President Trump today issued an Executive Order on Restoring American Saltwater Angling and Recreation (“EO”), which he said “modernizes Federal management by shifting the Federal posture from restricting recreational access to fishing to actively empowering affiliated industries and coastal communities.”
The EO, which is summarized below, includes provisions relevant to artificial reefs, reducing regulatory burdens, improving data collection infrastructure and fisheries science and data integrity, managing shark and pinniped depredation, and supporting projects that increase fish abundance. A White House Fact Sheet on the EO is accessible here.
Among other things, the EO:
- Makes it U.S. policy to “elevate the marine recreational fishing industry as an important consideration in all Federal ocean, coastal, and public land decision-making”
- Within 60 days, directs Marine Minerals Administration to establish a Federal Outer Continental Shelf Reef-in-Place Program to facilitate the conversion of decommissioned offshore oil and gas and other-use structures (other than infrastructure associated with offshore wind) into permanent artificial reefs through reef-in-place, topple-in-place, or other approved reefing methods (where consistent with applicable law)
- Interior Secretary will establish criteria and standards for the Program that ensure protection of navigation and national security interests, and coordinate with officials including the Secretaries of Commerce and War and the Coast Guard Commandant to streamline interagency review and permitting to the maximum extent permitted by law, reduce unnecessary administrative delays, and promote timely decisions for qualifying reef projects
- Within 120 days, the Secretary the NOAA Administrator will review and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, revise policies and procedures governing Special Use Permits and other applicable authorizations for the placement and management of artificial reefs within National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine National Monuments, with an aim to establish transparent and efficient permitting pathways, identify areas suitable for artificial reef development and other national interest uses, and enhance fisheries, recreational fishing, diving, and other compatible public uses
- Directs federal agencies to eliminate unnecessary restrictions that harm coastal economies, burden charter fishing businesses, and limit public access to marine resources
- Within 30 days, the Secretaries of Commerce, Interior, and Agriculture, and the Asst. Secretary of the Army for Civil Works must, consistent with applicable law, take steps to initiate action to suspend, revise, or rescind regulations that overly burden boaters, anglers, and outdoor businesses
- Within 60 days, relevant agencies must evaluate existing agency permitting authorities to effectuate a transition to multi-year permit terms (3 year minimum) that include, to the extent permitted by applicable law, a standard presumption of renewal within creating new information collection burdens (relying on interagency data sharing agreements and internal database verification to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law), with consideration given as to whether the renewal presumption should apply only to permittees meeting the “good standing” definition outlined in the EO
- To the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law, and to minimize duplicative applications across agencies, relevant agencies must establish infrastructure necessary to develop a single, unified interagency Special Use Permit application, with a goal of deploying a unified “One-Stop” joint permit portal within 1 year
- Directs the Secretary of Commerce, to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law, make use of technological advancements for marine mammal avoidance, with the NOAA Administrator directed to facilitate coordination with the private sector to integrate key technologies (in consultation with the Coast Guard where necessary)
- Directs federal agencies to partner with states and the private sector to vigorously rebuild, expand, permit, and modernize data collection
- To the extent feasible and consistent with existing law, NOAA must take appropriate action, including through rulemaking where necessary, to modernize federal data collection infrastructure
- NOAA must evaluate the statistical reliability of traditional mail‑in survey systems for recreational catch-and-effort data collection and their adequacy for dynamic fishery management, and consider the results of the evaluation in determining whether, and to what extent, such mail-in survey systems shall be phased out
- NOAA must harness existing platforms and potential successor platforms and technologies to deploy standardized, user-friendly mobile applications for mandatory and voluntary electronic reporting by recreational anglers and for-hire operators; to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law, data collected via mobile applications shall be securely aggregated into a modernized Federal data architecture that processes real-time catch, effort, and observational data and serves as the primary analytical repository for fishery managers
- NOAA must consider establishing a data-replacement threshold tethered to the Percent Standard Error (PSE) for Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) data collected for any seasonal fishery; where the PSE for MRIP data for a seasonal fishery meets or exceeds such specified data‑replacement threshold, and an affected State collects recreational catch-and-effort data with a lower error rate, NOAA shall then consider substituting the relevant State’s data in place of MRIP data for management decisions concerning such fishery
- To address the decline of iconic recreational fisheries, the Commerce Secretary must generate a list of key species to use in partnership with the recreational angling community, charter captains, and State agencies to gather real-time data, deploy advanced tagging technologies, and improve catch-and-release mortality estimates
- Within 6 months, the Commerce Secretary must develop a comprehensive 5-year strategic plan with clear implementation milestones to improve the collection, analysis, and application of recreational fisheries economic data to support fisheries management, ensuring that the economic impact and value of recreational fishing is fully accounted for in Federal fishery management decisions and harvest opportunities
- Directs the Commerce Secretary to develop and initiate at least 2 new pilot programs for recreational fisheries data collection or management approaches working with the angling community that test innovative solutions for achieving sustainable fisheries management that maximizes fishing access
- Within 6 months, directs the Commerce Secretary to review targeted National Standards Guidelines issued under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act for consistency with the EO, and at minimum consider revising National Standard 1 (Optimum Yield) and National Standard 2 (Best Scientific Information Available), to ensure they appropriately account for the unique biological, economic, and social characteristics of the recreational fishery, and to facilitate the rapid integration of State-level data into Federal management decisions, where appropriate
- Directs Commerce Secretary to establish an Interagency Shark and Pinniped Depredation Task Force and work with other officials to actively address international and domestic barriers to sustainable shark fisheries to the extent permitted by applicable law, including by:
- Assessing listings under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
- Directing Fish & Wildlife Service to expedite Non-Detriment Findings for global export
- Reviewing all regional fisheries management organizations, conventions, treaties, and agreements to ensure that their measures and actions promote robust commercial and recreational harvests
- Using the Commerce Secretary’s Saltonstall-Kennedy grant-making authority, give priority to partnerships charter boat captains and recreational angling organizations
- Within 90 days, developing and implementing (including through rulemaking where necessary), a standardized “Real-Time Depredation Reporting” protocol that is integrated into existing federal and state-linked mobile data collection platforms to enable the rapid mapping of depredation events and support dynamic fishery management decisions.
- Directs Interior Secretary and Fish & Wildlife Service Director to identify regulatory and administrative hurdles that delay disbursement from the Sport Fish Restoration & Boating Trust Fund and remove such hurdles to the extent consistent with applicable law, with the Make America Beautiful Commission directed to convene a Restoration Coordination Working Group within 60 days to develop a framework to identify and reduce duplicative restoration efforts within the same watersheds, with agencies encouraged to transition habitat restoration metrics toward production-based goals