Commercial fishing in a vast Pacific nature area halted after judge blocks Trump order
Honolulu: Commercial fishing that recently resumed in a vast protected area of the Pacific Ocean must halt once again, after a judge in Hawaii sided this week with environmentalists challenging a Trump administration rollback of federal ocean protections.
The remote Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument is home to turtles, marine mammals and seabirds, which environmental groups say will get snagged by longline fishing, an industrial method involving baited hooks from lines 100 kilometres or longer.
US President Donald Trump’s executive order to allow this and other types of commercial fishing in part of the monument changed regulations without providing a process for public comment and rulemaking and stripped core protections from the monument, the groups argued in a lawsuit.
US District Judge Micah W J Smith granted a motion by the environmentalists on Friday. The ruling means boats catching fish for sale will need to immediately cease fishing in waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles (93 to 370 kilometres) around Johnston Atoll, Jarvis Island and Wake Island, said Earthjustice, an environmental law organisation representing the plaintiffs.
US Justice Department attorneys representing the government did not immediately return an email message seeking comment on Saturday.
Trump has said the US should be “the world’s dominant seafood leader,” and on the same day of his April executive order, he issued another one seeking to boost commercial fishing by peeling back regulations and opening up harvesting in previously protected areas.
President George W Bush created the marine monument in 2009. It consists of about 5,00,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometres) in the remote central Pacific Ocean southwest of Hawaii. President Barack Obama expanded it in 2014.
Soon after Trump’s executive order, the National Marine Fisheries Service sent a letter to fishing permit holders giving them the green light to fish commercially in the monument’s boundaries, Earthjustice’s lawsuit says.agencies
