Saving Seafood

Future Of Commercial Fishing In Protected Pacific Waters In Courts’ Hands

August 20, 2025 — Hawaiʻi-based longliners have logged more than 900 hours pursuing tuna in previously protected parts of the Pacific Ocean, online tracking data shows, since President Donald Trump lifted a commercial fishing ban in late April.

That new fishing opportunity disappeared recently when a district court judge ruled that U.S. fishery officials didn’t follow proper procedures before opening up the vast waters that form the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.

The remote area has become the latest flashpoint between conservationists who want more of the Pacific placed off-limits to better protect tuna stocks and sensitive marine environments and regional fishing leaders who say they need access to more fishing grounds — who now have Trump’s ear.

Those leaders have already stated they’d like to see the waters around the Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Sanctuary opened up as well.

For the monument, Judge Micah Smith found that officials should have sought public input before enacting Trump’s order, which ultimately aims to reopen more than 400,000 square miles of deep ocean. Smith said they also need to publish new, proposed fishing rules in the Federal Register.

Read the full article at Civil Beats

Expanded commercial fishing eyed in Pacific marine monuments

August 15, 2025 — Opening marine monuments to commercial fishing may prove more challenging than President Donald Trump thought when he proclaimed in April he was “unleashing American commercial fishing” in the Pacific Ocean.

A federal court in Hawaii ruled last week that the president cannot reinstate fishing by executive fiat but must use the standard regulatory review and public comment process before allowing about 160 fishermen licensed to harvest tuna, mahi-mahi and wahoo access to roughly 256 million surface acres of ocean in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.

The ruling effectively stayed NOAA’s action to implement Trump’s April 27 proclamation rolling back the commercial fishing ban across roughly 400,000 square miles of the Pacific Islands monument about 900 miles southwest of Hawaii.

Read the full article at E&E News

US judge blocks commercial fishing in Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument

August 12, 2025 –A judge has blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to reopen large swaths of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to commercial fishing, ruling that the NOAA Fisheries letter authorizing fishing in the monument is unlawful.

“We applaud the court for rejecting the Fisheries Service’s attempt to gut fishing protections in the monument without going through the formal rulemaking process, which ensures a voice for all those concerned about protecting the monument’s vital species and ecosystems for today and for future generations,” Conservation Council for Hawaiʻi Executive Director Jonee Peters said in a statement.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Judge blocks Trump bid to allow fishing at marine monument

August 12, 2025 — A federal judge in Honolulu blocked a NOAA guidance Friday that permitted commercial fishing around protected Pacific islands and atolls.

The ruling from Judge Micah Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii said the Trump administration’s unilateral decision to open a large swath of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument violated the Administrative Procedure Act by forgoing public comments or hearings.

That notice to fishermen came one week after President Donald Trump’s proclamation declaring 400,000 square miles of the monument would no longer be subject to commercial fishing prohibitions that had been in place between 50 and 200 nautical miles of Wake and Jarvis islands and the Johnston Atoll. The areas, which have ecological, cultural and historical value, became subject to fishing bans when President Barack Obama expanded the monument in 2014 under the Antiquities Act of 1906.

Read the full article at E&E News

Fishing in vast Pacific nature area halted after judge blocks Trump order

August 11, 2025 — Commercial fishing that recently resumed in a vast protected area of the Pacific Ocean must halt once again, after a judge in Hawaii sided this week 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 will get snagged by longline fishing, an industrial method involving baited hooks from lines 60 miles (about 100 kilometers) or longer.

President Donald Trump’s executive order to allow this and other types of commercial fishing in part of the monument changed regulations without providing a process for public comment and rulemaking and stripped core protections from the monument, the groups argued in a lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Micah W. J. Smith granted a motion by the environmentalists on Friday. The ruling means boats catching fish for sale will need to immediately cease fishing in waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles (93 kilometers to 370 kilometers) around Johnston Atoll, Jarvis Island and Wake Island, said Earthjustice, an environmental law organization representing the plaintiffs.

Read the full article at ABC News

Judge discontinues commercial fishing in Pacific monument

August 11, 2025 — A Hawaii judge vacated an agency letter on Friday that allowed commercial fishing in a Pacific Ocean monument following a proclamation from President Donald Trump that walked back Obama-era environmental protections.

U.S. District Court Judge Micah Smith, a Joe Biden appointee, ruled that the letter — issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service — violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act and Administrative Procedure Act when it opened up protected water of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.

Environmentalists had claimed that the government didn’t engage in any notification or comment process before issuing the letter on April 25, a week after Trump’s proclamation.

“Whether plaintiffs are right to contend that they are entitled to participate in a notice and comment procedure — the government has chosen to concede that they are,” Smith wrote, noting the government had opted not to argue the letter was an interpretive rule instead of a legislative one.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Environmental lawyers, Trump officials meet in court over fishing in Pacific monument

August 7, 2025 — Was the process of allowing commercial fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument followed properly?

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation in April to open PIHMNM to commercial fishing, in part by ordering that the secretary of commerce “shall not prohibit commercial fishing” in the monument, located in the central Pacific Ocean.

About a week later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that commercial fishing is no longer banned in those waters, and just days after that, longline fishing boats were observed fishing in the monument.

But environmental lawyers in a legal battle to stop the fishing say a formal process, which includes public hearings, is required first.

Read the full article at Hawaii Public Radio

At U.N. Conference, Countries Inch Toward Ocean Protection Goal

June 16, 2024 — Remote coral atolls in the Caribbean. Habitat for threatened sharks and rays around a Tanzanian island in the Indian Ocean. And 900,000 square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean around French Polynesia.

These are some of the millions of acres of water now set aside as part of an international goal to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. More than 20 new marine protected areas were announced at the third United Nations Ocean Conference, which ended on Friday in France.

Countries and territories pledging new areas included Chile; Colombia; French Polynesia; Portugal; Samoa; Sao Tome and Principe; the Solomon Islands; Tanzania; and Vanuatu.

“Protecting the ocean is beginning to become fashionable,” said Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist and oceanographer who served as chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the 1990s, at an event celebrating a network of protected areas around the Azores.

The new designations come at a time when the United States, which sent only two observers to the conference, has moved to reopen the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. The country is also seeking to unilaterally authorize mining of the seafloor in international waters.

France, which hosted the conference with Costa Rica, pushed for a moratorium on deep sea mining, with four new countries pledging their support this week, bringing the total to 37 countries.

Read the full article at The New York Times

WPRFMC clarifies impacts of Trump’s decision to reintroduce fishing in Pacific national monument

June 5, 2025 — In April, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order allowing commercial fishing from 50 to 200 nautical miles off the shore within the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.

The national monument was founded as the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in 2009 under President George W. Bush and then expanded in 2016 under President Barack Obama.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Environmentalists’ lawsuit challenges Trump’s order to allow commercial fishing in Pacific monument

May 27, 2025 — Environmentalists are challenging in court President Donald Trump’s executive order that they say strips core protections from the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument and opens the area to harmful commercial fishing.

On the same day of last month’s proclamation allowing commercial fishing in the monument, Trump issued an order to boost the U.S. commercial fishing industry by peeling back regulations and opening up harvesting in previously protected areas.

The monument was created by President George W. Bush in 2009 and consists of about 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) in the central Pacific Ocean. President Barack Obama expanded the monument in 2014.

A week after the April 17 proclamation, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service sent a letter to fishing permit holders giving them a green light to fish commercially within the monument’s boundaries, even though a long-standing fishing ban remains on the books, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Honolulu.

Read the full article at the Associated Press