Titled “Advancing Agency-Level Reforms to Restore American
Seafood Competitiveness,” the message reflects the efforts of NOAA Fisheries
Assistant Administrator Eugenio Pineiro Soler to comply with Executive
Order 14276, “Restoring American Seafood Competitivenes” which, among other
things, calls for the agency to
“unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and
inefficient regulation,”
instructs that
“The Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the
Secretary of Health and Human Services and with input from the United States
fishing industry, shall immediately consider suspending, revising, or
rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s commercial fishing,
aquaculture, and fish processing industries at the fisheries-specific level,”
and directs that
“The Secretary of Commerce shall request that each Regional
Fishery Management Council, within 180 days of the date of this order, provide
the Secretary of Commerce with updates to their recommendations submitted
pursuant to Executive Order 13921 [issued in 2020], to reduce burdens on
domestic fishing and to increase production.
Building upon the earlier goals, identified actions should stabilize
markets, improve access, enhance economic profitability, and prevent closures.”
Assistant Administrator Soler wrote in the message that
“Over the past year, I have met with fishermen, processers,
coastal community leaders, and regional fishery management council members and
staff across the country. In every
harbor and at every meeting, the message has been consistent: American
fishermen just want to fish, and they need their government to clear the
bureaucratic barriers standing in their way…
“Today, I am announcing NOAA Fisheries’ priorities for
agency-level actions in support of the Seafood Executive Order. It will serve as our operational roadmap for
regulatory, scientific, and administrative reform. Informed by the 787 public comments submitted
under the 2025 ‘Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness’ Executive Order (EO
14276), these priorities focus strictly on the policy levers directly within
the agency’s authority…
“NOAA Fisheries will pursue the actions outlined below
immediately as we look forward to that broader strategy [which is currently
being formulated]. We are moving away
from regulations that treat domestic harvesters like a problem to be managed,
and toward a science-based, common-sense system that recognizes the importance
of those who feed our citizens and the communities that they support.”
“Calls for modernization and a return to a true risk-based
regulatory structure, rather than the inertia of persistent bureaucratic
expansion, could go a long way to mitigating the operational and administrative
burdens the agency has committed to reduce.”
“Conservation and competitiveness go hand in hand because
fishing communities need abundant fish stocks, and fish stocks need a healthy
ocean. The guideposts of sustainable
fisheries management, the ‘National Standards’ laid out in the Magnuson-Stevens
Act, America’s premier fishing law, helped American seafood back from the brink
because they encourage management with an eye to the future…
“The agency also says it will weaken protections for
ecologically important habitats, even though we know fisheries will suffer when
habitats are degraded by damaging fishing gear, mining, or other extractive
activities…
“Weakening the standards and science that protect fish stocks
is not the path to strong fishing communities and continued opportunity for
future generations. At risk are not only
the species that power our seafood economy, but the whales, turtles, fish and
corals that make up a healthy and productive ocean.”
And there is little question that the “reforms” being proposed
by NMFS will weaken the National Standards, increase the risk to managed fish
stocks and protected marine resources, and emphasize short-term economic gains
over long-term sustainability.
Updating the National Standards, and what is being called “regulatory
reform” will probably have the greatest impact on targeted fish stocks. Certainly, the first subheading of that section
of the Leadership Message, “Reforming Endangered Species Act Section 4, Section
7 and the Definition of ‘Harm’” gives cause for concern, as it talks about NMFS’
intent to
“Reform Endangered Species Act processes by finalizing joint
rules with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Section 4 [designating threatened
and endangered species, as well as critical habitat] and Section 7 [interagency
consultations and cooperation]. Work
with U.S, Fish and Wildlife Service and Office of Management and Budget to expand
economic impact analysis for critical habitat designations specifically
focusing on any downstream economic impacts on commercial fishing and other
maritime activities stemming from the designation. Streamline Section 7 interagency
consultations to eliminate bureaucratic backlogs that delay fishery management
plans and fleet operations through stricter timelines, limiting the use of
overly conservative ‘worst-case scenario’ assumptions and prioritizing
empirical, consistent data in biological opinions.”
While the Endangered Species Act, in a fisheries management
context, is most often associated with various species of sea turtles and
marine mammals, people often don’t realize that 28
distinct populations of Pacific salmon and steelhead (sea-run rainbow) trout
are also listed as either endangered or threatened. Basing the definition of critical salmon/steelhead
habitat on economic, rather than strictly biological, considerations could
easily lead to endangered wild salmon runs being extinguished, and the
population driven into extinction, if habitat degradation, which may include
commercial fishing in areas where endangered fish are particularly vulnerable, is
permitted.
The Trump Administration has already taken action that
allows critical habitat for endangered species to be degraded, changing a
long-time interpretation of the law that equated harm to or destruction of
critical habitat with harm to any threatened or endangered species that were
dependent on that habitat. On
July 10, it issued a regulation that deleted the definition of “harm” from the regulations
interpreting the Endangered Species Act, which
definition had previously read
“an act which actually kills wildlife or injures
wildlife. Such act may include significant
habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures
wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns,
including breeding, feeding, or sheltering.
[emphasis added]”
Amending fishery management plans to accord with that
deletion will allow the destruction of critical habitat for threatened and
endangered marine resources, which could include damage caused by fishing gear,
as well as damage to critical habitat for anadromous species such as salmon and
steelhead caused by dams, irrigation water drawdowns, industrial effluents,
warm water discharges, and similar threats to fish survival.
Possible changes to the National Standards could have a much
broader impact, affecting just about every managed fish stock. In the case of National Standard 1, the
Leadership Message states NMFS’ intent to
“fully utilize existing flexibilities to improve catch limit
utilization by increasing use of carryover or other flexibilities and providing
technical guidance to prevent unnecessary fishery closures,”
approaches that focus management measures on landing the
entire quota for a particular stock, rather than on ensuring that any such
quota will not be exceeded.
Potential changes to National Standard 2 are perhaps more
troubling, for that National Standard requires that fisheries management
measures are based on “the best scientific information available,” while the
proposed changes seem aimed at degrading the quality of fisheries science, as
NMFS attempts to
“Establish protocols for integrating industry-collected data
into stock assessments while exploring how to better incorporate social and
economic expertise from fishing partnerships, including leveraging commercial
vessels as scientific platforms and fishermen as scientific partners into its
decision-making processes under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”
The decision as to what data is appropriate to include in
stock assessments should be one made solely by stock assessment scientists, who
can evaluate the available data, including industry-collected data, determine
whether it is statistically valid and relevant to their assessment of the
particular stock.
Biologists should not be forced by NMFS to incorporate data
that they would not otherwise incorporate into a stock assessment, whether for
reasons of data quality, inherent bias, or any other cause. Anyone
who has attended fisheries meetings has undoubtedly heard recreational and
commercial fishermen complain that the data is “bad,” or “wrong,” often because
biologists conduct random surveys rather than targeting local concentrations of
fish then way that fishermen do, or because scientists use less efficient gear
than that used by fishermen. Sometimes fishermen
object to the data just because they don’t like what it says. Intentionally opening up stock assessments to
such biases could only degrade the quality of both the data and the assessments
that result.
Other proposals, such as “National Standards and
Recreational Fishing,” which is described as
“Review the National Standards Guidelines to ensure they
fully and appropriately account for the unique biological, economic, and social
characteristics of recreational fisheries,”
and “Essential Fish Habitat Practicality Application,” in
which
“NOAA Fisheries will not implement regulatory measures based
solely on Habitat Areas of Particular Concern designations and instead apply
the ‘Essential Fish Habitat practibility’ standard to ensure protections are
balanced with economic interests”
also have the potential for serious mischief on the part of
the agency, which could easily result in degraded fish stocks.
That issue comes up again in another one of the categories, “Transforming
Fisheries Science through Cooperative Partnerships, Innovative Technologies,
and Data Pipelines,” which appears to be largely a giveaway to the
recreational fishing industry, which has long complained about the Marine
Recreational Information Program, which is used to develop recreational catch,
effort, and landings estimates. For many
years, the recreational industry has been trying to replace MRIP with a series
of independent state data collection surveys, all of which are a little
different, and none of which can be compared to one another without first going
through an state-by-state calibration process, but which—to the industry—seem to
justify the extra trouble because they tend to produce lower harvest estimates
than MRIP does, and thus allow longer seasons and probably put more fish in
anglers’ coolers, both things that tend to increase industry profits.
MRIP
has, admittedly, overestimated recreational fishing effort in the past, leading
to overestimates of catch and landings, but those problems have recently been
resolved, and there is no reason to believe that MRIP is currently any less
accurate than existing state programs, although some state programs may be
designed to better deal with short seasons, seldom-caught species, and in-season
management.
Still, the Leadership Message announced NMFS’ intention to
“Remodel recreational catch estimates by co-designing shared
governance data collection frameworks directly with state agencies to replace
legacy Marine Recreational Information Program structures,”
apparently whether or not states wish to do so and whether
or not all states have the financial and personnel resources needed to support
the new data collection approaches.
Not surprisingly, other initiatives announced under this
category deal with red snapper, which has been a hot-button fish for the
recreational industry for the past 20 years.
Thus, we see NMFS intending to
“Coordinate with South Atlantic states and the South Atlantic
Fishery Management Council to implement state-managed exempted fishing permits,
which will allow for more accurate red snapper discard accounting [although
NMFS doesn’t explain why such accuracy would improve] in the South Atlantic and
provide better data to inform future stock assessments and management
decisions,”
But, apparently, NMFS wants to try again.
NMFS infatuation with red snapper—or, more accurately, the
recreational fishing industry’s political connections within the
Administration, which makes it responsive to the industry’s infatuation with
red snapper—also led to a proposal to “Prioritize South Atlantic Red Snapper in
SouthEast Data, Assessment, and Review (SEDAR), in which NMFS would
“Use the results from SEDAR 90 South Atlantic Red Snapper to
ensure catch limits are based on current, robust science. Ensure the SEDAR process considers the
results from the South Atlantic Red Snapper Research Program,”
the latter sentence again raising the problem of politicians
and appointed administrators, rather than fisheries scientists, dictating what
should be included in a stock assessment, and thus potentially skewing the assessment
results.
Most of the rest of the section—other than one proposal to
use acoustic tagging to determine whether the sandbar shark population in the Gulf
of Mexico has migratory and resident components—deals with adopting new
technologies, including AI and angler-focused applications. There aren’t enough details to tell whether
some of those proposals might be beneficial, and make the data collection process
more accurate and more efficient, although the likelihood is that some would
improve then fishery management process.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that the recreational fishing
industry will—at least for the duration of this administration—always have its
thumb on the scale, and will be trying to skew the data collection process to
favor those surveys and processes which result in lower landings estimates and
more liberal management measures.
They have been doing that for more than a decade, and are
unlikely to stop doing so now, when they enjoy the friendliest political
climate they are ever likely to encounter.
The third big category—although it will have a greater
impact on protected resources than it will on targeted fish stocks—is “Protected
Resources: Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection Act Management.”
As the title suggests, NMFS populated this category with
multiple proposals that would sacrifice whales, pinnipeds, sea turtles, and
other creatures so that commercial fishermen can harvest more fish. Thus, we see proposals to further endanger
the already critically
endangered North Atlantic right whale, including one, “Vessel Speed Rule
Modernization,” that would supposedly
“integrate technological advancements into North Atlantic
right whale strike reduction strategies, reducing unnecessary burdens while
ensuring responsible conservation practices,”
although what criteria will be used to determine whether a
burden is “unnecessary” or a particular conservation practice is “responsible”
isn’t explained at all, and another, “Northeast Lobster Fishery and North
Atlantic Right Whale,” which assures lobstermen that
“NOAA Fisheries will not mandate the use of ropeless
gear. Ensure that any decision support
tools or other models used by the Take Reduction Team have been independently
and empirically reviewed and any future Large Whale Take Reduction Plan is
based on the best available data rather than worst-case scenario modeling,”
even though one might argue that, with
NMFS itself admitting that there are only about 70 reproductively active
females in the entire North Atlantic right whale population, we already entered
the worst-case scenario some years ago.
“Entanglements in fishing gear is one of the primary threats
to North Atlantic right whales. NOAA
Fisheries and our partners estimate that over 85 percent of right whales have
been entangled in fishing gear at least once,”
and that
“Vessel strikes are another primary threat to North Atlantic
right whales…Vessels of any size can injure or kill a right whale. The faster a vessel is traveling when it hits
a whale, the higher the likelihood of serious injury or death,”
yet it is planning to cut back on the “burden” of vessels speeding around known
right whale locations, and is doing little or nothing to prevent entanglements
in fishing gear, so maybe the agency just views the worst-case scenario of
possible extinction as an acceptable risk, and less important than maintaining
or increasing fishing industry profits.
The same sort of sentiments seem to apply on the Pacific
coast, where NMFS proposes to
“launch a ‘Gold Standard’ science review of entanglement risk
models for the Dungeness crab fishery and clarify the regulatory scope of the
West Coast Take Reduction Team,”
which probably shouldn’t be surprising, given that increasing
numbers of humpback whale entanglements have led to changes being made to the
Dungeness crab fishery, which in turn led to unhappy crab fishermen and another
political effort to subordinate the health of then whale population to economic
concerns.
Pinnipeds—seals and sea lions—also seem to have swum into
NMFS’ crosshairs, with one proposal to
“Conduct a biological and economic impact analysis relative
to California and Stellar sea
lions [the latter listed under the Endangered Species Act] and harbor seals
on depredation of valuable stocks in U.S. fisheries and, in collaboration with
industry, convene a workshop to explore administrative flexibilities for
non-lethal deterrents.”
While the mention of “non-lethal deterrents” makes that
proposal seem relatively benign a second proposal would have NMFS
“Work with Congress to provide greater flexibility for the
removal of sea lions under section 120 for managers to further the goal of rebuilding
fisheries and supporting the long-term sustainability of fishing communities,”
which seems to suggest that the only reason non-lethal
deterrents are being proposed is that current law makes it difficult to employ
anything else, and that if and when the law can be changed, lethal “removal”
will immediately be on the table.
A third seal-related proposal almost sounds benign. It would have NMFS
“Review methodologies for assessing long-term threats to
ice-associated seals for Endangered Species Act listing and critical habitat
determinations including State of Alaska data, and how current long-term
modeling accounts for present population data.”
But
given that NMFS already says that
“We do know that ice seals are highly dependent on suitable
sea ice condition and distribution for resting and nurturing their pups.
“Concern about loss of sea ice habitat in the current warming
climate has been the basis for petitions to NOAA Fisheries for listing all four
species as threatened of endangered under the Endangered Species Act,”
and given that the entire thrust of the Leadership Message
is to propose regulatory actions that would reduce the regulatory burdens faced
by commercial fishermen, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the “Ice Seals”
proposal is intended to find an excuse not to list those seals
under the ESA, rather than finding an way to protect them.
Which would be completely consistent with the current
administration’s natural resources philosophy.
Sea turtles, too, would be placed in greater jeopardy by a
proposal to
“Review and revise turtle excluder device regulations, if
appropriate, to incorporate vessel size exemptions and regional flexibility,
particularly in the Gulf of [Mexico], conserving sea turtles while ensuring
operational practicability and safety for small vessel fleets.”
Other proposals would provide fewer Endangered Species Act
protections to Pacific salmon, and investigate the impact of the shrimp fishery
on smalltooth sawfish and giant manta rays.
Again, given the context in which the proposals appeared, it’s not
likely that they are intended to help conserve any of the species cited.
The other three categories are much narrower in scope, and
address things like allowing commercial fishing within national marine
monuments, providing loans and other capitalization for the domestic fishing
fleet (remember when the
original Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 created problems by
doing that sort of thing, in its original attempt to “Americanize” the fishery?),
and improve the seafood import monitoring program.
For at least the past quarter-century, the National Marine
Fisheries Service, using the tools provided by the
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, has done a very
good job of managing the nation’s living marine resources, promoting
science-based management, reducing the number of stocks experiencing
overfishing and fully rebuilding 52
once-overfished stocks.
Now, guided by Trump’s executive order, the agency seems
intent on abandoning its commitment to long-term sustainability, undoing at
least some of its past successes, and exposing United States fisheries to
significant additional risk in order to boost the short-term income of the
commercial and recreational fishing industries.
It will be another 28 months—nearly 2 ½ years—until another
administration takes over the White House, and hopefully reverses all—or at
least, with luck, most—of the bad fishery management decisions that will be
made between now and then. But even if
it has the best of intentions, no new administration will be able to fix the
damage overnight.
Habitats will have been damaged. Some, like slow-growing
deep-water corals, could take centuries to recover. Vulnerable fish stocks, if they become
overfished, could take decades to rebuild.
Currently endangered species, such as the North Atlantic right whale and
some salmon and steelhead populations, could be driven to extinction, and removed
from the face of the Earth, never to return.
There is no reason to believe that such possibilities worry
an administration focused on short-term economic gain, regardless of consequences.
Thus, in the short term the only hope will come from
Congress and the courts. Congress—if the
mid-term elections erode administration support—will probably try to prevent
the worst abuses, but its power will be limited, as any legislation it passes to
conserve fish stocks can, and almost certainly will, face a presidential veto.
The courts offer more hope, for just as the district court for
the District of Columbia enjoined the exempted fishing permits for the recreational
red snapper fishery in the South Atlantic, other courts can and hopefully will
act if and when NMFS again acts illegally.
But for that to happen, there needs to be people and organizations
willing and able to retain counsel and make a principled stand.
That isn’t always going to happen.
So yes, the recent Leadership Message outlines a very real
threat to the health of the nation’s fish stocks, and to protected resources as
well. We can, unfortunately, expect some
of that threat to manifest itself, and for resources to suffer as a result. We can hope that other efforts to overexploit
or otherwise threaten marine resources will be thwarted, whether in Congress or
by the courts.
But have no doubt that the next 28 months will see the
fishing industries and the administration try to drag the management process
back into the bad old day before 1996, when science was trumped by economic
concerns, and fish abundance quickly declined.
Citizen-led efforts might thwart some of those efforts, but others will
inevitably prevail.
It will take a lot of time and effort to fix the resulting
damage. And some things, like
extinctions or profound habitat damage, may end up being beyond repair.
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