An environmental group has filed further legal action against the Trump administration in an attempt to halt commercial fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
In May, California organization Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of multiple Hawai‘i groups — the Center for Biological Diversity, the Conservation Council for Hawai‘i and Kāpa‘a — opposing an April proclamation by President Donald Trump that permitted U.S. commercial fishing within the National Monument.
That lawsuit argued that both Trump’s proclamation and a subsequent letter by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service lifting the prohibition on commercial fishing within parts of the monument did not follow due process and were not legally valid actions.
Despite this, commercial fishing “is now taking place within the monument’s boundaries,” Earthjustice spokeswoman Miranda Fox told Aloha State Daily via email.
The boundaries of the PIHMNM cover about 490,000 square miles of ocean, protecting the waters surrounding Wake Island, Johnson Atoll, Jarvis Island and other islands in the Pacific. Based on the NMFS letter, most of those waters would be free game for licensed commercial fishing, with protected waters scaled back to much smaller areas around those islands.
In response, Earthjustice filed on Tuesday an additional motion for summary judgement, requesting that the U.S. District Court of Hawai‘i declare unlawful all efforts made by NMFS to revise the National Monument regulations without due process.
Fox told ASD the NMFS “[failed] to provide any opportunity for the public to comment before the agency issued its April 25 letter … contrary to the process that the law requires and that NMFS followed in the past.”
Earthjustice’s motion further explains that any changes to fisheries management within the Monument fall under the authority of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (otherwise referred to as Wespac). Under federal law, Wespac must conduct public hearings about such changes over the course of a lengthy public comment period.
This the NMFS failed to do, the motion contends. In fact, the NMFS letter doesn’t mention any recommendation by Wespac at all, nor did Wespac convene at any point between Trump’s April proclamation and the publication of the letter.
But, the motion claims that a mere three days after the letter was published in April, Hawai‘i-based longline fishers “began setting their miles of hooks in the Monument Expansion.”
The motion warns that such fishing methods create bycatch, which can inadvertently kill endangered and threatened species within Monument waters, including leatherback, green and hawksbill sea turtles.
“Even minimal commercial fishing in the Monument Expansion threatens grave harm to the pristine and vulnerable marine- and land-based ecosystems … which have benefited from over a decade of protection from destructive fishing practices.”
Fox said Earthjustice has requested a court hearing date in August to “address the NMFS’ failure to follow the lawful process.”
