in effect
Proclamation 11009, signed February 6, 2026, is a presidential proclamation that revokes the Biden administration’s 2021 ban on commercial fishing inside the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. It restores the rules set by a 2020 Trump proclamation, which had lifted the original fishing prohibition established when the monument was created in 2016.
Commercial fishing is now permitted again within the monument’s approximately 4,913 square miles of Atlantic Ocean waters off the northeastern United States. The 2021 Biden proclamation (Proclamation 10287) that had reinstated the fishing ban is revoked. Fishing in the monument will now be governed by the 2020 Proclamation 10049 rather than the original 2016 creation proclamation or the 2021 ban. The proclamation does not eliminate the monument or alter its boundaries — it only removes the commercial fishing restriction. All other existing federal laws continue to apply, including the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which regulate how fishing is conducted and protect species within the area.
Commercial fishing operators — particularly those targeting species like tuna and other highly migratory fish found in Atlantic waters near the continental shelf — are now permitted to operate within the monument’s boundaries again. Federal fishery management councils and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) remain responsible for regulating any commercial fishing that occurs there under existing statutory frameworks. Conservation organizations and researchers with interests in the monument’s deep-sea canyons and seamounts are affected in that the additional layer of protection the fishing ban provided is removed, though other federal environmental laws remain in force.