President Donald Trump’s executive order for stronger federal action against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is being undermined by deep staff and resource cuts at NOAA, the Coast Guard and other agencies, experts told a Senate panel Thursday.
Under questioning from members of the Commerce Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime and Fisheries, national security experts said the U.S. fishing economy is under siege from foreign actors who poach millions of tons of seafood annually from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico.
Offenders run the gamut from small-boat pirates conducting overnight raids on red snapper off the Texas coast to geopolitical rivals’ fishing fleets encroaching on U.S. fishing grounds in the North Pacific and Arctic oceans.
In an exchange with subcommittee ranking member Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Whitley Saumweber, director of the Stephenson Ocean Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned that countering IUU in U.S. waters and maintaining international order among competing countries cannot succeed without NOAA.
