Audrey Streb
Contributor
Fishermen in New England are calling on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to rethink federal regulations that they say pose an “existential threat” to their communities, according to a letter shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) sent the letter to DOGE Wednesday outlining the “unnecessary bloat” of federal regulations that are “destroying the fishing industry.” The group urged DOGE to begin the process of deregulating the industry by reallocating National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ funds currently used to “destroy” the industry by placing regulations that have benefitted “foreign competitors” to instead go to “supporting and marketing” the fishing industry. (RELATED: White House To Scrap Federal Climate Research Office As Part Of ‘Woke Ideology’ Cleanse)
“Fishing is one of the most dangerous and challenging trades in existence, but it is an invaluable source of food and commerce,” the letter reads. “Overregulation by climate-focused, ideological bureaucrats is destroying the fishing industry, making it nearly impossible for working-class fishermen to make a living.”
The letter follows an April 9 executive order signed by President Donald Trump to “revitalize U.S. maritime industries” and “review ways to improve competition within the private sector.” The president said in the order that the industry had been “weakened by decades of government neglect” and vowed to prioritize its restoration.
Founded in 2023, NEFSA represents hundreds of members with the shared goal of “fighting to save the American commercial fishing heritage and to preserve the opportunity for future generations to work in the fisheries providing fresh, wild-caught, protein-rich, sustainable seafood to the nation.” according to its website.
In its letter, the group specifically called on DOGE to “investigate” and “reallocate NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] funding to support the fishing industry” through subsidies for ship modernization as well as advertising fish consumption, which the group says “aligns” with the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
“Given the NOAA accounts for over half of Commerce’s budget, it is undoubtedly a ripe target for further investigation by DOGE,” the letter reads. “Indeed, DOGE was established for this very purpose — to target federal government inefficiencies that often manifest themselves as overreach.”
The letter further calls for the “elimination” of the NOAA’S Office for Coastal Management (OCM), arguing that it has been “effectively captured by environmentalist groups,” resulting in the oversupply of protected areas that prohibit fishing entirely.
The group points to over regulation as a burden on the industry, which notably increased under the Biden administration. During former President Joe Biden’s term, the NOAA proposed and expanded restricted fishing areas in New England. The administration also increased federal restrictions on allowable catches and lobster robe, though there was a seafood trade imbalance to the tune of $20.3 billion in 2023. Seafood exports from the U.S. also dropped substantially, roughly 23%, from 1995 to 2023, according to the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, the U.S. has begun to import much of its seafood from China, according to an analysis from Oceana which also found that “Americans are eating seafood from countries with a history of illegal fishing and human rights violations at sea.”
“Foreign fishers are reaping the rewards and benefiting from high demand in the United States,” the letter continues. “This trade imbalance is precisely the type of issue that President Trump has a mandate to fight.”
NEFSA’s letter also references reports that the U.S. fishing industry’s revenue dropped by a compound annual rate of 3.5% over the past five years totaling $5.9 billion, despite increasing demand for seafood. The group argues that imports from “foreign competition” serve to “fill the gap,” which is “precisely that type of issue that DOGE was designed to tackle,” in the letter.
“We feel that fishermen know how to catch a fish. They are very good at it. That is what they do. That’s what they’ve been doing since they can walk, most of them,” Dustin Delano, a fourth-generation Maine lobsterman and NEFSA’s chief operating officer told the DCNF.
Commercial fishing is a huge part of New England’s maritime heritage.
NEFSA is proud to protect this way of life for generations to come! pic.twitter.com/LSSiRXnTcn
— NE Fishermen’s Stewardship Assoc. (@fishstewardship) February 20, 2025
“It feels like we haven’t been listened to for decades,” Delano added. “It feels like when we provide comments, we show up to meetings, but the decisions are already made, and essentially we are just answering to bureaucrats that have gone rogue. They have their own personal agendas and climate initiatives that they put over us.”
The letter further references how other regulatory bodies in Canada, Iceland and Norway “protect fisheries and boost exports,” while it singles out the U.S. for being “wholly captured by environmental interests.”
NOAA has implemented policies based on “inaccurate assumptions” that lobster fisheries harm endangered whale species, which caused a “detriment” to the industry, according to the letter.
“We feel quite strongly that a lot of the actions taken over recent years have essentially catered to climate change type regulations rather than actual fisheries management. We would like to reign things back in,” Delano said. “We want to see some balanced reforms that support all of these sustainability measures, while also safeguarding our livelihoods and also food security for people.”
Delano added that many fishermen have proven themselves to be effective self-regulators in order to respect and protect the environment, such as size limits, escape vents and protecting female lobsters. (RELATED: New Federal Regulation Could Devastate Coastal Communities)
The letter also calls for reform to the Maritime Safety Administration, which the letter said “began with a worthy goal” to protect “American enterprise from foreign encroachment — the federal takeover of fishing regulation has resulted in the growth of a leviathan bureaucracy that is now doing just the opposite,” the letter continues.
Commercial fishing has been the backbone of our coastal towns for generations.
Today, government regulation threatens this way of life, but as long as NEFSA exists, we will continue to #FightSalty to protect commercial fishing. pic.twitter.com/5ixb6pLoSe
— NE Fishermen’s Stewardship Assoc. (@fishstewardship) January 8, 2025
“Climate-change hysteria has resulted in the establishment of projects detrimental to [the] U.S. fishing industry by the NOAA,” the letter reads.
Delano further called attention to the several offshore wind projects in New England, which were also championed under the Biden administration.
“It’s impossible to have offshore wind and do commercial fishing in the same area,” Delano said, and referenced a memory in which a fisherman from the UK told him to “fight like hell” against the expansion of offshore wind. “We’ve been extremely fearful up here in New England for offshore wind development.”
Delano noted that the fisheries are looking to this new administration as “potentially a friendly atmosphere” to try and accomplish their goals to “allow access to an extremely sustainable fishery.”
“I think that most fishermen are going to be some of the most environmentally conscious people that you’ll see,” Ed Wenger, NEFSA’s outside counsel told the DCNF. “They understand the importance of our natural resources.”
Wenger said that these changes will “make the fisheries themselves more lucrative and make sure that they continue to feed the American families from coast to coast.”
The White House, NOAA and the MSA did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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I have no knowledge of the US fishing industry, but I can say that the UK fisherman probably feels equally betrayed. Since what has become Brexit in name only, the EU has been desperate to gain access to British waters, and similarly Starmer has been beavering away, feverishly, on “agreements” that gradually drag us back into the orbit of the EU – without consulting those pesky voters.
“Starmer’s ‘liberation day’ from Trump lies in a new EU customs deal”
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/starmer-customs-arrangement-eu-trump-vance-b2734268.html
“UK-EU summit: To talk defence, Starmer has to talk fishing first”
https://www.cityam.com/uk-eu-summit-to-talk-defence-starmer-has-to-talk-fishing-first/
“President Trump’s tariff announcement has been seized upon as an excuse for deepening UK-EU cooperation. Government officials from both sides now indicate that a defence and security pact is likely to be finalised at the EU-UK summit in London on May 19th. Meanwhile, talks over fishing rights – which the EU has long been pushing for a hard cave-in – are ramping up, with a deal either signed or committed to at the summit. Those 92 EU surrender staff have been busy…”
https://order-order.com/2025/04/08/starmer-to-make-major-concessions-in-new-eu-reset-deal/
I guess they don’t like it up ’em
“Brexit fishing row as Belgian trawlermen arrested in UK waters – ‘Treated like criminals'”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2042229/brexit-fishing-row-belgian-trawlermen
They were.
I hope your fishing industry fares better than ours under the net zero lunacy…
“Labour launches net zero crackdown on boats
Maritime bosses warn ‘nonsensical’ measures could sink the British fishing industry overnight” – Daily Telegraph
Speaking of your fishery, I seem to remember some decades ago about burning their boats in Scotland. This is part of what they have to deal with. It’s too much an unscientific presumption of guilt. In fact, some considered that the assumption was that they were responsible unless proven otherwise. I haven’t studied these, but doubt that they did their homework.
Williams, R. S., et al, Sea temperature and pollution are associated with infectious disease mortality in short-beaked common dolphins, Communications Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-025-07858-7
Byers, J. E. Marine parasites and disease in the era of global climate change. Annual Review Marine Science. 13, 397–420 (2021). Author has a number of papers on the subject.
This is part of what I posted before about commercial fishing. I wouldn’t have standing on cold water but I was at an American Fisheries Society meeting in Halifax in the mid-1990s when the cod catch cratered, but lobsters and other fish subsequently increased. It didn’t help to have heavy fishing, but there was an ignored paper about the physical changes that happened. Check out (Bundy, A. 2005. Structure and functioning of the eastern Scotian Shelf ecosystem before and after the collapse of groundfish stocks in the early 1990’s. Canadian Journal Fisheries Aquatic Science. 62:1453-1473. ).
I once told an oyster fisherman that they were ‘predators,’ but had to clarify that it was not pejorative but just one of many of such that must be considered. I worked with Gulf of Mexico fisheries modelers with scientific sense, it ranged from danger of extinction to needing a bounty depending on the assumptions. Academia is part of the problem. Activists/advocates are a minority but get the most attention and cause the most trouble.
https://spectator.org/higher-educations-7-deadly-sins/
More like phishing
As a lobsterman in Maine I can tell you it has been death by a hundred paper cuts. We have spent thousands on gear modifications to save the Right Whales only to see them killed by the offshore wind industry. No regard for what these floating wind turbines will do to the ocean bottom, change in surface currents etc Strangulation by regulation is what we have to contend with, it is never enough.
I think help is on the way. Trump likes cutting regulations, and he doesn’t like windmills.,
And the tariffs on the EU and China will hopefully make wind and solar prohibitively expensive.
Maybe imported fish, too.
What about the states? Are their “burros” as bad as the feds regarding the fishing industry?
DOGE has no authority whatsoever, it is a PR exercise. What really counts is two things:
1) If an agency has exceeded its statutory authority, sue. The current SCOTUS is a fervent supporter of the Constitutional balance of powers reserving policy making to the Legislative branch, not the administrative branch
2) Lobby Congress to amend current laws as necessary to emasculate and even de-authorize agencies that harm American freedoms and economic productivity.
But it costs money to sue, governments have deep pockets and nothing but time for that sort of thing, and there are always multiple layers of regulations that the legislation requires you to follow before you get to that point, which if you don’t explicitly follow will result in the rejection of your lawsuit.
Plaintiffs sue all the time. Quite often their suits – if the plaintiff is not a deep pocket – are funded by third party legal aid groups that come in various ideological and political flavors. There are no layers of regulations that prohibit or slow down lawsuits. A plaintiff simply files, and goes through the pretrial processes (discovery and motions and determination by the court if the plaintiff has standing to sue), and that’s it.
The most consequential anti regulatory lawsuit of all time, Loper Bright vs. Raimondo that resulted in SCOTUS overturning the Chevron doctrine, was paid for entirely by Cause of Action, a legal organization that works for Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by anti-regulation advocate Charles Koch. Loper Bright Enterprises is a small family business – fishermen. The legal services provided by Cause of Action were reportedly offered at no cost to the fishing companies involved.
The administrative state is bureaucratic, the judicial branch is not.
Filing lawsuits is how our system is SUPPOSED to work – that is the exercise of our first amendment right to petition the government. It’s in the Constitution.
Keep in mind that many of the lawsuits filed were funded by NGO’s which were given Federal grants.Tracking and cutting off that money flow has cut down on the corruption and use of taxpayer dollars for political purpose, etc.
There have been over 60 years of extreme political bias warping the US population, it will take a while to clean it out.
If tax-payer dollars are being wasted by an Executive Branch agency, why wouldn’t DOGE have some authority?
True, DOGE can’t make or rescind regulations itself, but they can certainly point out waste.
DOGE does not actually exist as an agency of the Federal government – it is just a name. It is composed 100% of citizens acting in a solely advisory capacity with no authority to cut spending or eliminate entire agencies that Congress has created and appropriated funds for. Congress never authorized DOGE and it is unlikely ever to create such an agency, given that it has generated such white hot opposition from people including Republicans and conservatives who disparage their lawless unauthorized actions. Even the President of the United States has no authority to cancel an agency, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. Only Congress can tax and spend, not the President.
That’s how our Constitution works, and that is how it is supposed to work. We are not a dictatorship run by the whims of one elected official. Nothing in our government can act alone without the consent and cooperation of all three branches of government.
This is basic citizenship 101 stuff.
DOGE has found at least $150 billion in waste, fraud and abuse.
DOGE has found that millions of illegal aliens were given social security cards which would allow them to vote in U.S. elections.
DOGE does not cut spending or fire employees, Trump and the Department Secretaries do that, and are authorized to do so.
I think a Republican Congress will make DOGE permanent. DOGE is being established in numerous U.S. States (Red) at the present time.
I don’t know of any Republicans or conservatives who think DOGE is performing “lawless unauthorized actions”. I don’t know of any lawless actions being performed by DOGE. They are operating perfectly within the law and the constitution.
The President of the United States has the authority to cancel spending that is authorized by bureaucrats in the Executive Branch. Congress does not detail every expenditure made by the U.S. government, they leave a lot of these decisions to the bureaucrats of the Executive Branch.
Example: The Congress allocates money to reduce hunger, and the Executive Branch bureaucrats decide where the money should be spent. In this case, the president can direct that an Executive Branch bureaucratic decision be reversed, and it’s all perfectly legal. The president is reversing a bureaucratic decision, not a congressional decision.
The congressional decision was to leave the spending details to the bureaucrats, which means the president is the one who ultimately decides. You don’t think Congress specifically authorized spending on Transgender education in Nepal, do you? Of course, they didn’t. This spending was a bureaucratic decision, subject to reversal by the president.
What you describe above is *not* how our constitution works.
Exactly, and just because Congress allocates certain funds to a particular department, that doesn’t obligate the Executive Branch to spend all of it. The Executive needs to go back to Congress to authorize additional funds but not to give some back
There is likely no segment of the US economy that hasn’t suffered the choking reach of government.