PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • May 7, 2025
Elon Musk’s government efficiency campaign may be the last, best chance to save beleaguered American fishing jobs from overregulation and foreign competition. Fishermen have been regulated to the brink, with alphabet soup agencies placing surveillance agents aboard their boats, closing huge swaths of the water for months at a time and ordering large amounts of gear removed from the water. There are about 50,000 commercial fishermen working U.S. waters. They support another 200,000 jobs onshore. Overzealous environmentalists have managed some communities into decline, as with Washington and Hancock counties in Maine. Regulators are driving American fishermen off the water. For too long, bureaucrats have treated fishermen like interlopers on our oceans. ~ Alex Titcomb, executive director of The Dinner Table, the largest “conservative” grassroots organization in Maine