May 28, 2025
Lawsuit Challenges Trump Order Opening Pacific Monument to Commercial Fishing
On April 17, President Trump issued an executive order that would open large marine protected areas to commercial fishing in US waters. The order authorized the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and US Fish and Wildlife Service to implement U.S.-based fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
The President announced a proclamation to unleash American commercial fishing in the Pacific Ocean, a key component of his America First Fishing Policy. The proclamation opens the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM) to commercial fishing, boosting the economy of American Samoa where tuna fleets and canneries exist.
The order opens the waters within 50 to 200 nautical miles of the PRIMNM’s boundaries to commercial fishing by U.S.-flagged vessels. A scientific study published in 2022, reported that 96% of protected ocean habitat in the United States is in the central Pacific Ocean, including 99% of the no-fishing and highly protected area. Fully protected ecosystems enhance species recovery, support cultural values and maintain marine biodiversity of marine ecosystems.
On May 22nd, a lawsuit was filed by Earthjustice representing a Hawaiian group Kāpaʻa, the Conservation Council for Hawai‘i, and the Center for Biological Diversity. The groups are challenging the order by President Trump that would allow U.S.- flagged vessels to fish commercially in an area that’s long been preserved to protect marine ecosystems, as well as steps taken by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service to implement that illegal proclamation. Protected under federal law since 2009, the suit challenges the illegal action to open the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. The proclamation threatens endangered species, and some of the healthiest coral reefs and marine ecosystems in the world.
On April 25, NMFS sent a letter to fishing permit holders giving them a permission to fish commercially within the monument’s boundaries, although the monument legal protections remain unchanged. The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (formerly known as the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument) was established by President George W. Bush in 2009 and expanded by President Obama in 2014. The Trump administration seeks to strip important protections, including area expansion that President Obama put in place in 2014. This expansion increased the monument’s boundaries to include the waters from 50 out to 200 nautical miles around Jarvis Island, Wake Island, and Johnston Atoll, banning commercial fishing in those waters.
The Trump order is setting sights on opening commercial longline fisheries in the expansion zone, with the potential to kill tens of thousands of sharks as bycatch of Johnston Atoll alone.
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.