August 27, 2025 — Ray Hilborn is a professor at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, a member of the Science and Statistics Committee of the Western Fisheries Management Council, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Washington State Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the Volvo Environmental Prize and the International Fisheries Science Prize and has published over 300 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
In 2006, President George W. Bush used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create the nation’s first marine national monument – an area from 0 to 50 nautical miles around the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands encompassing 139,797 square miles.
Then, in the last few days of his term in January 2009, Bush established three other national marine monuments in the Pacific: Rose Atoll Monument off American Samoa; Marianas Trench Monument adjacent to Guam and Northern Mariana Islands, and the Pacific Remote Islands (PRIMNM) monument around the uninhabited islands of Wake, Johnston, Palmyra, Howland, Baker, and Jarvis.