiquities Act to proclaim additional tracts of ocean territory off limits to fishing and other sustainable uses would cause significant negative impacts, the group contends.

As ocean ecosystems undergo increasingly rapid change, the U.S. fisheries management provides a far stronger framework for establishing effective and durable area-based conservation measures than does the Antiquities Act, the group said.

“As ocean warming causes shifts in the distribution of fish stocks and other marine biota, fisheries scientists see it as prudent to provide managers with flexibility to distribute fishing effort across areas over time in ways that best achieve defined objectives, including conservation objectives,” the letter contends.

Area-based conservation measures adopted by the eight regional fishery management councils now protect ecosystems covering a significant percentage of the U.S. EEZ, the letter points out.

The group also said the Highly Migratory Species Division of the National Marine Fisheries Service monitors and manages an extensive system of science-based spatial for U.S. Atlantic HMS fisheries reflecting both Magnuson-Stevens Act conservation mandates and U.S. obligations under the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

Likewise, NMFS actively manages a range of area-based management measures for the conservation of U.S. HMS fisheries in the Pacific pursuant to the U.S. obligations under the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), the letter said.

The group also cited the acute economic hardships being faced presently by the commercial fishing industry, plus federal government actions encouraging offshore wind development in some of the nation’s most historically important fishing grounds.

Source: https://fishermensnews.com/seafood-industry-urges-biden-to-halt-expansion-of-marine-monuments/