President Trump signed a proclamation Thursday reopening nearly half a million square miles of protected Pacific waters to commercial fishing, rolling back monument-based bans his administration calls unnecessary and his critics call illegal.
Three marine national monuments in the Pacific are now open to commercial fishermen for the first time in years. Trump's proclamation removes fishing restrictions in the Mau and Ho'omalu Zones of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument near Hawaii, the Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument near Guam, and the entirety of the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument near American Samoa. Combined, the White House says the order reopens nearly 500,000 square miles of ocean that American fishermen had been locked out of under executive-order conservation restrictions imposed by Obama and reaffirmed by Biden.
"These actions have unlocked billions of dollars in economic value and protected thousands and thousands of jobs," Trump said at the signing, according to the White House. Standing beside him was Kitty Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, whose members had long pushed for the restrictions to be lifted.
The White House framed the move in straightforward economic terms: more domestic fishing means a stronger seafood supply chain, less dependence on imported fish, lower grocery prices, and work for fishing families in Hawaii, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. The administration also cited food and national security as grounds for the change, arguing that closing off vast stretches of American ocean to American industry serves neither.
Thursday's proclamation is the third significant monument rollback Trump has signed. In April 2025 he opened the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. In February 2026 he did the same for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic. The administration has argued consistently that prohibiting commercial fishing inside monument boundaries is unnecessary because many target species are highly migratory and already protected under existing federal fishery law regardless of monument status.
The monuments at the center of Thursday's order have a complicated history. Papahānaumokuākea was originally designated by President George W. Bush, but Obama dramatically expanded it and imposed the commercial fishing ban that blocked access to waters between 50 and 200 miles offshore of the islands. Biden's team reaffirmed those restrictions. Now the Mau and Ho'omalu Zones of that monument are back open.
Opposition Promises a Fight
Conservation groups immediately signaled they would not accept the order without a legal challenge. Earthjustice, the Conservation Council for Hawai'i, and the Center for Biological Diversity had already sued over Trump's April 2025 Pacific Remote Islands action, arguing it violates the Antiquities Act of 1906, which authorizes presidents to designate monuments but does not explicitly grant the power to shrink or modify them.
Floyd Masga, acting administrator of American Samoa's Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality, warned that "opening national monuments to commercial fishing threatens fragile ecosystems, endangers species, disrupts spawning and migration, and risks overfishing key stocks like tuna and bottomfish," according to reporting by earth.org. His comments reflect a genuine split within Pacific Island communities, some of which have long complained that monument designations were imposed over local objections and cut off both traditional and commercial fishing alike.
A federal judge in Hawaii already vacated a related NOAA Fisheries decision tied to the April 2025 Pacific Remote Islands action, ruling the agency had not followed proper rulemaking process. Whether courts apply similar reasoning to Thursday's proclamation will depend largely on how the new order is structured and whether the administration can show it stayed within proper procedural bounds.
That legal outcome will determine how durable Thursday's win actually is. If courts uphold the administration's reading of the Antiquities Act, fishing communities around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Guam, and American Samoa have a genuine, lasting opening. If the conservation groups prevail, the fishermen are back on the dock and the administration is back at the drawing board.
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