Honolulu longliners wasted little time cashing in on President Donald Trump’s decision last month to lift the commercial fishing ban in the deep ocean waters of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
Online tracking data shows several vessels from the local tuna fleet started fishing in the deep-ocean waters surrounding Johnston Atoll, which is part of the Central Pacific monument, within three days of being given the OK by federal fisheries officials.
However, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court Thursday by several prominent conservation groups aims to halt that new fishing activity in what was a protected area for sharks, turtles, seabirds and other vulnerable marine animals.
Timelapse video of data from Global Fishing Watch shows fishing vessels entering the protected area of Johnston Atoll from April 25 to May 4. (Global Fishing Watch)
The suit contends that Trump overstepped his powers under the U.S. Antiquities Act in opening most of the monument waters back up to commercial fishing. Only Congress, the suit argues, has the power to revoke such protections that were put in place by previous presidents.
The monument was created in 2009 by President George W. Bush and expanded in 2014 by President Barack Obama.
Trump’s order “threatens to destroy one of the world’s last healthy and wild ocean ecosystems,” Jonee Peters, executive director of one of the suit’s plaintiffs, Conservation Council for Hawaiʻi, said in a statement Thursday. “Commercial fishing would remove large numbers of fish, sharks, turtles and other marine life as both intended catch and unintended bycatch.”
It’s the latest dustup over the ramifications of opening one of the largest marine protected areas in the Pacific back up to U.S. fishing fleets — primarily those based in Hawai‘i and American Samoa — as the effects of climate change worsen.
This map shows the marine national monuments in the Pacific and the areas with changes to commercial fishing restrictions in the Pacific Islands Heritage monument by Trump. (April Estrellon/Civil Beat/2025)
Leaders of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council recently downplayed the impacts of Trump’s move because it keeps the commercial fishing ban intact within 50 miles of shore of the monument. Wespac Executive Director Kitty Simonds said it keeps sensitive nearshore habitats “beyond the reach” of commercial fishing gear.
Local scientists and conservationists say that’s misleading. The seabirds that nest on shore at the monument forage for fish well past the 50-mile border, where commercial fishing has resumed. The guano they produce when they fly back is then crucial to nourishing the monument’s nearshore environments.
Deep-ocean fishing threatens to disrupt that and other ecological connections between the deep ocean waters and the near shore, University of Hawaiʻi Kewalo Marine Laboratory Director Robert Richmond said Thursday.
Commercial fishing vessels operating in the Central Pacific region that includes the monument regularly hook endangered whales, sharks and turtles, U.S. fishery reports show, often killing them.
Richmond said those were the chief reasons Obama expanded the monument more than fivefold, pushing the boundary out to the federal limit of 200 miles around all the islands and atolls except Palmyra/Kingman and Baker and Howland.
“The only way you can really address management of fisheries is to look at the entire ecosystem and all (their) components,” he added.
That expanded area is what’s now open to commercial fishing under Trump’s order.
A Quick Turnaround
On April 25, Sarah Malloy, the Pacific Islands regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, sent out a letter declaring that the waters 50 miles to 200 miles out around Johnston plus Jarvis and Wake Island had been reopened to commercial fishing.
Three days later, marine tracking data compiled by the nonprofit Global Fishing Watch showed U.S.-flagged longliners based out of Honolulu started to enter and fish those waters around Johnston. The vessels included the Sapphire 2, Captain Alex, Autumn and Kīlauea.
Seabirds dive and forage in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument. Researchers and conservationists say this foraging occurs in distant waters offshore and is a key reason to keep those monument waters off-limits to commercial fishing. (Courtesy: Kydd Pollock/The Nature Conservancy)
It’s not clear why the local vessels headed to the expanded monument area so quickly — or how much time they plan to spend there going forward.
Prior to the 2014 expansion under Obama, Honolulu longliners only set 4% of their hooks in those waters and obtained 95% of their tuna catch in other areas, according to a report prepared for the federal government in 2014 by scientists with the National Geographic Society, the Marine Conservation Institute and University of Hawai‘i.
Hawaiʻi Longline Association Executive Director Eric Kingma did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, the new lawsuit filed against Trump also takes aim at the Fisheries Service for opening up the monument to commercial fishing simply by issuing a letter. The agency bypassed requirements to take public input before making any changes and publish any new rules first in the Federal Register, Earthjustice attorney David Henkin said.
“There’s a process to go through,” said Henkin, whose legal advocacy group filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs, “and none of that happened here.”
Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by The Healy Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.
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