President Trump issued an executive order on April 17 that attempts to open the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (formerly the Pacific Remote Islands) to industrial fishing, threatening to reverse decades of progress to safeguard one of the planet’s last wild, healthy ocean ecosystems.
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 Coalition is not standing down to allow industrial fishers to exploit and raid protected ocean areas. Furthermore, the President does not have the authority to undo monument regulations. Now is the time to stand together and fight to protect the ocean that we all rely on.
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; more than 160 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 voyagers.