The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is a vibrant reservoir of biodiversity, a home to many endangered species, and an irreplaceable jewel of the Atlantic Ocean. Naturally, the Trump administration is trying to open this protected marine ecosystem to dangerous, destructive, commercial fishing.
CLF, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Zack Klyver, a veteran whale watch observer and advocate, is suing to challenge the legality of Trump’s proclamation to reopen the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing, arguing that it violates the Antiquities Act.
Passed in 1906, the Antiquities Act grants the U.S. president the authority to create national monuments from federal lands and waters to protect vital natural, historic, or scientific resources. While the Act empowers the President to designate a monument, it does not grant the authority to undo or diminish those protections. In fact, the power to take back such protections lies solely with Congress.
This rollback of the national monument’s core protections will harm the unique deep-sea corals, marine mammals, and other incredible wildlife living in this ocean habitat. It will harm us, as the ocean already bears the brunt of the climate crisis. And it will not provide any relief to the New England fishing communities that the president claims to care about.
Critical Ocean Ecosystems Are Under Threat
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts is the only fully protected area in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean, covering about 1 percent of New England’s waters. Fully protected means no commercial fishing, no sand and gravel mining, no oil and gas drilling, no industrial development of any kind. Free from these threats, a rich diversity of ocean wildlife – from ancient deep-sea coral and dense schools of fish to pods of dolphins, porpoises, and whales – thrive within the monument’s boundaries.
The national monument, made up of three canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon and four extinct underwater volcanoes, was designated both for its rich biodiversity and its scientific value. Many rare species have been discovered in the canyons and seamounts of this ocean habitat. With every new research expedition, we’re still discovering new species and gaining new ocean knowledge.
The canyons cut deep into the continental shelf and are home to a rich food web – including krill and small deep-water fishes like hatchet fish and lantern fish. At the canyon heads, scientists have seen layers of krill over a hundred feet thick and extending for miles out from the canyon wall. This makes the water above the canyons an ideal feeding ground for animals like squid and forage fish, as well as top predators like whales and dolphins.
Canyons support so much of the marine ecosystem that they have been called “keystone structures.” Like a keystone species, this ocean ecosystem depends on the health of these structures and would change dramatically without them.
The seamounts rise thousands of feet from the ocean floor. They create oases in the ocean that provide migratory predators like tunas, sharks, and marine mammals, plenty of food. They also support communities of species native to the seamounts.
At Bear Seamount, the most studied of the monument’s seamounts, surveys have documented a wide diversity of animals, like fishes, squids, and crustaceans, several of which were new records for the region or species rarely seen on our side of the Atlantic – and yet our best estimate is that we’ve discovered only 47 percent of Bear Seamount’s rich biodiversity.
Plain and simple, President Trump does not have the legal authority to eliminate or significantly reduce protections of our national monuments.
Marine Protected Areas Are Crucial to a Healthy Ocean
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument was created by President Obama in 2016 using the Antiquities Act, which presidents of both parties have used since 1906 to protect areas of scientific, cultural, or historic value on land and in the sea. It doesn’t allow presidents to decimate them. Federal courts have already affirmed that our Atlantic marine monument was created legally and that the Antiquities Act can be used to protect ocean habitats as well as lands. In his decision, the judge wrote that “our people should see to it that [the Canyons and Seamounts] are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever.”
We can protect both New England’s historic fishing industry and the ocean’s special places. We all benefit from a healthy ocean that supports sustainable fishing. But decades of overfishing have pushed many of New England’s fish populations to dangerous lows, heightening the importance of protected areas like the monument.
Our changing climate also makes it urgent to set aside ocean habitats. As humans have continued to pump carbon pollution into the atmosphere, our oceans have borne the brunt. They’ve absorbed the majority of the world’s excess heat and approximately a quarter of the emissions from our relentless burning of fossil fuels.
After decades of enduring this abuse, the world’s oceans are warmer, more acidic, and losing oxygen. The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost any other body of water on earth. We’re already seeing iconic species like lobster and Atlantic cod move away from New England waters in search of cooler seas, among many other shifts to the ocean ecosystem.
Protected areas like the monument have greater biodiversity, which builds resiliency to the stress of climate change. They also typically experience an increase in abundance of fish, which can spill over into areas outside the monument – benefiting fishermen.
By creating more protected areas – not rolling back protections for the only marine monument we have – we can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis already in motion and benefit New England’s blue economy for decades to come.
Taking Action to Protect This National Monument
Ultimately, President Trump’s proclamation is simply part of his administration’s shameful pattern of exploiting our public spaces for private profit, weakening critical environmental policies, and harming public health. When he tried to roll back protections for the monument in his first term, we sued and we kept fighting until President Biden restored the protections. We’re ready to fight again.
So much remains to be discovered and understood, not only in the Canyons and Seamounts, but across New England’s ocean. Protecting its most precious areas and fragile resources serves us all.
For now, we’ll see the Trump administration in court.