The fight over the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument now has commercial fishermen inside it, not just watching from the dock.
Frank Green of New York and Bob Conrad of Vermont filed a motion on 31 July to intervene in Conservation Law Foundation v. Trump. Represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, the pair want standing to defend the February proclamation that reopened the roughly 5,000-square-mile area, some 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, to commercial fishing.
PLF's argument is constitutional rather than ecological. "Presidents have abused their power under the Antiquities Act for decades, drastically exceeding its narrow scope and disregarding Congress to restrict Americans' right to productively use natural resources," said PLF attorney Frank Garrison. "The fishermen who work those waters shouldn't have their livelihoods threatened by unilateral presidential decree."
The area has changed status four times in ten years. Obama designated it in 2016 under the 1906 Antiquities Act and banned commercial fishing. Trump lifted the ban in 2020, Biden reimposed it in 2021, and Trump lifted it again this February. PLF says the 1906 law never gave presidents power to declare monuments at sea in the first place — the same argument it lost with when it challenged the original designation.
"Conservation Law Foundation campaigned to establish this monument because the life it shelters is unique and irreplaceable. The last time the Trump administration tried to strip away protections, we sued and kept fighting until protections were restored. We're ready to do it again," CLF staff attorney Chloe Fross said in comments reported by SeafoodSource.
CLF senior counsel Erica Fuller framed the stakes in biological terms. "The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is a biodiversity hotspot and one of the most biologically productive areas in the Atlantic Ocean. It deserves our full protection," she told The New Bedford Light, calling the rollback unlawful.
The Center for Biological Diversity's oceans legal director, Kristen Monsell, has made the ecosystem case: three canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, four seamounts, ancient deep-sea corals and habitat for sperm, fin and sei whales are not protected by fishery rules alone.
Trump's proclamation argued the opposite, stating that "appropriately managed commercial fishing would not put the objects of historic and scientific interest that the monument protects at risk" and that many species there "are highly migratory and not unique to the monument."
Saving Seafood executive director Bob Vanasse welcomed the reopening as a return to "fairness, transparency, and science-based governance," and said the 2016 designation excluded the people it affected.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, whose port lands more value than any other in the US, has criticised the process since 2016. Any fishing closure, he said, "should be subject to a rigorous process that includes a reasonable opportunity for direct input from the fishing industry and robust scientific peer review."
If the ban returns, PLF says Green and Conrad face heavy fines and the loss of their fishing licences. The court has yet to rule on whether they get to make that case themselves.
