TRUMP ISSUES EXECUTIVE ORDER TO "RESTORE" RECREATIONAL FISHING

 

On September 17, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Restoring American Saltwater Angling and Recreation.”

And yes, it was at least as bad as you probably expected.  It was as if the Eye of Balor had finally focused on the federal fishery management system, and began killing off its core components.

For those unfamiliar with Celtic mythology, Balor was king of the Fomorians, a race of misshapen giants, or perhaps demons, which came from beneath the sea, and were described as

“phenomenally ugly, and celebrated this ugliness, even driving out children who were normal in appearance, taking deformities as a mark of favor from their dark gods.  One Fomor might have a large arm and a small arm, while another might have two heads, and another three eyes!

“Other tales claim they were born whole enough but became strange in mind and appearance after exposure to the occult ur-light, degenerative radiances and blasphemous smokes of their eldritch rituals.”

The Eye of Balor appears to have sprung out of the latter tradition, as it gained its “immense destructive power” after Balor

“peered into a potion, [and the eye] turned venomous and caused death to anyone it gazed upon.”

Which is a pretty good analogy for what happens when Trump gets involved with fisheries management issues.

In some ways, this Executive Order came as no surprise, although there are rumors that many people within the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t know it was going to happen.  My second blog post of 2026 warned that

“We can expect the sportfishing industry to take advantage of the current administration’s hostility to conservation measures, and its support for corporate profits, and become ever more aggressive in weakening federal fisheries management while trying harder to warp state and regional fisheries management toward greater exploitation and greater short-term economic benefits for the fishing industry, regardless of the long-term impacts on fish stocks.”

The recent Executive Order pretty well evidences that truth, and is undoubtedly the result of some major campaign contributors (and one of the things I keep wondering, ever since the EO came out, is whether Trump charges more or less for an Executive Order than he does for a pardon) talking to people high enough in the administration, and getting their priority issues included in the document. 

I don’t know whether the Executive Order was actually written by administration staff, or whether it is written by industry counsel and then just handed over to the administration for edits (the language of the document suggests that the latter might be more likely), but we can be pretty sure that Trump, who has never evidenced any interest in outdoor sports, had no idea what he was signing when he issued the EO.  Anyone who doubts that statement need only refer to his comments about another executive order, intended to facilitate sport hunting, that was issued the same day.  In that case, he said

“Lead ammunition was a problem, huh?  Is it better than other ammunition?  I assume, huh?  That’s pretty good.”

Calling him “clueless” when it comes to sportsmen’s issues would be pretty kind, although I suspect that he’s not clueless at all about who made the donations that, in his mind, justified issuing the saltwater angling-related Executive Order.

The topics included \in the EO were, for the most part, also no surprise.  Some, including the sections “Agency Implementation,” “Modernizing Data Collection Infrastructure for Recreational Catch-and-Effort Estimates,” “Restoring Integrity to Fisheries Science and Data,” and “Managing Predators” were foreshadowed in the NMFS Leadership Message issued on September 2.

And while there were some new items that the administration hadn’t seemed to focus on before, such as addressing “the decline of iconic recreational fisheries, such as the Atlantic striped bass,” “Fast-Tracking Artificial Reefs and Habitat Creation,” and “Projects for Increasing Fish Abundance,” all are presented with characteristic industry and Trumpian twists. 

New scientific efforts to conduct striped bass research (as well as research on “other depleted stocks”) will be conducted in order to

“test innovative solutions for achieving sustainable fisheries management that maximizes fishing access.  [emphasis added].”

The Executive Order talks about “Fast-Tracking Artificial Reefs and Habitat Creation,” but is primarily focused on turning played-out oil rigs (“and other-use structures with the exception of infrastructure associated with offshore wind energy [emphasis added]”) into permanent artificial reefs, a long-time goal of the red snapper-obsessed Coastal Conservation Association, and with

“the placement and management of artificial reefs within National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine National Monuments,”

which would seem an act of vandalism particularly attractive  to this administration, given its record of hostility to both National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine National Monuments.  The fact that the Executive Order would consider “habitat creation” at all is somewhat curious, given the administration’s recent actions to remove habitat damage from the list of items constituting a “take” of a listed species under the Endangered Species Act.

But then, I suspect perspective changes when donations are involved.

And the EO’s concerns with “Projects for Increasing Fish Abundance” seem to have nothing at all to do with improving spawning habitat, nursery areas, or other habitat areas of particular concern.  Instead,

“Agencies are encouraged to transition habitat restoration metrics toward production-based goals,”

which means, if you don’t speak bureaucratese, shifting away from promoting natural reproduction in recovered habitats to pumping out truckloads of hatchery-generated rubber fish of various species, with little regard for natural reproduction, native runs, or healthy ecosystems.

Which makes the whole “habitat creation “ point seem that much more hypocritical, although to be fair, it would seem that the habitat creation visualized by the Trump administration would involve toppled oil rigs, sunken vessels, and similar scrapyard-based efforts, rather than restoring anything originally created by nature, so maybe it isn’t quite as hypocritical as it first seems.

Needless to say, the recreational fishing industry is falling all over itself to praise the Executive Order.  

Jeff Angers, president and panderer-in-chief for the Center for Sportfishing Policy, gushed that

“This Executive Order is a historic recognition of what millions of American anglers and coastal communities have known for decades: marine recreational fishing deserves a management system built for the way Americans fish.  By prioritizing better data, stronger state partnerships and modern management approaches, President Trump’s order builds on our conservation gains creating a path to more reliable access and opportunity in America’s oceans.”

Glenn Hughes, president and CEO of the American Sportfishing Association, declared that

“The American Sportfishing Association thanks President Trump for his decisive action to improve management and data collection for America’s saltwater fisheries.  This Executive Order will have long-term benefits for the sportfishing industry and America’s 15.5 million saltwater recreational anglers.”

At the National Marine Manufacturers Association, President Frank Hugelmeyer said,

“Recreational boating and fishing are the foundation of America’s outdoor heritage and an important driver of our nation’s recreational economy.  Today’s actions further reaffirm the importance of ensuring Americans can access and enjoy our nation’s waters.  Access supports American manufacturing jobs and small businesses across the country.  Thank you to President Trump and his administration for recognizing the value of outdoor recreation and the American industries and communities it supports.”

And down in Houston, Texas, Pat Murray, president of the Coastal Conservation Association, also made his ritual obeisance to Trump, figuratively kissing the President’s ring while declaring,

“We’re grateful the Administration has taken this opportunity to emphasize the social and economic importance of recreational fishing.  State-based management has never been more important for our federal fisheries, and we applaud this critical need being highlighted in this Executive Order.”

It’s probably important to note that while the industry spokesmen all praised the benefits that the EO will bring to the fishing industry and to recreational fishermen, none even tried to suggest that it would improve the health of sustainability of the nation’s saltwater fish stocks. 

We should probably be grateful for that tiny sliver of honesty.

But otherwise, the Executive Order is about what one would expect. 

“To effectuate the policy described in section 1 of this order, all relevant executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall partner with States and the private sector to vigorously rebuild, expand, permit, and modernize data collection.  All such agencies shall eliminate unnecessary restrictions that harm our coastal economies, burden charter fishing businesses, and limit public access to our marine resources.  Furthermore, it is the policy of my administration to demand accurate cutting-edge data collection and empower State-Federal partnerships to produce the information needed for responsible management…

“…the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works shall, consistent with applicable law, take steps to initiate action to suspend, revise, or rescind regulations that overly burden boaters, anglers, and outdoor businesses.”

To achieve those goals, the EO directs the Secretary of Commerce to

“review targeted National Standards Guidelines issued under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act…for consistency with the purpose of this order.  Specifically, the Secretary shall, at a minimum, consider revising the Guidelines for National Standard 1 (Optimum Yield) and National Standard 2 (Best Scientific Information Available) to ensure they appropriately account for the unique biological, economic, and social characteristics of the recreational fishery, and to facilitate the rapid integration of State-level data into Federal management decisions, where appropriate.”

The Secretary of Commerce would also be expected to overhaul and/or replace the current Marine Recreational Information Program used to estimate recreational effort, catch, and landings with a new approach to data collection that would rely much more heavily on state-supplied data, while also generating

“a list of key species to use in partnership with the recreational angling community, charter captains, and State agencies to gather real-time data, deploy advanced tagging technologies, and improve catch-and-release mortality estimates,”

and developing

“a comprehensive 5-year strategic plan with clear implementation milestones to improve the collection, analysis, and application of recreational fisheries economic data to support fisheries management.  This plan shall ensure that the economic impact and value of recreational fishing, including for-hire fisheries and shoreside support industries, is fully accounted for in Federal fishery management decisions and harvest opportunities,”

thus moving the emphasis in management decisions away from good science, conservation, and sustainability and toward the economic aspects of fisheries management.

At the same time that was going on, the Executive Order would have NMFS and other relevant agencies working to relieve the regulatory and administrative burden on recreational fishermen and the recreational fishing industry, creating more artificial fish habitat (while making it easier to destroy natural structures and waterways that constitute critical habitat for various marine species), killing off more of the sharks and seals that steal anglers’ catch, while increasing fish abundance through projects that deemphasize habitat restoration in favor of “production-based goals.”

In other words, the Executive Order is just about what one would express when an angling industry focused on short-term profits buys the ear of an administration that seeks to monetize the nation’s natural resources, with neither side of the transaction having much, if any, regard for those resources’ long-term health or sustainability. 

You end up with fisheries, and a fishery management system, that look like they’ve suffered the gaze of Balor.

Speaking for myself, and I suspect for a lot of saltwater sport fishermen, we’d be far happier with an administration that ignored all of this fancy Executive Order stuff, and just managed to get the cost of diesel back under $5.00 per gallon.  Under $4.00 would be even better.

That would do more toward “restoring American saltwater angling and recreation” than all of the executive orders ever issued, the most recent order included.