Deep-sea octopus on Bear Seamount within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the coast of New England Photo: NOAA
Happy World Ocean Day, held every year on the 8th of June to celebrate the oceans and to take action to restore and protect them. This year the day’s theme is ‘Innovation for a sustainable ocean.’
Unfortunately, the current US administration seems determined to move backward rather than forward on the protection of the ocean. Late last week, the current occupant of the Oval Office announced, while on a trip to Maine, that he intended to open the first and only Atlantic marine sanctuary to fishing and to cancel the planned phase-out of lobster and crab fishing in the area.
The monument includes three canyons and four seamounts that contain fragile and largely pristine deep marine ecosystems and rich biodiversity, including important deep-sea corals, endangered whales, and sea turtles, other marine mammals and numerous fish species.
The sanctuary, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, was established by President Obama in 2016 and is approximately 4,913 square miles (12,724 square kilometers), located about 130 miles east-southeast of Cape Cod.
Should the current administration act on their promises, the result will be the subject of lawsuits by environmental groups related to the 1906 Antiquities Act and the power it gives presidents over national monuments. While the law gives a president the right to designate monuments, it does not expressly allow the president to modify them.
While Trump claims that fishing prohibitions in the sanctuary hurt Maine, fisherman, the sanctuary is out of range for most Maine fishermen. Some see the administration’s promises as an attempt to placate the Maine fishing industry, which has been hit hard by tariffs resulting from Trump’s trade wars between the United States and China.
Guy acts like he was elected by a majority, a big one. Dumping WHO, exiting treaties, generally behaving as though he’d obtained broad, definitive permission to represent most of us. He didn’t. He’s tolerated like a fart in a crowded elevator. He should be walking on tiptoe.
Democratic or Republican, supermajority, just skating by, or party underdog: we’re _all_ constituents.
I do not wish to get involved in another country’s politics, but hope that after DT is voted out of office whoever becomes the next PotUS does a better job.