Mixed reactions as Trump opens Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument

04/23/25 - Gov. Arnold I. Palacios commended Western Pacific Fisheries Council and American Samoa Delegate Uifa'atali Amata Radewagen for persuading U.S. President Donald J. Trump to sign an executive order restoring for Pacific Island communities the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument between 50-200 miles offshore. 

However, some in the CNMI were not happy with the decision, contending that the executive order will open pristine waters to industrial fishing. 

“I'm glad that the fisheries council and Congresswoman Radewagen and the Samoan delegation were able to articulate and convince the president to issue an executive order exempting the American fishing fleets to fish in their waters... it really would help the American Samoa tuna canneries and I commend them for all their efforts and their persistence to get this done,” said Palacios in a social media interview with Marianas Press.

He added that when former U.S. president Barack Obama established the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument in 2009 it basically restricted pelagic fisheries in the monument.

“That was one of the more productive fishing grounds for U.S. fishing fleets that deliver tuna to the American Samoa cannery. So that really impacted the American fishing fleet's ability to fish within the U.S. EEZ because it restricted them.”

As a former Department of Lands and Natural Resources secretary, Palacios acknowledged that the fight to get back fishing rights within the American EEZ has spanned more than a decade and the executive order was a long time coming considering Chinese fishing vessels have exploited the high seas at their expense.

“Chinese flag fishing vessels are all over the South Pacific and so it wasn't making sense to have a sanctuary that large and restrict the American fishing vessels from fishing within our own waters for pelagic. Tuna is a pelagic species and it's very highly migratory. [They] would go through the boundaries of the monument and when [they] get out, you know, you have Chinese and other international fishing fleets waiting on the other side. So, it didn't make sense, really, conservation sense.”

Blow to long-term conservation efforts

Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality acting administrator Floyd Masga, however, has a different viewpoint.

Speaking as a private citizen and a staunch environmentalist, he said opening national monuments like the Marianas Trench to commercial fishing threatens fragile ecosystems, endangers species, disrupts spawning and migration, and risks overfishing key stocks like tuna and bottomfish.

He added that the executive order may also violate the Antiquities Act and lead to lawsuits and policy reversals also create instability by undermining long-term conservation efforts.

Masga added opening up marine monuments to commercial fishing also has some Indigenous concerns and will affect America’s international reputation when it comes to conservation.

“Commercial activity in sacred areas may disrespect Indigenous culture local fishers may lose out to large commercial fleets, harming sustainable, community-based fishing. Rolling back protections could also damage the U.S.’s leadership in ocean conservation and weakens global efforts to protect marine environments.”

However, when it comes to short-term gain vs. long-term sustainability, Masga said while commercial fishing may see short-term profits, it would lead to long-term degradation of marine ecosystems and threaten biodiversity, future fisheries, and vital ecosystem services.

“For example, Marianas Trench Monument opening this area could disrupt the CNMI’s NOAA partnerships, cultural practices, eco-tourism potential, and the momentum of the newly approved Management Plan.”

Angelo Villagomez, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., agrees with Masga’s assessment, adding that it’s not only industrial fishing that’s on the table. 

“President Trump is threatening to open public lands and waters to oil drilling deep-sea mining and industrial fishing and like a lot of things that have happened during the last 100 days the legality of this action is questionable because the authority given to the president to protect these scientific and natural areas is called the Antiquities Act.”

Villagomez said while the Antiquities Act grants the president the power to designate national monuments it doesn't give him the power to overturn it as Congress only has the power to do so.

“I'm concerned that this is just the first action and that there's going to be additional bad actions opening up you know. If you can open up the Pacific Remote Island Marine National Monument what's to stop him from opening up Yellowstone to uranium mining.”

Fantastic news for US food security 

Radewagen, meanwhile, hailed the signing of the executive order and said it expands options for the U.S. tuna fleet out of Pago Pago Harbor in American Samoa.

“This sensible proclamation is important to the stability and future of American Samoa’s economy, but it also is fantastic news for U.S. food security. The vast Pacific Islands area cannot fall under the domination of an increasingly aggressive [Chinese Communist Party]. Instead, President Trump’s key action strengthens our American fishing fleet and helps combat malign activities by the CCP with increased U.S. fishing presence along with Coast Guard operations.”

Radewagen added the proclamation boosts American commercial fishing presence and economic activity in the Pacific islands region; helps reassert U.S. commitment and energetic presence in the Pacific; helps reduce I.U.U. fishing; combats malign activities by the CCP in the region based on U.S. commercial and Coast Guard presence; and enhances the nation’s food security by securing the supply chain of healthy tuna, serving Buy America school lunch and military K-rations, and reducing unnecessary reliance on imported fish. 

“Our U.S. fleet of law-abiding, thoroughly regulated fishermen is preferable to dependence on other nations supply, and highly preferable to the illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing practices that are a problem in our shared ocean. The American fleet is part of the solution, not the problem. I appreciate this strong, patriotic, common sense, and economically wise decision by President Trump.”

In 2014, Obama increased the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument from the original 80,000 square miles under President Bush to 490,000 square miles; and extended the fishing ban from 50-200 miles.

For perspective, the original PRIMNM area created was the size of Minnesota (80,000 sq. miles); and Obama increased it six-fold adding the equivalent of California (260,000 sq. miles) and Texas (150,000 sq. miles) and eliminating fishing in the process. This PRIMNM area and fishing ban is five times the size of all the Great Lakes combined! In fact, it is roughly 20 percent the size of the lower 48 states and the smallest 20 states would fit in the PRIMNM area with its fishing ban in open ocean waters.

“There was never any science justifying this fishing ban. Restoration of fishing from 50-200 miles will not negate any protections for existing inland waterway, beach, coral, or any other near-shore fishing species, flora or fauna,” said Radewagen.

Catch value opportunities

Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council chair Taulapapa William Sword, for his part, also welcomed Trump’s executive order that will allow two major U.S. fisheries in the Pacific Ocean back into U.S. waters. 

He said a third of American Samoa's workforce and 99.5% of its exports are dependent upon access to these waters by U.S. tuna purse seine vessels. Tuna is the most valuable commodity in the Pacific Islands and this proclamation will help increase U.S. relevance in the Pacific economy. Thirteen U.S. purse seine and approximately 150 U.S. longline vessels compete on the high seas with more than 450 foreign purse seine and more than 1,200 foreign longline vessels in the Western and Central Pacific. 

In 2023, the catch value was $113 million in the port of Honolulu and $97 million in Pago Pago, ranking sixth and seventh in the nation, respectively, according to NOAA Fisheries One Stop Shop.

The proclamation recognizes the effectiveness of U.S. fisheries management under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and reopens parts of the PIHMNM to commercial fishing, according to Sword.

“The president recognized that well-regulated, U.S.-flagged commercial fisheries are not only compatible with conservation goals but are also vital to national food security, economic resilience and maritime presence in the Pacific.”

Sword went on to say this decision is aligned with the council’s long-held stance that sustainable U.S. fisheries can coexist with marine conservation goals. 

“The expansion of the monument in 2014 denied U.S. fishermen access in the entire 200-nautical mile U.S. exclusive economic zone around Johnston and Wake Atolls and Jarvis Island. It did little to prevent overfishing of highly migratory species like tuna, which move freely across international waters. Meanwhile, foreign fleets—often poorly regulated and heavily subsidized—continued to fish near the monument boundaries where they compete with well-managed U.S. tuna fisheries.”

This action restores access to fishing grounds of the Hawaii longline fishery, one of the most sustainable and highly regulated fisheries in the world that supplies fresh bigeye and yellowfin tuna to Hawaii and the U.S. mainland. These stocks have been maintained above sustainable levels with little risk of overfishing.

This region is sustainably managed under the council’s Pacific Pelagic and Pacific Remote Islands Areas Fishery Ecosystem Plans and associated federal regulations. U.S. longline fisheries have quotas, are required to report their fishing activity and catch, use real-time satellite-based vessel monitoring systems, carry federal observers and use specific gear to minimize impacts to protected species. The Council is also developing new measures for crew training for protected species handling and release and modernizing the fishery’s monitoring program to include camera-based electronic monitoring. 

“The council remains committed to sustainably managing ocean resources while ensuring that U.S. fishermen are treated equitably in federal policies,” said Kitty Simonds, council executive director. “Waters from 0 to 50 nautical miles offshore and the corals, fish and sea turtles there continue to be protected by the Council, NOAA Fisheries and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and are off limits to commercial fishing.” She added that “this is a positive step for our island fishing communities, local economies and the broader Pacific region!”

Threat to one of the planet's last wild, healthy ocean ecosystems 

The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition said Trump’s EO threatens to reverse decades of progress that have reduced overfishing and exploitation of one of the planet's last wild, healthy ocean ecosystems and a place of cultural significance for Pacific Islanders.

The coalition said the move intends to scale back protections from 50 to 200 nautical miles, opening up 408,000 square miles of the monument to harmful industrial fishing extraction—one of America’s treasures, with deep sea coral reefs and resilient shallow reefs; threatened, endangered and critically endangered whales, sharks, rays, turtles, and seabirds; seamounts that serve as ecological hotspots for biodiversity; deep-sea species not found anywhere else on Earth; and the waterways of ancient and modern Indigenous navigators. 

“The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument includes some of America’s most pristine coral reefs and ocean ecosystems,” said Dr. Douglas McCauley, professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and director of Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory. “It is a safe haven for endangered sea turtles, the feeding and breeding ground for millions of seabirds, and a place of refuge for endangered marine mammals. Only 3% of our worldwide ocean is strongly protected today and our monuments are a significant portion of this figure. In attempting to downgrade the protection of this unique monument, we are devaluing a critically important asset in America’s ocean wealth portfolio.”

The area is also significant for Indigenous Pacific Islanders with ancestral, historical, and cultural ties to its islands and atolls. 

“The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument is more than a place for fishing, it is vital to the cultural heart of the Pacific Peoples,” said Solomon Kahoʻohalahala, a native Hawaiian elder and chair of the Pacific Island Heritage Coalition. “Opening this sacred place for exploitation is short-sighted and does not consider current or future generations of Pacific People who rely on a healthy ocean, and know this special ocean space as our ancestral home.”

The coalition said industrial fishing methods can catch and entangle marine wildlife–including endangered whales, dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, and seabirds–and cause harm to fragile corals. Commercial fishing also removes large numbers of fish and top predators, which disrupts ecological food webs and degrades ecosystem function. 

“Marine protected areas not only benefit ecosystems, they benefit fisheries. Studies have shown that protected areas have spillover benefits that lead to increased catch rates for tuna fisheries operating outside their boundaries. Specific to the area, a study published in Nature Communications shows that after the expansion of the Pacific Islands Heritage area, the Hawaii-based longline industry has been catching more fish, while the distance the fleet travels has remained unchanged,” said the coalition.

The claim that opening the conservation area will save American Samoa’s last cannery or local American jobs is troubling and misleading, it added. 

An emLab study conducted in 2023, which analyzed data from Global Fishing Watch and the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, found that between 2018 and 2022, the U.S.-flagged purse-seine fleet only spent 0.52% of their effort fishing in the two areas where commercial fishing is currently allowed in the PIH area: Howland Island and Baker Island, Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll. The U.S.-flagged drifting longline fleet spent 0.00% of their effort fishing (in the same area) out of the entire Pacific. 

The coalition said the cannery is owned by Starkist Samoa Co., a subsidiary of StarKist Co., which is owned by Korean company Dongwon Industries. The cannery has an egregious environmental record.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Communications’ Kristen Oleyte-Velasco said, at the moment, they’re reviewing Trump executive order.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing the recent Executive Order on commercial fishing in the Pacific and evaluating next steps for the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument and other protected areas. We remain committed to our conservation mission and will work closely with territorial leaders, Indigenous communities, and other stakeholders to assess any impacts, including those on the CNMI and neighboring Pacific islands.”

Story by Mark Rabago