Trump Just Opened a Marine Sanctuary to Destructive Fishing

Donald Trump has made a dangerous decision that puts one of the Atlantic’s most extraordinary ocean ecosystems at risk.

His administration just rolled back protections and opened the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing—inviting industrial extraction into a protected underwater sanctuary that was created to safeguard fragile marine life for generations.

This monument isn’t an empty stretch of water. 

It was protected in 2016 by the Obama Administration, recognizing this area as one of the most biologically rich and vulnerable places in the Atlantic. Spanning an ocean wilderness about the size of Connecticut, it contains towering underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon and massive volcanic seamounts rising thousands of feet from the seafloor—creating a rare refuge for endangered whales, sea turtles, seabirds, and ancient deep-sea corals that have survived for millennia.

These canyons and seamounts form a complex ocean habitat found nowhere else along the U.S. East Coast.

Commercial fishing—especially with destructive gear—can devastate these ecosystems. Bottom trawling and longlining can destroy ancient coral gardens, disrupt breeding grounds, and cause deadly bycatch of already vulnerable species. Once damaged, these deep-ocean environments may take centuries to recover, if they recover at all.

And Trump’s hypocrisy is staggering.

Trump has argued that offshore wind development should be blocked because it could cause ecological harm. But now he is welcoming an industry with a long track record of habitat destruction, overfishing, and ecosystem collapse.

If the goal was truly to protect marine life, commercial fishing would never be allowed inside a national marine monument.

This decision is not conservation. It is political convenience at the expense of science, biodiversity, and our shared ocean future.

At a time when climate change is warming and acidifying the seas, we should be expanding marine protections—not shredding them for short-term profit.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts were protected for a reason: because some places are simply too rare, too fragile, and too important to sacrifice.

We cannot let this underwater sanctuary become the next casualty of reckless exploitation.

Sign the petition demanding that Trump reverse this decision and restore full protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. Our oceans are not for sale.

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Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/climate/trump-monument-fishing-northeast-canyons.html

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2026/02/09/trump-opens-massive-atlantic-marine-monument-to-commercial-fishing-00771312