Commercial fishing that recently resumed in a vast protected area of the Pacific Ocean must halt once again, after a judge in Hawaii sided with environmentalists challenging a Trump administration rollback of federal ocean protections.
The remote Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument is home to turtles, marine mammals, and seabirds, which environmental groups say are at risk of being snagged by longline fishing—an industrial method involving baited hooks stretched from lines 60 miles (about 100 kilometers) or longer.
President Donald Trump’s executive order allowing this and other types of commercial fishing in part of the monument changed regulations without a process for public comment and rulemaking, and it stripped core protections from the monument, environmental groups argued in a lawsuit.
The Associated Press reports that U.S. District Judge Micah W.J. Smith granted a motion by the environmentalists on Friday. The ruling means boats catching fish for sale must immediately cease fishing in waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles around Johnston Atoll, Jarvis Island, and Wake Island, according to Earthjustice, an environmental law organization representing the plaintiffs.
Trump has said the U.S. should be “the world’s dominant seafood leader,” and on the same day as his April executive order, he issued another one aimed at boosting commercial fishing by rolling back regulations and opening up harvesting in previously protected areas.
President George W. Bush created the marine monument in 2009. It spans about 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) in the remote central Pacific Ocean southwest of Hawaii. President Barack Obama expanded it in 2014.
Soon after Trump’s executive order, the National Marine Fisheries Service sent a letter to fishing permit holders, giving them the green light to fish commercially within the monument’s boundaries, according to the Earthjustice lawsuit. Fishing resumed within days, the group said.
Government attorneys argued that the fisheries service’s letter merely notified commercial fishers of a change that had already taken place under Trump’s authority to remove the prohibition on commercial fishing in certain areas.
Earthjustice challenged the letter, and by granting the motion in their favor, the federal judge found the government had chosen not to defend the letter on its merits and had forfeited that argument. Smith also ruled against the government’s other defenses: that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the letter and that the court lacked jurisdiction over the matter.
David Henkin, an Earthjustice attorney, said Smith’s ruling requires the government to undergo a proper process to determine what kind of fishing, and under what conditions, can occur in monument waters without destroying the area.
Photo of Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge/USFWS
