On June 11, 2026, President Trump signed an “Executive Proclamation Restoring American Commercial Fishing in the Pacific,” opening National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine National Monuments to United States flagged fishing vessels. This Executive action would illegally open fishing in three areas protected for over 25 years.
The expanded fishing grounds for American fishermen in the Pacific restored through this Executive Proclamation include:
- The Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument
- The Mau Zone and Ho‘omalu Zone and areas seaward of 50 nautical miles within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
- Waters between 12 and 50 nautical miles surrounding Rose Atoll within the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument
The announcement comes following a similar move by the Administration in April 2025 when the President announced a proclamation to unleash American commercial fishing in the Pacific Ocean. Opening up protected waters is a key component of Trumpʻs America First Fishing Policy. The first proclamation temprorarily opened the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM) to commercial fishing.
Following the 2025 decree, the US fishing fleet moved into Johnson Atoll and fished until blocked by an injunction filed in Hawaii Superior Court by cultural and environmental groups in Hawaii. On August 7, 2025 the federal district court in Honolulu ruled that commercial fishing cannot legally continue in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, which is located to the south and southwest of Hawai‘i. The court’s order declares unlawful and cancels the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) April 25 letter that purported to authorize commercial fishing in the portions of the monument that President Obama protected in 2014. NMFS issued the letter despite lawfully enacted regulations prohibiting such fishing that remain on the books.
The monument’s protections provide a refuge for biodiversity and intact populations including coral reefs threatened by human impacts, improving their resiliency against climate change. Deep water coral reefs, seamounts, guyots, submerged reefs and banks, and deep-water benthic communities also find protection within the monument boundaries. Many of these habitats are not well understood scientifically, and new species are yet to be discovered.
Even short-term commercial fishing can inflict long-term, irreparable harm on the pristine marine environment. The monument designations, and associated ban on taking marine resources, provide needed protection to scientific and historical treasures in one of the most spectacular and unique ocean ecosystems on earth. The monument’s status allows its waters to be havens for a vast range of marine wildlife including five species of threatened or endangered sea turtles, like the leatherback, that use these waters to feed and migrate. The waters are habitat for large populations of sharks including the critically endangered oceanic whtetip shark, as well as 22 species of protected and marine mammals, and millions of seabirds that use the monument waters and islands to nest, breed and feed.
President Trump’s order violates the intent of the original Antiquities Act. This 1906 law allows presidents to designate and protect public lands as national monuments but does not grant them the authority to strip vital protections from established monuments. This lawsuit challenges President Trump’s action as unlawful for exceeding the president’s constitutional authority and infringing upon the powers reserved to Congress.
The NMFS’s approval to allow commercial fishing violates several important American environmental laws, including the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. Among other violations, the NMFS bypassed a clear, longstanding legal requirement that it first publish rules in the Federal Register before amending or repealing existing regulations so that affected parties can have input on how best to protect public marine resources. NMFS has not published new rules in the Federal Register as required, and has failed to conduct any environmental review to assess the impact that opening this area to commercial fishing would have on endangered species and the ecosystem, as required by the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act.