3.) Environment/climate change
It’s not an issue anyone really wants to be dealing with, but unfortunately, climate change is a fact, and one that will dramatically change the seafood industry.
However, President Trump does not acknowledge there’s a problem to be dealt with, and his plan to “explode fossil fuel development across the nation” will only exacerbate the already near-certain odds that the world’s oceans will be irrevocably altered as a result of the effects of climate change – namely, rising water temperatures.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the fishing industry is doomed. From the Gulf of Maine, where waters are warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, to the Gulf of Alaska, there will be winners and losers among the popular species we consume as seafood. If you’re in the seafood industry, it might be a good idea to start studying up on how the species you deal in and places you fish (see the likely fate of Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati) might be affected.
On another environmental front, Trump is unlikely to follow his predecessors’ examples and unilaterally create any marine monuments (as both Obama and George W. Bush did). Trump may even seek to undo the creation of those monuments, which may be good news to the lobstermen and crabbers who are counting down the days they have left fishing the waters now designated part of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
