While some are calling President Barack Obama’s declaration Thursday of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument a fair compromise, balancing conservation and fisheries interests, some local fishermen and fishing groups are decrying the designation.

“I’m very disappointed,” said Joe Gilbert, owner of Empire Fisheries, which operates fishing and shellfishing vessels locally and elsewhere along the Connecticut shoreline. “We’re disenfranchised. The fishermen aren’t opposed to having protected areas, but this takes it out of the accepted norms of ocean fishery management.”

The new national monument, designed under the presidential powers given by the federal Antiquities Act, sets aside a 4,913-square-mile area — slightly larger than the total land area of Connecticut — that lies 150 miles from the New England coast as a conservation area, where commercial fishing, mining, drilling and other industrial activities no longer are allowed.

The area includes three deep-sea canyons and four undersea mountains, a smaller area than the one originally proposed that extended to eight canyons.

The area is considered a hub of biodiversity, because it is an intact ecosystem that is home to more than 70 species of deep-sea corals, sponges, whales and many other rare and endangered species.

The three canyons are located at the edge of Georges Bank, one of the more productive fishing areas in the North Atlantic.

The four seamounts, extinct volcanos that rise higher than Mount Washington off the seafloor, are not active fishing areas, so were not areas of contention for fishermen.

The smaller area will shut off one of the canyons frequently fished by vessels owned by New London Seafood Distributors, but leave other canyons open where they can still catch squid and whiting, said Gary Yerman, owner of the company.

“I would have preferred if Lydonia Canyon was left open, but as a conservation measure and an environmental measure, it’ll work,” he said. “It's a fair compromise. It won’t impact us drastically.”

Peter Auster, senior research scientist at Mystic Aquarium — one of more than 40 environmental groups that lobbied for the monument — was among marine scientists leading the effort for the national monument, the first in the Atlantic.

Auster believes the smaller area that received the designation is a reasonable response to the concerns of fishermen about losing access to important areas.

“This balances the needs of the fishing industry with the desire to conserve places,” said Auster, retired marine sciences professor at the University of Connecticut’s Avery Point campus in Groton. “It’s an outstanding contribution to the American people and all of humanity.”

In his announcement, Obama said that protecting the area will enhance the resiliency of the marine ecosystem in the face of climate change, helping fishing economies in the long run.

The area will be jointly managed by the Department of Commerce, which includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of the Interior.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who led the state’s congressional delegation in support of the monument, said the president set “sensible boundaries” that responded to the economic and job interests of fishermen.

"This first ever Atlantic marine national monument will protect countless species and habitats from irreversible damage, advance key research and support critical jobs that depend on healthy oceans,” he said.

Blumenthal also noted that along with the announcement about the new monument, NOAA announced that it would release data critical to resetting fishing quotas that now put New England fishermen at a disadvantage compared to fishermen from mid-Atlantic and southern states.

The data document how fish species are moving north as ocean waters warm, supporting revisions in fishing quotas.

The fishing quota issue has been one of the chief complaints of Bob Guzzo and other Stonington fishermen who want to be able to catch and sell more of the fluke, blackfish and scup now found in New England waters.

Guzzo, vice president of the Southern New England Fishermen & Lobstermen’s Association, said he is not mollified by the smaller boundaries of the new monument or NOAA’s acknowledgement about the fishing quota inequities.

“It’s still no good,” Guzzo said. Actions needed to help him and other struggling fishermen are long overdue, he said.

He added that while he does not currently fish in the canyons that are now part of the monument, other fishermen who do frequent that area may now start competing with him in the same waters elsewhere.

“They’re killing us,” he said. “We’re only trying to make a living.”

Gilbert also said he currently doesn’t fish in the monument area, but is concerned that the area will be expanded to adjacent waters where he does fish, like the recent expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea National Marine Monument off the coast of Hawaii.

Meagan Lapp, fisheries liaison for Seafreeze, a group of fishing vessel owners and dealers based in North Kingstown, R.I., said the three canyons in the monument are “extremely important" to her company.

She is a member of the board of directors of the New Bedford, Mass.-based Center for Sustainable Fisheries, one of several fishing groups that opposed the monument.

The declaration of the monument, Lapp said, “hijacked” the process underway by the New England Fishery Management Council to establish protections in the canyons for the deep-sea corals and other species.

Trawlers that scrape nets against the seafloor already were banned in two of the canyons, she added, but mid-water trawling still was permitted.

She said she would have preferred an alternative proposed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Under that plan, the deepest central part of all eight canyons plus the four seamounts would have been in the monument, but the shallower areas around the perimeter would have remained open to fishing, said Toni Kerns, director of interstate fishery management for the commission.

“We also requested that the White House not use the Antiquities Act, but use the processes that provide for more transparency,” Kerns said.

Those processes would have been governed by regional fishery management panels that would factor economic impact along with scientific information into the decision, she said.

Under the designation, lobster and crab fishermen can fish in the monuments area for seven more years, and other commercial fishermen have 60 days to move out of the area.

The Obama administration also announced that NOAA will take steps to help New England fishermen, including programs that offer low-interest loans and programs to reduce costs and reduce catch discards.

The New England Fishery Management Council, in a statement Thursday, said that because of the monument designation, the coral protection measures it had been developing are “superseded.”

The council now will reassess its management strategy, and will continue working on steps to protect 15 other canyons on Georges Bank.

The council said it did not take a position on the monument proposal, but asked to be allowed to continue managing fishing and habitat-related activities there under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a process that includes input from scientists, fishermen and other stakeholders.

j.benson@theday.com