Many Maine fishermen are applauding a new executive order from President Trump, which calls on the federal government to identify and roll back regulations that are overly burdensome to the commercial fishing industry.
The order signals that the Trump administration wants to listen to commercial harvesters and involve them in decision-making and research, said Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen's Association.
"There are a lot of regulations that you could take a scalpel to, right? We can clean things up," he said. "There's a piling up regulations that takes place over time, and so I think it needs to be done carefully."
Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen's Stewardship Association, described the order as a "long time coming." Many of his members have long questioned the data that federal fisheries regulators use to conduct stock assessments and set stock limits.
"Most of the coastal fisheries are not even seeing the problem with our resources, other than the rules and regulations, which are holding us back from supplying the U.S. populous with wild, heart-healthy product," he said.
Environmental groups, however, caution that the rollback of too many regulations could deplete fishing stocks and harm endangered species that need protection.
The executive order also calls on the Agriculture and Commerce Departments to work together and create stronger U.S. markets for domestically-harvested seafood. More than 80% of seafood consumed in the United States is imported.
"We have a lot of fishermen who aren't fishing right now, not because there aren't fish in the ocean, but because they can't get paid for it when they come back to shore," Martens said. "We turned over 20,000 pounds of flounder into lobster bait last summer, because we didn't have markets to sell it into. Those are problems we have to solve."
But Martens stressed that any deregulation must be done with a healthy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has already lost staff and faces more workforce and budget cuts.
NEFSA, meantime, recently wrote to the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, detailing a long list of ideas for overhauling NOAA and the "fishing bureaucracy." The group recommended, for example, that the Trump administration reduce NOAA staff who focus on Endangered Species Act functions.
