NOAA Fisheries has opened a public comment period for feedback on how the agency should implement U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.
“Through our implementation of the President’s Executive Order, NOAA Fisheries is aiming to address the recent decline in fisheries landings and revenues,” NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator Eugenio Piñeiro Soler said in a release. “We look forward to receiving input from the public.”
Trump issued the executive order 17 April, directing Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and NOAA Fisheries to identify fisheries regulations to streamline or eliminate.
“Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce shall identify the most heavily overregulated fisheries requiring action and take appropriate action to reduce the regulatory burden on them, in cooperation with the Regional Fishery Management Councils, interagency partners, and through public-private partnerships, as appropriate,” the executive order stated.
The order also directed Lutnick to develop an “America First Seafood Strategy.”
NOAA Fisheries claims to be working on several areas to implement the president’s demands, including changing regulations, reviewing commercial fishing restrictions in marine national monuments, assessing its strategies for improving data collection, and updating the Seafood Trade Strategy.
Now, the agency is inviting public comments and suggestions across several broad areas, including:
- Fishing regulations that should be suspended, revised, or rescinded;
- Challenges facing fisheries and suggestions for improvements;
- Expanding exempted fishing permit programs; and
- Ways to improve fisheries management and science.
On the last point, the government is looking at cheaper yet more reliable technologies and research that can support fisheries assessments and ways to modernize data collection.
“What types of data, forecasting tools, or information products are most needed by U.S. fishing businesses to adapt their operations effectively to changing economic and/or environmental conditions and maintain access to fishery resources, and how can NOAA Fisheries best support the development and dissemination of such resources?” NOAA Fisheries noted in its release.
NOAA Fisheries will hold two public listening sessions via webinar: the first on 25 September at 4:30 p.m. EST and the second on 1 October at 4:30 p.m. EST.
The Federal Register document for the public comment period is scheduled to go live 27 August. Feedback can be submitted through 14 October.
Democrat lawmakers have questioned whether the Trump administration’s agenda – which has included slashing funding and staff at NOAA Fisheries – aligns with his purported aim of improving the domestic seafood sector.
“I hope to work with the administration and my colleagues and the majority to achieve that goal, but I don't see how the administration is going to succeed when it spent the last four months haphazardly cutting the funding and workers that our fisheries rely on,” U.S. Representative Val Hoyle (D-Oregon) said during a June House Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee hearing titled “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.”
