Trump Restores Fishing Access to Marine National Monument

(Reuters) – President Donald Trump will sign a proclamation on Friday restoring commercial fishing access to a marine national monument off New England, according to a White House official.

The move aligns with the Trump administration’s efforts to cut regulations it deems burdensome to businesses and economic activity.

The proclamation will reopen the nearly 5,000-square-mile (13,000-square-kilometer) Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, designated by former President Barack Obama in 2016 to protect species including deep-sea corals, sea turtles, and whales.

Trump first opened the monument to fishing during his first term in 2020, but that decision was reversed by former President Joe Biden in 2021.

The decision supports fishing communities, economic activities, and jobs, stated the White House official.

A recent aerial survey of the monument by the New England Aquarium, backed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, found over 600 animals, including a humpback whale calf and bottlenose dolphin calves, the group reported on Facebook on Friday.

Peter Auster, research professor emeritus of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut, noted the monument serves as an essential reference site for understanding the impact of human activity on marine life.

> “Without protected areas like this that exclude commercial scale activities, we have no measure of how human uses elsewhere at sea impact biodiversity,” Auster said.

The monument is the second that Trump has opened to fishing since his second term began in January. On April 17, he signed an order opening 400,000 acres of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing.

The administration’s regulatory freeze has caused chaos and uncertainty in the nation’s $320 billion fishing industry this spring, delaying the opening of some East Coast fisheries and leading to overfishing of Atlantic bluefin tuna, as previously reported by Reuters.