New Attitude in Washington Will Devastate Our Marine Environment

All politicians make promises they can’t keep. It’s part of the game! And yes, it is a game. Our representatives keep talking about our precious eco-system but have never passed a cohesive marine policy. The United States is a hodgepodge of federal, state, county, and town governments and agencies that fashion marine laws and rules that are at best pieced together with twice used painter’s paint. (By the way, if you learn how to “Cut” corners with a good brush, you won’t need tape and you’ll get done faster. But, as usual, I digress!)

On Aug 17, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order claiming he will restore the American commercial seafood industry and is intent on erasing the $20 billion dollar gap between home fished and imported seafood. I want to make it clear that I have always been pro-American commercial fishing but always within the realm of being “Sustainable” particularly when it comes to keeping foreign fleets out of our waters. The Achilles “fin” is, how does the country enhance domestic seafood and EXPORT without striping our marine environment clean. Can American waters sustain much larger scale commercial fishing for our home market so that we import less and ALSO supply our fish to the world markets. The President is not a fan of many environmental issues as he has shown by opening public forests to the lumber and paper industries. Does he know what he is doing on the subject of commercial fishing?
His intentions as outlined in his executive order concerning commercial fishing is to increase the size and modernize American fleets. Obviously, he is following the example of countries such as China, which has an historically insatiable appetite for marine products and has large modern fishing fleets roaming the world scooping up every type of fish, and seafood while encroaching on other countries fishing rights to feed their own populations and export overages for profit to other countries. China fished out 88.6 million tons last year, the most by far by four times the amount of the next fishy country. All this spring the enormous Chinese fishing fleet has been robbing the marine territories of Argentina, Peru, Chile, with well over 300 ships stripping these and other countries of their marine fishery reserves. The number of sharks taken for their damn “Shark Fin Soup” is immoral. China’s own adjacent waters are virtually fished out. And this is what Donald, with all his infinite business acumen, wants to compete with. Instead, he should be proposing a World Fishing Treaty to control the eventual complete devastation of all stocks. The next highest fish producers are Indonesia, (22m) India, (16m) Vietnam, (9m) Peru, (5.5m) and Russia (5.3m). The United States landed approximately four million tons which does not meet our domestic needs causing us to import 90% of the seafood consumed. Some countries, including the U.S. have been moving to more fish agriculture. This impacts “wild caught” fish in two directly opposing ways. It takes some pressure off wild stocks but also pollutes surrounding waters with chemicals used in the fish foods.
Here is the background leading up to Trump’s action in this industry. Our home fishing fleets are on the average quite old in comparison to other countries. We also have maintained a tighter control of our fishery starting with the Magnuson – Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of fifty years ago. Its objectives included – preventing overfishing, rebuilding overfished stocks, increasing long term economic and social benefits, ensuring a safe and sustainable supply of seafood and protecting habitat needed for fish to spawn, breed, feed, and grow to maturity. It also extended U.S. waters from 12 to 200 miles from our shores, which has been very important. The Act was re-authorized in 2007 which added establishing annual catch limits, strengthened science oversight. There have been additional provisions in 2011 to improve the conservation of sharks and in 2018 to address regulation of recreational fishing.
Now let’s look at Trumps executive order and how it corresponds the above. The president is well known for his dislike of trade imbalances and the United States has a reputed $20 million negative seafood trade deficit. His executive order states that the USA should develop an “America First Seafood Strategy to promote both domestic production and exports to become the world’s largest seafood supplier. The order outlines achieving his goals by increasing investment in modern fleets, modernize all data systems and technology for fishing management, expand aquaculture development, support maritime jobs, coastal economies, national food security, explore traceability, legal actions against illegal, unreported, unregulated foreign competitors by stronger monitoring and holding imports to the same standards as our domestic seafoods as presently only 2% of imports are allegedly inspected! (Yuk! I’ll be grossed out at this year’s “Seven fishes dinner Christmas Eve”. Actually, I grew up poor. We only did “Two fishes”, one being a sacrificial goldfish from my fish bowl.)
Some of these changes are warranted but there is also great danger here. The presidents opening up of marine reserves will be catastrophic to marine life renewal. These areas are officially called Marine Protected Areas of “MPAs”. With Trumps new edict 490,000 square miles of the National Pacific Marine Reserve will now be open to commercial fishing. This is a super-rich marine environment surrounding our Island possessions in the Southern Pacific and have large thriving coral communities and are home to unpressured populations of Pelagic fish, sharks, whales, and immense verities of fish and crustaceans. In addition, there are regional fish sanctuaries off central Oregon, Monterey Canyon, Farallon Islands, Olympic Coast, and Channel Islands on the west coast, a large area, south of Cape Cod, Florida Keys. Garden Banks, Gray’s Reef, to name a few.
The problem with the President’s unilateral decision without considering the view of major marine environmentalists is this. He has and will continue to defund more and more marine government agencies, scientific studies will go out the scuppers, and there will be no accounting of the status of our fishery. More fish sanctuaries will be opened up with a flash of his sharpie pen. It’ll be ‘Fish, fish, fish, until the nets are pulled in empty. This I guarantee! Jesus will not be there to help fishermen fill their nets this time. If the President succeeds in building largest and the most modern fishing fleet in the world, it could be a death knell for ocean sea life. Nothing will be left. The reason is simple. It will become a fishing war and other countries will enlarge and modernize their fleets as they try to scoop up as much fish as the USA and China. One thing is for sure, and this is a warning to the smaller independent generational fishermen out there. If you think you are going to benefit from Trump’s 140th executive order from his addressing the fishing industry, my well-founded guess is ‘’BEWARE” of the government bearing gifts of golden nets! I’ll place my bet that this entire misadventure is going to be handed on a platter to large corporations who will give not one flying fish about our independent home fleet fishermen or fishery stabilization.
One way that makes sense is to put the money into helping our present fisherman modernize or replace their vessels. One of the major costs for our commercial fishermen is fuel. The government should help to develop much more efficient engines for our fishing fleet. We should also let environmental science and invention find new ways to eliminate destructive by catch and most of all, work with our present fisherman to be successful while managing our fish stocks. There is not one commercial fisherman who wants to “deep six” his business and way of life by overfishing! I will always err on the side of smaller home fleets as opposed to building a worldwide competitive commercial fishing corporation which fish the oceans “DEAD”