Atlantic Fish Stocks at Risk? Politics Pushes Industrial Fishing Expansion

0:15 Fishing pressure does not disappear, it just shifts. This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. And if you care about staying informed on the ocean every weekday, hit the follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story. This is what happened. In February, 2026, the White House released an executive action entitled Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Atlantic, signaling a push to expand commercial fishing accent. Fishing pressure doesn't disappear, it just shifts.

0:58 This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast and if you care about staying informed on the ocean every weekday, hit the follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story. All right, here's what happened. In February, 2026, the White House released an executive action titled Unleash an American Commercial Fishing in the Atlantic. It signals a push to expand commercial fishing access in federal Atlantic waters. So, the nine nautical mile mark of the state waters up to about 200 nautical miles off the coastline for the exclusive economic zone. So, the policy uh frames the expanded fishing as an economic and food security opportunity, trying to bring food prices down and help the economy.

1:43 In a related legal opinion in the US department or in a... Let's start to head over again because I messed up the words. a related legal opinion from the US Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, it outlines federal authority over offshore resource management and clarifies executive power in ocean governance. Now, this is something, this statement is something that I didn't read properly, is something that is going to be crucial going forward with this Trump administration. because it's starting to say, you know what? We don't care what the science of fishery say.

2:24 We don't care what is considered sustainable fishing. We are just going to max out because that's what this administration wants to do. It wants to drill baby drill. It wants to mine the deep sea. It wants to open up parks for resource extraction, like minerals and oil. Everything is being pushed to the max because they want to maximize everything except for renewable energy. That's what this Trump administration seems to be all about. And this opinion, this legal opinion from the the US Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, basically saying, hey, we're going to say federal authority is going over offshore resource management and clarifies executive power in ocean governance.

3:09 So this move places political momentum directly alongside existing science based fisheries management frameworks. So it doesn't matter what the fisheries science says. It's basically saying, hey, you know what, if we decide as a political party or as a government to say, you know what, we're just gonna fish this anyway, we're just gonna open up the Atlantic, that's what we're gonna do. So here's how fisheries, the US fisheries is managed normally. So the US uses stock assessments to determine population health. So it will sample a commercial fishery, it'll go through the scientific method, and it'll say this is where the population is at. This is how many individuals there are, this is how much biomass they have.

3:49 And to say, okay, what are the trends over the last couple of decades, or since ever they've started these stock assessments, it's long term data, and they'll start to look at that data and they'll start to look at the trends. Has the population gone up, has it gone down, has it stayed still? And then there's all these management actions, I don't know why my voice cracked there, but there's all these management actions that happen as this is done. Right? And so if the population goes down enough, if it's steep enough, then there'll be management actions where there will be uh actions where, you know, you take the quota down and you move the quota so it goes down so you can't catch as many fish. Or they may not fish for that species in this particular season, or they may shorten that season.

4:30 There's all these different actions that they can do as NOAA, as managers of this resource. So annual catch limits can change. They're set based on scientific advice. Rebuilding plans are required for over fish stock. So if the stock continues to go down and go down and go down in number in biomass, it might be considered over fish. It might be considered critically endangered and go on the endangered species list. All these trigger these actions to be taken. So when there's rebuilding plans, basically saying that this population is going down, say cod, it's gone down. We got to have a rebuilding plan to make sure that this gets up. And when it does get up, we will take different actions. So there's always, and usually includes monitoring a little bit more, some research, and to just to kind of figure out what's happening.

5:15 Is it just being overfished or are there other things like climate change or is there other things that are going on in that area, like maybe something else has been fished that's affecting like the prey, that's affecting the prey of that area. So like it just, it depends on what it is. It could be marine pollution. It could be a lot of different things. So then they'll have like a regional fishery management councils, like in all these different areas in the regions. And then they incorporate the science and stakeholder input. So not only is science taken, right? Science taken is done. And then all these other inputs from fishing communities, from unions, from uh other users of the ocean, whether it be recreational, whether it be industrial, they all get together and they have these meetings and then they bang out a plan.

5:58 And that plan is kind of set for the year, for the season, for the next five years, for the next three years, depending on the region, depending on what they're looking at. So NOAA maintains that the US fisheries are among the most sustainably managed globally, with many even previously over fish stocks rebuilt under science-driven quotas. Now lot of them have seen that rebuild happen, and it's a lot of times due to the Magnuson-Stevenson Act, which is an act that Republicans put in place back in the 70s. They also put in the Marine Mammal Protection Act, they put in the Endangered Species Act. All these have helped rebuild stocks of fish as well as individual species like great white sharks and other places and marine mammals and stuff.

6:39 So all these have helped. All these little, these acts, these policies, I shouldn't say little, these big policies, these written words that go into law and have been followed over the years and enforced over the years and managed properly over the years have helped rebuild these fisheries even though they're probably not perfect and they're probably not exactly sustainably managed, they're probably one of the best managed fisheries in the world, some of them. Not all of them, but some of them. And that could probably be argued just in its own worth, because I haven't seen the exact data. I'm just kind of assuming. But we have the data. We use science to drive the policy. The policy puts it in place, and then we have managers and regional councils and all the fisheries management councils and everything to really go in to put together.

7:22 Now here is what we're looking at globally. oh So from the state of the world fisheries and aquaculture, more than one third of assessed global fish stocks are overfished, so they're in trouble. Overcapacity and public pressure remain key drivers in the depletion worldwide. The science will show the trends, and they're right, the science is right, they'll see the trends, they'll identify the problems that these stocks are having, whether they're overfished, whether they're on a downward trend, whether they're on an upward trend for the rebuilding. But then what happens is politics and stakeholders get together and they decide, hey, you know what? We actually want to fish more because the economy is not doing so well this year.

8:03 So we're actually going to fish more, even though we know that if we fish more, we're going to make that population even worse. We understand that and we're ready to take that into play. Not the greatest, but they're ready to take that into play. And so that happens a lot. A great example of that is Fishing Down the Line. I believe is the end of the line is the movie that we saw in the 90s. It was narrated by Ted Danson. I think it was sponsored by Oceana. They looked at fisheries in the US, tuna fisheries, and sorry, in Europe. They looked at tuna fisheries in Europe and they started to look at, here's what, you the science says that you are allowed to take 30,000 tons of tuna.

8:44 Okay, great, that's what the science says. If you do this, it'll be sustainably managed. Right away, the decision makers are like, we're gonna double that because we know that the stocks, like the stakeholders are not gonna like that. So we're gonna double that to 60,000. So they're actually, you know, two times the catch limit they're allowing to fish. So they do that and then after those meetings it got upped again to like 90,000 or 100,000 tons. Almost three times as much as it was originally said to be sustainably caught. This is what happens a lot of times and it depends on a lot of world factors. But where science-based limits are ignored or weakened, the stock starts to decline. It follows, we see this every single time. You listen to the science, you'll get it.

9:25 It doesn't always fit the narrative that we want. If we see a declining fishery stock and the economy is not doing that great, or the fisheries are having trouble, or inflation moves upwards and it's more expensive to maintain the boat, so people need more fish, well, it becomes a difficult situation. It's not easy. We want to look out for fishery in communities. We want to look out for fishers. And a lot of times it's the artisanal fishers, the smaller scale fishers that actually pay the price. Right? We need to ensure that those are protected, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on. Industrial fishing usually wins out because they have the money and they tend to get to the politicians that want this stuff happen.

10:06 So this matters because policy shifts do not occur in isolation. Fishing fleets are mobile, markets are global, and pressure often relocates rather than disappears. So sometimes we see illegal fisheries happen that affects how regularly fishing is managed. And it's not fair to the fishers who fish regularly, but they may have to have lower uh quotas because of the illegal fishers. So it's not really that great. But if this is the kind of breakdown you want and you find this helpful, make sure you hit that follow button on the show so you can follow the show and I drop new episodes every weekday morning. Now here's the tension around all of this stuff.

10:46 The economic expansion increases the effort. The number of vessels and access areas. So more people are fishing, more boats are fishing, they're fishing for longer, and the access increases. So you're having less special places protected. Right, there's even a meeting or public period to reduce the, uh I believe it's a marine monument, the C-mounts, the canyons and C-mounts marine monument along the East Coast so that we can increase fishing pressure. So scientific quota systems only work when the political actors respect the stock limits. This is not the case in the US right now. They're just saying, hey, you know what, you guys wanna fish more?

11:28 You can go ahead and fish more. Don't worry about the catch limits, don't worry about this, you'll get access to areas and all that kind of stuff. Just fish more. It's irresponsible. And of course legal authority clarifies power, but science determines sustainability. So no matter what you say, in terms of like, this is what I'm gonna fish now, no matter what you say, the stock is still gonna decline. And eventually, your stock is gonna be over fish and you can't fish it anymore because it's not gonna be worth it. It's gonna be too expensive for fishers to do it. It's not going to be big enough for the effort, right? The actual biomass is going to go down and the number are going to go down. So if access expands faster than the assessments adapt, right?

12:10 Than these stock assessments adapt, risk will increase of actually overfishing that species. So when the economic policy accelerates fishing access, how do we ensure stock limits remain science driven? This is the big problem that we're seeing. And I'd love to hear your answer on this because well managed fisheries can deliver food security and economic stability no matter how big the access area is. If you manage it properly, set the proper quotas, make sure that there's enough boats out there to sustainably fish, you will get the maximum economic yield. It just may not be what you expect, but just because we don't believe the science doesn't mean we're not gonna affect the actual fish stock.

12:54 Right, that's just really what it comes down to. Politically accelerated access without scientific guardrails can reverse rebuilding gains. All the rebuilding that we've done, if you just start to openly say, hey, fish as much as you want, you're going to reduce all of that effort and all the sacrifices that the fishing community and others have made in the past all in one swoop. It doesn't take much to overfish. And sustainable management is not automatic. It requires constant enforcement and independent science. That's what it really does. That's what it comes down to. Fishing pressure does not disappear. It shifts. The question is whether it shifts within sustainable limits or beyond them.

13:39 That's the episode for today. I'd love to hear your comments. Let me know. Go to speakupforblue.com forward slash feedback and hit that like button if you want access to more ocean news information. Hit the like or follow. Really follow, because I'd love to hear. I'd love to see you follow this episode. or this podcast because I think it'd be great. So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.