Environmentalists are challenging with President Trump’s executive order, stripping core protections from the Pacific Islands Heritage Marines National Monument and opening the area to harmful commercial fishing.
On the same day of last month’s declaration that allowed commercial fishing at the monument, Trump issued an order that would boost U.S. commercial fishing by stripping the regulations and opening harvests in previously protected areas.
The memorial was created by President George W. Bush in 2009 and expanded by President Obama to nearly half a million square miles of the Central Pacific Ocean.
A week after the April 17 declaration, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Services sent green light to fishing permit holders for commercial fishing within the boundaries of the monument, despite the long-standing fishing ban remaining in the book, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Honolulu.
The first Longline Fisher began fishing at the monument just three days after that letter, according to Earthjustice, which uses a global fishing watch to track vessel activities within the monument.
The Justice Department declined to comment Friday.
The lawsuit noted that commercial longline fishing, an industrial method that involves baiting hooks from lines over 60 miles, is like scratching turtles, marine mammals, or seabirds that are attracted to bait or swim through the curtains of hooks.
“We won’t stand up as the Trump administration unleashes highly destructive commercial fishing in some of the most untouched biodiversity marine environments on the planet,” Earth’s lawyer David Henkin said in a statement. “With the addition of lawlessness and stacking lawlessness, National Marine Fisheries Services has chosen to implement President Trump’s illegal declaration by issuing its own illegal directives without any public opinion.”
Designating the Pacific region south and west of the Hawaiian Islands as monuments “provided the necessary protection of various scientific and historical treasures in one of the most spectacular and unique marine ecosystems on the planet,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit added that allowing commercial fishing in the expansion of the monument would harm the “cultural, spiritual, religious, self-sufficiency, educational, recreational and aesthetic interests” of a group of Hawaiian plaintiffs who are genealogically linked to indigenous peoples in the Pacific.
Johnston Atoll is approximately 717 nautical miles west-southwest of the state and is the closest island to Hawaii’s monument.
Kelleher writes for the Associated Press.
