Commercial Maine fishermen, who have largely supported Donald Trump since he first ran for president in 2015, have high hopes for his upcoming second administration.
Chief among the issues that many fishermen hope Trump will address are plans for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine, which they argue would economically harm their fisheries and cause environmental damage to marine habitat. Some fishermen also hope that Trump will put other federal restrictions on the chopping block, including mandates to use whale-safe fishing gear.
Now that Trump is headed back to the White House, speculations are swirling about what it could mean for Maine. For the state’s commercial fishing industry, it is likely that Trump could make a difference on at least one of those issues, the development of offshore wind. But it’s not clear that he would be able to significantly address some of the others. Based on past experience, he could also create different challenges for the industry.
Trump had a mixed record on helping fishermen during his first term, from 2017 to 2021. After he imposed tariffs on China in 2018, it responded with a retaliatory 25 percent tariff on American lobster later that year, which cut Maine’s exports by millions of pounds. Trump has pledged to impose tariffs on China again when he is sworn back into office.
Trump also signed an order in 2020 to allow commercial fishing in Obama-era marine monuments roughly 130 miles southwest of Cape Cod, though the act was largely symbolic because they were far beyond the range of most Maine-based fishing vessels. Critics also questioned whether Trump had the authority to open the areas to commercial fishing — a move that later was reversed by President Joe Biden.
And Trump may well run into legal challenges to his policies, as happened during his first term, according to Brad Campbell, president of the environmental advocacy group Conservation Law Foundation. Campbell said Trump won’t have the authority to change a previous president’s monument designation — though Congress does — and likely would get sued again if he tries to open them to commercial fishing.
“We’re fully prepared for that fight,” Campbell said.
The most urgent matter for Maine fishermen, however, is the ongoing effort to develop floating wind turbine sites off Maine’s coast. Fishermen have said such development, which has been promoted by Gov. Janet Mills and others, will harm fishing, and some even have claimed that turbines kill whales, though there has been no credible evidence of this.
Trump — who courted fishermen’s votes during trips to Maine in 2016 and 2020 but did not visit the state this year — has made similar claims and promised to block offshore wind development after he takes office.
“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said earlier this year. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”
Jason Joyce, a Swans Island fisherman who spoke in support of Trump at the 2020 Republican National Convention, said that offshore wind is the biggest threat Maine fishermen currently face.
“That’s huge,” Joyce said. “The big bright spot we see in a Trump presidency is his opposition to offshore wind. It would be a huge sigh of relief for fishermen.”
If floating turbines go up in the gulf, Joyce said, the disturbance their electrical cables could cause to the ocean bottom as a result of dredging or resulting electromagnetic fields could harm the fishing habitat — though the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has said the expected electromagnetic fields would be weak.
Campbell disputed offshore wind development would ultimately be bad for Maine fishermen. Wind power is essential to reducing the use of fossil fuels, which have caused ocean temperatures to rise worldwide and have pushed many commercial marine species further toward the poles — including some that have largely left the Gulf of Maine in recent decades.
Campbell also said undersea cables between turbines and the shore would not harm the gulf’s marine habitat. Cables have provided electricity to offshore communities such as Vinalhaven and Swans Island for decades, he said, and there’s been no evidence that they have harmed any marine species.
“There’s no truth to that,” Campbell said.
Another area where fishermen have sought political intervention is federal rules aimed at preventing right whales from getting entangled in fishing gear, but it’s less likely Trump could make a difference there.
Changes to lobstering gear that reduced the amount of rope in the water column were mandated in 2009 and 2014, but in late 2022, Congress voted to delay any new mandates until 2028. By that time, a new president will be elected, and the 22nd Amendment bars Trump from seeking a third term.
Joyce said that if Trump’s new vice president, J.D. Vance, were to seek the White House in 2028, there’s a chance gear mandates could be reduced or delayed further, but he doesn’t see Trump having any impact on the issue before then. He said he hopes the critically endangered right whale population improves over the next four years, which might ease pressure on fishermen to make changes.
Campbell said that advances in ropeless trap technology are expected to improve in the coming years, which should allow fishermen to more broadly use it in places where fishing boats and whales overlap.
But beyond the technical fights over legal authorizations, electricity transmission and gear configurations, Campbell said the swinging pendulum from one opposing administration to the next doesn’t help either fishermen or environmentalists over the long haul. Both sides need to communicate and compromise more with each other, so that public policy doesn’t get stuck in an endless loop of enactments, reversals and enactments again, he said.
“The better the dialogue, the less contentious these issues will be,” Campbell said. “No one wins from an all-or-nothing approach.”
Still, many fishermen are hoping for drastic changes. Some believe that Trump’s expected appointments of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to pursue massive reductions in federal spending will result in significant cutbacks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees regulation of marine fisheries.
“Vivek is already looking into rules not passed by congress and plans on stripping them asap,” fisherman Murray Thompson wrote in a comment on the All Things Lobstering page on Facebook.
Another fisherman, Mark Brewer, was more blunt in his hopes.
“Bye-bye, NOAA,” Brewer posted on the page. “Y’all gonna get gutted just like you should be.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
