December 15, 2016 — LIHUE, Hawaii — The first round of several meetings addressing options for management of the newly expanded Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument came to Kauai Tuesday night.
Joshua DeMello, fisheries analyst with the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, explained the process to a scant audience at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School.
“We’re also looking at options for Native Hawaiian subsistence fishing,” DeMello said.
November 28, 2016 — In the months leading up to the Nov. 8 election, President Barack Obama signed a series of proclamations to dramatically increase the amount of land and water that is federally protected from commercial fishing, mining, drilling and development.
On Aug. 24, he established a nearly 90,000-acre national monument in the Katahdin Woods of Maine.
Two days later, Obama expanded Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands by 283 million acres, making it the world’s largest protected area at the time.
And on Sept. 15, he created the first national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, protecting more than 3 million acres of marine ecosystems, seamounts and underwater canyons southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Obama has used a century-old law called the Antiquities Act to federally protect more land — 550 million acres and counting — than any other president. He’s established 24 new national monuments in at least 14 states since taking office eight years ago, with the bulk of the acreage in Papahanaumokuakea and the Pacific Remote Islands.
But with Republican Donald Trump’s surprise upset of Democrat Hillary Clinton, attention is turning to what Trump plans to do when he takes office in January and whether he will seek to undo or at least modify the national monuments that Obama created.
Advocates for commercial fishing interests on the East Coast have started nudging policymakers to consider what changes the next administration could make. But West Coast and Hawaii industry groups are still gathering information and developing plans.
Saving Seafood, a nonprofit that represents commercial fishing interests, has already started pushing policymakers to consider what changes the next administration could make to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
Saving Seafood Executive Director Robert Vanasse told the Associated Press earlier this month that he thinks it would be “rational” to allow some sustainable fishing in the monuments.
Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat
November 23, 2016 — Unable to constantly patrol the waters, fishery enforcement agencies need new methods and technologies for monitoring [marine monument] areas.
Just west of the Hawaiian Islands sits one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. In August, President Obama tripled the size of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, which now stretches across 582,578 square miles of ocean, an area nearly four times the size of California. The monument is home to colorful coral reefs teeming with marine life and encompasses rocky outcrops where some 5.5 million birds, including the Laysan Duck and Short-tailed Albatross, breed every year.
More than 5,000 miles east of the warm Pacific waters of Hawaii, in the frigid northern Atlantic Ocean, sits the 4,913-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which Obama designated in September. There, 130 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, underwater ravines deeper than the Grand Canyon contain cold-water coral reefs, among the world’s most delicate ecosystems, and the water’s surface serves as the winter home of Maine’s Atlantic Puffins.
The monuments are major victories for environmentalists—with a swipe of his pen, the President banned all commercial fishing within the monuments’ boundaries and outlawed all gas and oil exploration. Protecting marine life in both oceans will ultimately support fisheries and provide refuge for wildlife adapting to a changing climate.
But it’s one thing to designate a monument, and it’s quite another to actually enforce the promised protections. The two new monuments are vast and remote, and authorities already struggle to detect illegal activity in marine protected areas that are smaller and closer to land. In 1997 and 2004, nets and other commercial fishing gear were uncovered in the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of North Carolina. Even worse, evidence of fishing with explosives, bleach, and even cyanide has been found in the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa.
That the new monuments are so large and located in such distant waters presents an even bigger challenge for the federal agencies responsible for their monitoring. Ideally, crewed vessels would police the areas, says Lisa Symons, resource protection coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. A physical presence would deter illegal fishing or mining and allow authorities to arrest or capture violating vessels. But this is almost impossible considering the locations of the new monuments—offshore and hundreds of miles from cities, towns, or villages.
November 14, 2016 — The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council is wasting no time seeking financial compensation for those in the fishing industry who may claim they have been harmed by President Barack Obama’s expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in late August.
At its meeting last month — shortly after being advised by counsel of restrictions on lobbying legislatures or the president for funds — the council decided to send a letter to Obama highlighting the expansion’s impacts on Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities and requesting that the Department of Commerce mitigate those impacts through “direct compensation to fishing sectors.”
The council’s letter will also include a request that the ban on commercial fishing in the expansion area — which includes the waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles off the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — be phased in. The letter will also ask for “other programs that would directly benefit those impacted from the monument expansion.”
Compensation for fisheries closures in federal waters is not unprecedented. In 2005, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) reimbursed the Hawaii Longline Association $2.2 million for legal expenses tied to the group’s lawsuit opposing a temporary closure of the swordfish fishery. Also, as part of the same $5 million federal grant that funded the reimbursement, lobster and bottomfish fishers displaced by the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve established by President Bill Clinton also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct compensation and funds for fisheries research.
With regard to the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, after it was first established by President George W. Bush in 2006, then-Sen. Daniel Inouye inserted an earmark in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 that provided more than $6 million to NMFS for a “capacity reduction program.” That program allowed vessel owners with permits to fish for lobster or bottomfish in the NWHI to be paid the economic value of their permits if they chose to stop fishing well ahead of the date all commercial fishing was to end in the monument, June 15, 2011.
November 14th, 2016 — As of Monday, virtually all commercial fishing will be banned from the newly created Marine National Monument that includes the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts off the coast of southern New England.
The closure includes more than 4,900 square miles of ocean, or about the same area as the state of Connecticut, about 130 miles east-southeast of Cape Cod.
The Northeast Canyons represent 941 square miles of that total, while the protection afforded the Seamounts stretches over 3,972 square miles.
Currently, only lobster and red crab fishing are exempted from the closure. Those fisheries are grandfathered in for seven years before they also will be excluded and the area wholly shut off to commercial fishing.
The closure, widely criticized by fishing stakeholders as an end-run around the established national fishery management system, is a product of President Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act on Sept. 15 to create the new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
The process, as it has in coastal communities around the country, pitted commercial fishing interests and other fishing stakeholders against environmentalists and conservationists in a contentious struggle over wide swaths of the nation’s oceans.
Some history:
In August, in a victory for environmentalists and conservationists, Obama ended a roiling debate by more than quadrupling the size of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument to 582,578 square miles in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, establishing the largest protected area on the planet.
October 20, 2016 — Hawaii’s commercial fishing industry leaders are not finished fighting the fourfold expansion of a U.S. marine monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
President Barack Obama signed a proclamation in August to make Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument the world’s largest protected natural area after several months of intense lobbying for and against the proposal.
Now the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which actively opposed the expansion, wants the government to study the potential effects and find ways to alleviate them.
“The impacts to the Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities as a result of monument expansion are considerable,” Council Chair Edwin Ebisui Jr. said in a statement Friday. “The Council will write to the President about these and request the Department of Commerce to mitigate them.”
Wespac sets fisheries management policies for a 1.5-million-square-mile area and advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on how to minimize bycatch, protect habitat and prevent overfishing.
The latest wave of opposition to the monument rolled in earlier this month at the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee meeting in Honolulu.
New committee member Ray Hilborn, a prominent marine biologist from the University of Washington, railed against large marine protected areas.
October 18th, 2016 — Seafood News — Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WestPac) will propose changes to fishery regulations to accommodate an expanded marine monument designation and also made no changes to the 2017 Pacific longline bigeye tuna catch.
WestPac agreed to produce a draft of amendments and regulations to the Hawai’i and Pelagic Fishery Ecosystem Plans (FEPs) to accommodate provisions of the August 26th Presidential Proclamation that expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
The Obama Administrations designation expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument to encompass the entire 200-mile US EZZ around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
An MPA designation means commercial fishing is banned in protected waters, though regulations can allow for non-commercial fishing, like subsistence practices.
“The impacts to the Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities as a result of monument expansion are considerable,” said Council Chair Edwin Ebisui Jr. “The Council will write to the President about these and request the Department of Commerce to mitigate them.”
The Council will solicit public input on the draft FEP amendment and draft regulation options through statewide meetings to be held prior to the Council’s next meeting in March 2017.
The Council will also ask the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to analyze various impacts of the monument expansion, which closed commercial fishing in approximately 61 percent of the US EEZ around the Hawai’i Archipelago. Among these is the change in longline effort around the main Hawaiian Islands in relation to changes in troll caught yellowfin tuna.
Meanwhile, WestPact recommended no changes for the 2017 longline commercial bigeye tuna catch.
This means the longline limits for the bigeye tuna catch will remain at 2,000 metric tons for the US Participating Territory.
Additionally, the Council also authorized the Territories of American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marina Islands (CNMI) to allocate up to 1,000 mt of their limit to US fishermen through specified fishing agreements as authorized under Amendment 7 of the Pelagic Fishery Ecosystem Plan for the Western Pacific Region.
WestPac says the transfer amendment provides the Territories with funding for fisheries development projects in their respective Marine Conservation Plans.
“The transfers also help to stabilize Hawai’i’s local fresh tuna market,”said Council Executive Director Kitty M. Simonds.
The amendment was actually invoked this month to extend the bigeye tuna season for the US sector in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
“It was a lot of work for the agency, but leaving 250 metric tons of bigeye in the water with 30 boats unable to fish was a significant hardship on 20 percent of the Hawaii fleet,” said Hawaii Longline Association President Sean Martin in our story about the quota transfer.
This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
October 13th, 2016 — Despite objections made by many prominent Hawaiians and a federally designated regional fishing council, President Barack Obama, relying on the authority granted to the presidency in the 1906 Antiquities Act, quadrupled the size of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (PMNM) with one stroke of a pen.
With its August 25 expansion, PMNM became the largest protected reserve on Earth, comprising 582,578 square miles, nearly double the size of Texas. President George W. Bush created PMNM in 2006.
The Antiquities Act is one of the most ill-considered laws ever written. It gives to presidents dictatorial power to declare large swaths of the public’s land off-limits to a variety of uses normally allowed on federal lands. Many presidents have used this power, but none have done so more often or with such recklessness as Obama has. Since 2009, Obama has created or expanded 25 national monuments, more than any other president in history.
The process of creating a national monument under the Antiquities Act does not require approval from the democratically elected Congress, which is especially problematic because the creation of national monuments has often been opposed by many people in the states where the monuments have been established. It’s these people who suffer most directly from the new limits placed on economic and recreational activities.
October 7, 2016 — Kure Atoll, a speck of land in a federally protected marine area nearly 1,400 miles northwest of Honolulu, provides a safe haven for seabirds, rare fish, endangered seals and coral reefs.
And now, at least until a salvage operation can occur, it’s also home to an 8,000-pound excavator, which is leaking fuel, a roll of chain-link fencing, hunks of metal and broken glass that fell into the water when the boat carrying it capsized a quarter-mile offshore.
Two of the nine people aboard the 33-foot landing craft were injured in the Sept. 2 incident, which remains under investigation. They were treated and released by a doctor at nearby Midway Atoll.
The accident offers a rare look at some of the work being done inside Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument — a nearly 600,000-square-mile area around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands that’s off-limits to anyone without a special permit for conservation, education, research or cultural purposes.
President Barack Obama quadrupled the monument’s size in late August, making it the world’s largest protected marine area. The day before the vessel capsized he flew to nearby Midway Atoll to highlight the monument’s importance in protecting natural resources, fighting climate change and preserving heritage sites, which include sunken ships at Kure.
Employees of Element Environmental, a Hawaii environmental and engineering firm contracted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, were working on a nearly $1.5 million project at Kure Atoll that involved digging up 400 to 600 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated soil from an old U.S. Coast Guard dump site near the shoreline and reburying it in a more secure spot near the center of Green Island, the atoll’s largest land mass at six miles wide.
October 4th, 2016 — The lure of legacy is pulling President Obama to designate national monuments at an unprecedented rate and with even greater vigor in the midnight hour of his last term. President Obama has already designated more than two dozen national monuments, the most ever of any President. Teddy Roosevelt designated 18 monuments; Bill Clinton 19; and George W. Bush just 6.
President Obama’s monuments encompass 548 million acres of federal land and water, double the amount of any preceding President. This includes the recent quadrupling of the size of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off northwestern Hawaii to 582,578 square miles, making it what some have called the largest protected place on Earth. He’s not done yet. Several possible designations loom, including the approximately 1.9 million-acre proposed Bears Ears national monument in Utah.
Some see these acts as excessive. But those who lodge complaints sometimes blame the President too quickly. Fault lies mostly with the U.S. Congress (of 1906) for delegating near plenary authority to a President to unilaterally convert normal public lands into high-level protected zones. The Antiquities Act of 1906 provides, in part, that “The President may, in the President’s discretion, declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated on land owned or controlled by the Federal Government to be national monuments.” This language has been interpreted by presidents as permitting proclamations of monuments for the preservation of places of natural significance, often the most controversial ways the Act is used.