Environmental legal fund fighting Trump fishing order

Photo: Supplied/ the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

An environmental legal fund have sued US President Donald Trump in response to an executive order rolling back commercial fishing protections in the Western Pacific.

The April 17th order, "Unleashing American commerical fishing in the Pacific", expands fishing rights within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, a protected area which surrounds various American-owned islands.

The monument was established by President Bush in 2009. President Obama in 2014 expanded the size of the monument to around 1,270,000 square kilometers of ocean space - or about twice the size of the state of Texas.

Obama also completely banned commercial fishing activity from that space.

Trump's order reverses those bans, which Earthjustice claimed leaves more than 80 percent of the monument's total area open to fishing.

David Henkin, lead attorney for the case, told RNZ Pacific that is illegal.

"The Antiquities Act gives American presidents the power to create national monuments and to reserve those lands to protect the resources, but it's one way ratchet.

"It doesn't give a president the ability to destroy a monument by stripping from it the essential protections that are necessary to preserve the the objects of historic and scientific interests within the monument."

Trump's side argues that the presence of commercial fishing vessels doesn't pose a significant threat to marine life.

"A host of federal protections exist under current laws and agency management designations to protect the area's natural resources, vulnerable marine species, and unique habitats, such as coral and seamount ecosystems."

Henkin's suit contends that vessels would actually pose a massive risk, directly contradicting Trump's justification for bypassing the Antiquities Act.

Species of critically endangered sea turtles in transit, as well as coral species and various other marine animals would be made vulnerable to fishing, Henkin said.

"There is a lot of interaction with all of these species which are supposed to be protected under the US Endangered Species Act. Yet the Fishery Service, which is charged with implementing the Act, failed to do any analysis about the effects of opening these protected areas to activities that they know kill and injure endangered and threatened sea turtles.

"It's that web of life that President Trump's proclamation and the Fisheries Service opening it to commercial fishing is tearing apart."

US Exclusive Economic Zones of the US Western Pacific region. Photo: Supplied

Trump says monument is "detrimental" to territories, fishing industry

At the same time, nearly half of US-owned territory in the Pacific Ocean had been made unavailable for fishing, Trump stated in the order.

"This has driven American fishermen to fish further offshore in international waters to compete against poorly regulated and highly subsidized foreign fleets.

"This disadvantages honest United States commercial fishermen and is detrimental for United States territories like American Samoa, whose private sector economy is over 80 percent dependent on the fishing industry."

One of Trump's supporters in the Pacific, Congresswoman Uifa'atali Aumua Amata of American Samoa, said that the food security that extra fishing provides for is vital for her community.

"Neither Presidents Bush, Obama or Biden ever asked American Samoa what they wanted before they took away our indigenous fishing rights without any science... President Trump asked and acted."

Henkin said it reflects Trump's "complete ignorance" about the Pacific.

"You need to go for days and days to get to Johnston Atoll, or to get to Jarvis Island and certainly Wake Island. There are fishing grounds much closer to the main Hawaiian Islands or to American Samoa that are and always have been available to fishers there."

Ensuring a space for fish stocks to replenish is vital for sustainability, Henkin argued.

"This is a concept that I think Polynesians long understood by putting areas to off limits to exploitation, you create more abundance. You create spillover effects. And so by protecting the species within the monument, there are more pelagic species, including tuna to catch outside of the monument."

In a separate executive order, 'Restoring American seafood competitiveness', Trump ordered the Secretaries of Commerce and the Interior to "review all existing marine national monuments and provide recommendations to the President of any that should be opened to commercial fishing".