The prospects of opening up Hawaii’s protected marine monument to commercial fishing has moved a step closer to reality.
Members of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, or Wespac, voted Sept. 17 to move toward allowing commercial fishing within four marine national monuments, including Papahanaumokuakea and the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
The decision followed testimony in strong opposition from Native Hawaiian leaders, scientists and environmental advocates.
Hawaii is now at a historical crossroads as the council, backed by President Donald Trump’s executive order, is setting its sights on opening Papahanaumokuakea — considered a sacred, ancestral place to Hawaiians and an ecological sanctuary — to industrial fishing after decades of protection.
For conservationists, the rollback of protections to these pristine areas, considered some of the last healthy, wild ocean ecosystems left in the world, would be devastating.
Papahanaumokuakea is home to 7,000 marine species, a quarter of which are found only in Hawaii, along with millions of seabirds. For the fishing industry, however, the monuments represent further economic opportunity, and the council believes commercial fishing can resume there without harm to protected species.
Wespac, one of eight regional councils established by Congress to manage fisheries in federal waters, said in a news release that it was responding to Trump’s proclamation and executive order as part of an effort to loosen regulations and make “U.S. fisheries great again.” The council has directed its staff to analyze ways to implement the proclamation, which are to be presented at its December meeting.
On April 17, Trump issued the “Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Pacific” proclamation allowing industrial fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
He proclaimed parts of the monument open to commercial fishing, but a federal judge recently ruled in response to a lawsuit that opening up the monument to fishing still requires a formal rule-making process with a public comment period.
Concurrently, Trump also issued an executive order, “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” seeking to lift the burden on overregulated fisheries. It calls for a review of all existing marine national monuments and a recommendation of all that should be opened to commercial fishing.
There is a sea divided between the two sides on marine monuments, particularly for Papahanaumokuakea, which is closer to Hawaii.
Conservationists who have been working to restore the monuments are against opening it up to the potential harms of commercial fishing, citing studies that show the protections are working.
Some places should just be off limits, according to William Aila, former chair of the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.
“There need to be some places that are off-limits,” he said, “so that we can have reproduction occur and then they can fish the spillover on the boundaries.”
Aila, a proponent of establishing Papahanaumokuakea as a monument, said studies on yellowfin tuna found setting limits within marine protected areas was ultimately better for longline fishers.
A University of Hawaii study found the world’s largest no-fishing zone — Papahanaumokuakea — increased the catch rate of yellowfin tuna by 54% in nearby waters, by 12% for bigeye tuna and by 8% for all other fish species combined.
He also supported President Barack Obama’s move in 2016 to expand the monument, established by President George W. Bush 10 years earlier, to more than 582,000 square miles. The longline fishing industry opposed the expansion.
Aila claimed that Wespac’s mismanagement is what inspired the protection of Papahanaumokuakea as a monument in the first place. He said he saw this firsthand while serving as a volunteer on the council’s advisory councils.
“We were making good recommendations,” he said. “They continued to ignore these recommendations. It was the mismanagement by Wespac that inspired us to create the monument, which became a sanctuary. That is the truth.”
Now that the area is healthy, he said, Wespac wants to mismanage it again. He also emphasized that the council lobbied the Trump administration for the changes.
“The science is clear around the world,” he said. “If you put some areas off-limits — that’s why Hawaiians have a kapu — that area thrives and it benefits other areas.”
Kanoe‘ulalani Morishige, an assistant professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said, “Papahanaumokuakea is a realm for reverence, not extraction.”
The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition is opposed to any commercial fishing at monuments, joining with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Friends of Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge and the Papahanaumokuakea Coalition, among others.
Sustainable fishing
The fishery council, however, says its mission is to support responsible, sustainable fishing, and it has managed fisheries in the monument areas since 1976, based on science and public input under laws such as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Wespac also managed tuna fishing in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands since 1991, prior to the monument designation, and was the entity that prohibited longline fishing within 50 nautical miles of the isles.
“These laws ensure that fish stocks, protected species like turtles and marine mammals and habitat for corals remain healthy,” the council said in a written response. “Regulations are in place that prohibit destructive gear types, set catch limits, and provide monitoring and reporting of bycatch and protected species interactions.”
Trump’s proclamation recognizes this, Wespac said, offering it the opportunity to continue supporting sustainable fishing and allowing U.S. fleets to provide seafood to consumers.
U.S. fleets are facing high fuel and bait costs while competing with highly subsidized foreign fleets that are less regulated.
“At the same time, U.S. policy unfairly restricts where American fishermen can operate,” Wespac said in a statement. “To resolve this imbalance, the Council is asking for tougher standards on foreign fisheries. Together with providing access to fishing within the monuments, U.S. fisheries will be better able to compete.”
In a July 24 letter sent to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the council said Hawaii-based tuna fisheries provide dockside values of more than $130 million per year.
Wespac recommended commercial tuna longline fishing be allowed to resume within waters from 50 to 200 nautical miles around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, among other proposals.
Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association, said, “We follow the rules.”
The Hawaii longline fleet is among the most regulated and highly monitored fisheries in the world, he said, and it complies with the Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection acts.
“Under U.S. law, fishing is not authorized if it highly destructive to the marine environment,” Kingma said in an email. “We have daily logbook reporting at sea, port-to-port satellite monitoring, independent human observers, protected species gear and handling requirements, and soon every vessel in the fleet will have on-board camera monitoring systems.”
Protections unravel
Still, many conservationists fear the unraveling of protections, once done, will be difficult to reverse.
The monuments already face a battle against increasing storms, sea level rise and marine debris that entangles monk seals, turtles and other wildlife.
Every year, a nonprofit heads to the remote atolls of Papahanaumokuakea to remove derelict fishing nets and other debris that washes up on shore, hauling back up to 70,000 pounds per expedition.
Jonee Peters, executive director of the Conservation Council for Hawaii, was dismayed by Wespac’s actions.
“For me, it’s very sad,” Peters said. “For me, fish is not infinite, so with this decision we’re just not taking into account future generations; they are taking into account only the here and now.”
She is not against fishing, as her own grandfather operated a tuna boat, but is concerned about the industry’s impacts on Papahanaumokuakea’s endangered species.
Unintended bycatch, for instance, often includes female fish vital to reproduction, with any harms resulting in potential disruption to the monument’s ecosystem.
Alan Friedlander, retired chief scientist for the National Geographic’s Pristine Seas Project, said in a Sept. 22 “Island Voices” submission in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that any amount of industrial fishing in pristine areas poses harm to the entire ecosystem and its species, whether it’s through entanglement in lines, purse seines or the thousands of hooks put into the sea.
Wespac also voted to review options for opening up commercial fishing within the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument in American Samoa and within parts of the Mariana Trench.
—
TIMELINE
Protections for Papahanaumokuakea
>> 2000: President Bill Clinton established the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve.
>> 2006: President George W. Bush designated the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument.
>> 2007: The monument was renamed Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
>> 2010: Added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites.
>> 2016: President Barack Obama expanded the monument to 582,578 square miles (twice the size of Texas), making it the largest marine conservation area in the world.
>> 2025: President Joe Biden’s administration designated Papahanaumokuakea a National Marine Sanctuary.
REQUEST FOR COMMENTS
>> The National Marine Fisheries Service is accepting comments on President Trump’s Executive Order 14276 “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.”
>> Submit comments via email to nmfs.seafoodstrategy@noaa.gov. Include “E.O. 14276 Notice Response” in the subject line of the message.
>> Comments will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. Oct. 14.
>> For further information, contact Kelly Denit, director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, NMFS, 301-427-8517.
Source: Federal Register
Source: The Garden Island