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.
Combined, this equated to nearly 500,000 square miles of U.S. waters closed to commercial fishing, with only recreational fishing allowed. These islands, being extremely remote, didn’t see much recreational fishing – so that concession was in principle only.
In 2014, President Obama expanded the PRIMNM by over 400,000 square miles and, later in 2016, expanded the Hawaii monument by over 440,000 square miles. The use of the Antiquities Act meant there was no required consultation or environmental review, and with a stroke of the pen, the two presidents closed approximately 51 percent of U.S. waters in the Western Pacific to commercial fishing by U.S. fishermen. These actions were consistently opposed by the Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council, which is responsible for managing U.S. fisheries in the Western Pacific.
In April, President Trump signed a proclamation reopening portions of the U.S. exclusive economic zone around Pacific Remote Islands beyond 50 nautical miles of Johnson Atoll, Wake, and Jarvis Island, and some of the Hawaii-based fishing fleet began fishing in the newly reopened areas. In August, a federal court issued an injunction blocking this opening on the grounds that NMFS failed to conduct a public rulemaking process as it relied on a letter issued to permit holders indicating the waters were opened per Trump’s proclamation.
The decision to open fishing in some areas of the monument pertained only to waters beyond 50 nautical miles, yet advocates of the closures repeatedly use images of coral reefs when arguing for the value of the closures. There are no coral reefs 50 nautical miles from any of these islands; therefore, no coral reefs will be affected by commercial fishing.
Purse seining and longlining for tuna are the only kinds of commercial fishing allowed in the monument that will happen and have happened, neither of which comes even close to touch the bottom of the ocean beyond the 50 nautical miles of any land. Earthjustice attorney David Henkin claims that “longline and purse seine fishing are highly destructive.”
Destructive to what? Non-existing coral reefs? Purse seines and longlines are two of the most sustainable forms of food production. Both the independent science evaluations by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) have rated purse seine and longline fisheries as sustainable by MSC and a “good alternative” by Monterey Bay.” The idea that NMFS should ban these highly monitored fisheries runs counter to U.S. law and objectives for sustainable seafood production.
The expansion of these pelagic monument waters in 2014 had no scientific justification; it was simply one-upmanship among nations to claim the biggest protected area. The boats that had fished inside the expanded areas moved outside and caught the same number of fish.
Tuna don’t stay put but are always on the move and are in and out of these areas often enough that there is no reason to expect there would be more of them inside because of any closure. A 2023 study of the impact of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) in Kiribati showed very little increase in tuna abundance, and the Kiribati government has reopened the area to fishing. Moreover, all commercially fished tuna stocks in the Pacific Ocean are currently assessed to be at sustainable levels.
The U.S. Pacific Marine Monument had been much more lightly fished than PIPA, and closures would therefore be expected to have even less effect. When the monument areas were reopened, Hawaii-based fishermen who fished there reported no higher tuna catches than elsewhere. The idea that these closures, or fishing before the closures, changed the marine ecosystems of the area in any way is not supported by any evidence.
A recent study by authors from environmental groups found no difference in the abundance of tunas inside and outside the monument waters around Palmyra. Thus, despite the unsupported claims that the expanded monument areas are “protecting” a fragile marine ecosystem and producing “spillover,” the main effect the closures have had is to exclude U.S. fishermen from U.S. waters – forcing them to compete with foreign fleets on the high seas.
Even worse, there are those in the conservation community who advocate for closing all high-seas areas to fishing, blithely claiming that all the fish could be caught in each nation’s economic zone. In that case, assuming the expanded monument area remains closed, there would be almost no place in the Pacific for U.S. fishing fleets to fish, except in other nations’ waters. These are too far for the Hawaii-based longline fleet. As the Hawaii longline fleet is a major food producer in the state, this jeopardizes Hawaii’s food security and self-sufficiency objectives.
The U.S. has a fisheries management system that, by law, prevents overfishing and protects marine species through a wide range of laws, including the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, among others, through the regional fisheries management councils and NMFS. The monument expansions by President Obama were done by executive fiat with no scientific evaluation or justification.
Essentially, the only measurable effect has been to displace the U.S. fishing fleet to international waters. It did not provide any protection for highly mobile species or open ocean marine ecosystems.
