The order threatens one of the planet’s last wild, healthy ocean ecosystems and a place of great cultural significance for Pacific Islanders
HONOLULU, HI – On April 17, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order attempting to allow industrial fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (formerly the Pacific Remote Islands). This action 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 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. The Pacific Islands Heritage is 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.”
George W. Bush established the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument in 2009 to protect the marine habitats of seven islands or atolls: Wake, Jarvis, Howland and Baker Islands, Johnston Atoll, and Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll. The monument was expanded in 2014 to a total of approximately 495,189 square miles. Presidents have the authority to designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act, not to modify or abolish them. Presidents from both parties have designated a total of 168 national monuments under the Antiquities Act.
The area is 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.”
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 Hawai‘i-based longline industry has been catching more fish, while the distance the fleet travels has remained unchanged.
The claim that opening the conservation area will save American Samoa’s last cannery or local American jobs is troubling and misleading. 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 US-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 US-flagged drifting longline fleet spent 0.00% of their effort fishing (in the same area) out of the entire Pacific.
The cannery is owned by Starkist Samoa Co., a subsidiary of StarKist Co., which is owned by Korean company Dongwon Industries. The cannery has a egregious environmental record (EPA news releases here and here),
The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition is not standing down to allow industrial fishers to exploit and raid protected ocean areas. Now is the time to stand together and fight to protect the ocean that we all rely on.