Oceana is challenging the Trump Administration’s withdrawal of a proposed Obama-era rule that would have limited the number of protected marine animals that could be “incidentally captured” by drift gillnets. Oceana, a non-profit ocean conservation and advocacy organization, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on July 12 against the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

In 2015, the Pacific Fishery Management Council introduced a proposal for hard caps, or limits, on the number of injuries or deaths of nine protected species allowed during a rolling two-year or four-year period.

The Obama Administration published a proposal of how to implement the caps in October 2016 that would temporarily close a thresher shark and swordfish drift gillnet fishery in California if that fishery reached the cap. According to NOAA, gillnets are walls of netting with holes that fish can fit their heads through, but not the rest of their bodies. When the animal tries to back out, their gills get caught on the net. The more the animal struggles to free itself, the more it becomes entangled in the netting.

In addition to the swordfish that are intentionally being fished off the coast of California, the nets also accidentally trap marine animals that are considered “protected species.” The regulation would have protected fin, humpback, and sperm whales; leatherback, loggerhead, olive ridley, and green sea turtles; short-fin pilot whales; and bottlenose dolphins. However, the Trump Administration withdrew the proposal in June after the NMFS decided that the proposed changes “are not warranted at this time.”

Oceana released a statement on July 13 regarding the lawsuit. It said the proposed rule would have been an opportunity for the fishery to reduce “bycatch,” or species being caught inadvertently, and adopt “cleaner fishing methods” such as deep-set buoy gear or harpoon gear. Oceana attorney Mariel Combs said in the statement that “the withdrawal of this important protection … is plainly illegal.”

“Drift gillnets are a dirty and unsustainable way to catch swordfish,” Combs said. “Incremental steps, like limits on bycatch, are important tools to help move toward cleaner fishing. The Fisheries Service has supported these measures in the past, and its change of course is both disappointing and illegal.”

This isn’t the first time the Trump Administration has reversed some of the Obama Administration’s environmental decisions. In June, six environmental conservation groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency for suspending Obama-era regulations that limited leaks of harmful toxins during oil and gas production.

Marcus Dieterle

Marcus is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a rising senior at Towson University where he is double majoring in mass communication (with a concentration in journalism and new media) and political science. When he isn’t in the newsroom, you can probably find him reading on the train, practicing his Portuguese, or eating too much pasta. Contact Marcus at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Trump Administration is proposing to allow seismic air guns to survey oil and gas deposits along the U.S. Atlantic coast, but some environmentalists are concerned that the surveys could harm marine mammals.

Seismic air gun surveys use ships that tow seismic air guns. The guns are used to shoot compressed air through the water and into the seabed. That blast reflects back information about oil and gas deposits below the seabed, according to Oceana, an international advocacy organization focused on ocean conservation. The guns shoot compressed air every 10 to 12 seconds, said Ingrid Beidron, a marine scientist and campaign manager at Oceana.

The use of seismic air guns has a controversial history due to its impact on the environment. The Associated Press reported that the United States has not conducted any seismic air gun surveys in the mid- and south-Atlantic regions for at least 30 years. In January, the Obama Administration denied six energy companies’ applications for permits to conduct air gun seismic surveys in those regions. In May, under the Trump Administration, the Department of the Interior began reviewing those same six applications.

Most recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration took action on those applications by releasing a proposal by the National Marine Fisheries Service on June 6 outlining the details of the plan as it seeks permits for the use of five seismic air gun surveys that could incidentally harass marine mammals.

The proposal includes measures to minimize harm to marine mammals such as prescribing a standard exclusion zone and, under some circumstances, shutting down the acoustic source so as not to disturb marine mammals. However, many environmental organizations, local governments, and businesses remain opposed to seismic air gun surveys.

Michael Jasny, director of marine mammal protection for the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote in a blog post that some of the potential negative effects of the surveys could include causing marine animals to abandon their habitats, preventing animals from feeding regularly, obstructing animals’ communication, and injuring and killing fish and invertebrates.

The Endangered Species Act prohibits the “take”–or harassment, harming, pursuit, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capture or collection–of species listed as “endangered” or “threatened. However, a 1982 amendment to the Act allowed for taking that is “incidental to, and not the purpose of, the carrying out of an otherwise lawful activity.”

The proposal in question lists five energy companies’ seismic operations, each spanning a range of days. The shortest operation would be 70 days; the longest, 308. According to the proposal, the seismic operations would generally occur within 200 nautical miles of the coast between Delaware and Cape Canaveral, Florida, with some additional activity up to 350 nautical miles from the shore. The operations would typically occur 24 hours per day.

Jasny called the surveys “an environmentally assaultive activity” that will open the east coast to offshore oil drilling. Over 120 East Coast communities, over 1,200 elected officials, over 41,000 businesses, and over 500,000 fishing families have opposed seismic air gun surveys and/or offshore drilling, according to Oceana.

If the NMFS finds that the taking will have a “negligible impact on the species or stock(s)” and “will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of the species or stock(s) for subsistence users,” an incidental harassment authorization will be granted. Individuals can comment on the proposal until July 6, exactly 30 days after the date on which the proposal was released, by contacting Jolie Harrision at the NMFS.

Marcus Dieterle

Marcus is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a rising senior at Towson University where he is double majoring in mass communication (with a concentration in journalism and new media) and political science. When he isn’t in the newsroom, you can probably find him reading on the train, practicing his Portuguese, or eating too much pasta. Contact Marcus at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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