Trump opens massive marine protected area to commercial fishing

disgusted..again

undoing decades worth of fisheries management rebuilding of stocks to help replenish the rest of the overfished oceans

how long before Gallapos Islands are needed for national security

Trump opens massive marine protected area to commercial fishing

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation allowing commercial fishing in Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (PIH), a massive marine protected area home to threatened fish, sea turtles and marine mammals. The proclamation says U.S.-flagged vessels may now fish within 50-200 nautical miles (90-370 kilometers) inside PIH’s boundaries.
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PIH was established in 2009 by then-president George W. Bush and expanded under his successor, Barack Obama, in 2014 to cover about 1.27 million square kilometers (490,000 square miles), mostly around uninhabited U.S.-controlled islands and atolls. Industrial fishing was until now banned in PIH. PIH Coalition, a Hawai‘i-based advocacy group that includes scientists, fishers and Indigenous leaders, told Mongabay in an emailed statement that allowing industrial fishing “threatens to reverse decades of progress that have reduced overfishing and exploitation of one of the planet’s last wild, healthy ocean ecosystems and a place of cultural significance for Pacific Islanders.”
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Fisheries expert and PIH Coalition member Rick Gaffney told Mongabay that the proclamation, and the president, “seem to be oblivious to the fact” that most U.S.-flagged vessels in the Pacific have only a single U.S. citizen: “[T]he rest of the crew are foreign nationals from impoverished countries being paid pitifully low wages, working in harsh, often dangerous conditions.”

Additionally, the proclamation notes that existing laws like the Endangered Species Act are enough to protect the area’s natural resources. But Gaffney said these don’t provide the same protections as the PIH closures. “And many of them appear to be on the administration’s list of measures destined for the ‘wood chipper,’ along with the agencies that enforce them.”