Trump's 'National Scallops Day': What the Post Gets Right, Leaves Out, and Gets Wrong

This is accurate. NOAA Fisheries opened 171 square miles of the Northern Edge to commercial scallop fishing, implementing Trump's April 2025 executive order directing action on seafood competitiveness.^[2] The area sits at the northern boundary of Georges Bank and had been closed to all commercial scallop fishing since 1994, a 32-year gap. NEFMC surveys estimated the accumulated scallop biomass at roughly 14 to 18 million pounds.^[3] That New Bedford, Cape May, and Norfolk are significant commercial scalloping ports is also correct.

NEFMC survey data from 2023 estimated standing biomass in the Northern Edge at approximately 14.7 to 18.4 million pounds of scallops, though those estimates carry high standard errors.^[3] Whether that translates to "millions more pounds per year" depends on harvest rates, rotational access schedules, and what sustainability limits NOAA sets. No independent fisheries projection has validated the specific annual yield claim. The scallop biomass built up specifically because the area was protected for 30 years; the first fishing seasons will draw down that accumulated stock, after which annual yield is unknown. The claim is directionally plausible but unverified.

The Northern Edge closure was established by the Clinton administration in 1994 as an emergency response to collapsing cod stocks, not by Obama or Biden.^[2] It persisted through George W. Bush's two terms and through Donald Trump's first term (2017–2021) without being reversed. Obama and Biden maintained the closure rather than originating it; they also faced identical recommendations from the New England Fishery Management Council, which voted as recently as June 2024 to keep the area closed.^[10]

Obama did impose separate fishing restrictions: the 2016 Northeast Canyons monument and, more broadly, NOAA quota management. Biden restored monument protections after Trump's 2020 rollback. Those actions affected certain fishermen. But singling out Obama and Biden for the Northern Edge closure specifically omits 32 years of bipartisan enforcement, including during Trump's own first term.

There is a real historical grievance here, though the post does not explain it. The 1984 International Court of Justice ruling, issued while Ronald Reagan was president, allocated roughly 42% of the eastern Georges Bank to Canada, including waters directly adjacent to the Northern Edge.^[11] US scallop fishermen lost access to grounds they had worked for generations. Canada subsequently kept its side of the boundary open to scallop fishing, meaning Canadian vessels can operate near waters that US vessels cannot. The post has a factual basis for the Canada reference, but the framing obscures that the boundary was set 42 years ago under Reagan through an international legal proceeding that the US itself participated in. After the ruling, enforcement records show it was predominantly US vessels crossing into Canadian waters, not the reverse.^[11]

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was designated solely by President Obama on September 15, 2016, using his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906.^[6] Biden did not "declare" it. After Trump's first term opened it to commercial fishing (2020), Biden issued a proclamation in October 2021 restoring the original fishing restrictions^[7]—that is the action Biden took. Restoring protections to an existing monument is different from creating one.

The "terminated" claim also overstates what happened. Trump's February 2026 proclamation opened the monument to commercial fishing, but the monument designation itself remains legally intact. Conservation groups filed suit in May 2026 arguing the rollback violates the Antiquities Act, which grants presidents the power to create monuments but does not expressly permit later presidents to abolish them.^[8] The case is pending. Trump has reversed the fishing restrictions; whether the monument can be legally "terminated" is an open question in federal court.

The monument covers approximately 4,913 square miles (not the entire "massive area off the East Coast" implied—it is a specific and bounded protected area located 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod).^[5]

The area figure is approximately correct. The White House said Trump's June 11, 2026 proclamation restores commercial fishing access to "nearly half a million square miles" of Pacific monument zones.^[4]

The fishing-access claim is false. The Pacific marine monuments lie within the US Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), waters where the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act already prohibits unauthorized foreign commercial fishing—regardless of monument status. The monuments banned all commercial fishing vessels, American and foreign alike. No foreign country was granted the right to fish these waters while Americans were excluded.^[9]

The Trump administration's own Fact Sheet describes the situation more accurately: monument restrictions "forced American commercial fishermen further offshore into international waters to compete against poorly regulated foreign fishing fleets."^[4] That is a different and more defensible argument: US fishermen lost access to nearby EEZ grounds and had to travel farther to reach international waters, where they competed with foreign fleets. But that is not the same as "every country was allowed to fish except our Great American Fishermen," which implies foreign vessels had access to the monument waters that Americans were denied.

It is also worth noting that several of the Pacific monuments (Papahānaumokuākea, Mariana Trench, Rose Atoll) were established by George W. Bush, not Obama, though Obama expanded Papahānaumokuākea in 2016.^[9]