Congress Moves to Lock In Commercial Fishing Rights Inside Marine National Monuments
For the better part of a decade, the question of whether American commercial fishermen can legally drop a line inside a federally designated marine national monument has been answered differently depending on who happens to occupy the Oval Office. That maddening cycle of bans, reversals, and reinstatements may finally be heading toward a permanent legislative resolution — one that would strip future presidents of the power to use a 120-year-old land protection law to shut fishermen out of the ocean.
A bill currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress would prohibit presidents from banning commercial fishing in marine national monuments entirely, codifying that fishing activities in those areas must be regulated under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). The legislation, H.R. 8904, introduced by Delegate Amata Radewagen of American Samoa, would amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to provide a statutory framework for regulating fishing in marine national monuments. It is the most direct congressional attempt yet to resolve a legal and political standoff that has now lasted the better part of three presidential administrations.
A Monument Built on Executive Power — and the Fishing Bans That Came With It
To understand why this bill matters, it helps to understand how the United States ended up in this situation in the first place. The Antiquities Act of 1906, originally passed to protect archaeological sites from looters in the American Southwest, grants presidents sweeping authority to declare national monuments on federally owned land — and, more controversially, on federally controlled waters. For more than a century, administrations of both parties have pushed that authority steadily outward.
Designated in 2016 by President Barack Obama, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument encompasses an area roughly the size of Connecticut and protects three vast underwater canyons — deeper than the Grand Canyon — as well as four extinct volcanic seamounts that tower thousands of meters from the seafloor. Together, these features create habitat for endangered whales, sea turtles, seabirds, and ancient deep-sea corals, some thousands of years old. It remains, as of today, the Atlantic Ocean's first and only marine national monument.
Obama prohibited commercial fishing within the nearly 5,000-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument when he established it in 2016, and later presidents have alternated between reallowing commercial fishing or banning it again. The move marks the fourth time that the status of fishing in the region has been changed in the last ten years since the creation of the monument. That revolving door of executive action has left both fishing communities and conservation groups in a constant state of legal and regulatory limbo — pouring money into litigation and lobbying, with no permanent resolution in sight.
The pattern is straightforward but exhausting. On June 5, 2020, Trump issued Proclamation 10049, which removed the restrictions on commercial fishing within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. Subsequently, on October 8, 2021, President Biden issued Proclamation 10287, finding that commercial fishing activity has the potential to significantly degrade the monument's objects of historic and scientific interest and reinstating the prohibitions on commercial fishing. Then Trump came back. On February 6, 2026, President Trump signed a proclamation opening the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. On April 6, 2026, the Trump Administration issued a final rule rescinding regulations issued under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act that restrict commercial fishing within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
The Pacific Monuments: An Even Larger Stakes Game
The Atlantic monument fight, high-profile as it is, represents only a fraction of the total ocean territory at issue. The greater commercial battle has been playing out over the Pacific, where the scale of restricted waters dwarfs anything in the Atlantic.
The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, known as the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument until January 2, 2025, is an area in the Central Pacific Ocean that encompasses over 495,000 square miles — nearly twice the size of Texas. It contains seven U.S. Pacific Island territories — Howland and Baker Islands; Jarvis Island; Johnston Atoll; Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll; and Wake Island — most of which are uninhabited, and their surrounding marine environments.
Initially established under President Bush in 2009, the no-fishing zone around Wake, Johnston, and Jarvis in the Pacific Islands Heritage Monument was extended to 200 miles by President Obama in 2014. On April 17, 2025, President Trump signed a proclamation opening the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, first established by President G.W. Bush in 2009, to commercial fishing. He also signed an executive order directing the secretaries of Commerce and the Interior to review existing marine monuments and recommend which should be opened to commercial fishing.
That executive order was no small thing. "Federal overregulation has restricted fishermen from productively harvesting American seafood including through restrictive catch limits, selling our fishing grounds to foreign offshore wind companies, inaccurate and outdated fisheries data, and delayed adoption of modern technology," Trump wrote in the order, titled "Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness." The administration's message was blunt: American fishermen have been losing ground to foreign competitors for years, and monument designations have accelerated that decline.
American Samoa's Economy in the Balance
The economic case for opening the Pacific monuments is not merely abstract policy. The Trump administration claims to have opened the Pacific Remote Islands Monument to fishing partly to support the economy of American Samoa, stating that American Samoa's "private sector economy is dependent on the fishing industry," because a tuna cannery "is the largest employer on the island, providing about 5,000 jobs" and "accounts for 99.5% of American Samoa's exports and 84% of the private employment in the territory." In addition, "American Samoa is home to the only Buy American-compliant tuna processing facility for U.S. military rations and school lunch programs."
The numbers from the fishing industry paint an equally stark picture. One of the witnesses at the congressional hearing, American Tunaboat Association Executive Director William Gibbons-Fly, blamed marine national monuments for the shrinking size of the American tuna fleet in the Western Pacific, noting that roughly 53 percent of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone around the Pacific Islands Region is covered by marine national monuments. "Our industry is struggling to survive, and with it, so is the tuna-dependent economy of American Samoa. The loss of fishing grounds and the strict regulatory environment has seen the U.S. Pacific purse seine fleet reduced from 34 vessels just a few years ago to just 15 vessels operating today," Gibbons-Fly testified.
The Tuna Biology Argument
Supporters of reopening monument waters have also challenged the scientific premise behind blanket fishing prohibitions in the Pacific. The proclamation assumes that the monument's ban on commercial fishing does nothing to help the main species fishing would target — tuna and other pelagic fish — because these species "are migratory in nature, and do not permanently reside within" the monument. Put plainly: if tuna don't stay put, a no-take zone does not function as a tuna reserve. As one industry figure put it, "If the objective is to protect tuna, you'd have to close half the Pacific. These areas that were closed are relatively small. They are not tuna reserves where tuna are going to spawn and fill the ocean."
Real-world catch data appears to back that up. When U.S. longliners fished the newly opened waters around Johnston Atoll, they reported that their catches per hook were not significantly different from the waters outside the previously closed areas. That finding cuts directly against the spillover hypothesis — the idea that protecting an area from fishing allows populations to rebuild and overflow into surrounding waters — which has been a central argument for monument fishing bans.
The Congressional Push: Making It Permanent Through Statute
The congressional bill at the center of this fight takes direct aim at the legal mechanism that has allowed presidents to unilaterally flip fishing access on and off. Successive presidents' administrations have used the Antiquities Act to unilaterally establish national marine monuments or to change the protections granted within them, and commercial fishing groups have long bemoaned the use of that power to ban fishing within their boundaries. The proposed legislation would effectively close that loophole by making the Magnuson-Stevens Act — not a president's proclamation pen — the governing authority for all fishing activity inside monument waters.
The bill received a formal airing before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries in early June 2026. Among its supporters was a notable voice from within the federal government itself. Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere Tim Petty, who spoke in favor of the bill at the hearing, argued that the existing regulatory process safeguards fish populations and habitats within those areas: "The MSA, along with the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and other applicable authorities, provides enforceable, adaptive, and science-based mechanisms sufficient to ensure the proper care and management of monument objects."
Petty added: "Moving forward, NOAA will continue to rely on the regional fishery management councils as critical advisors to ensure that fishing regulations are developed with local expertise and stakeholder input. By cutting red tape and prioritizing the MSA, we ensure our marine monuments support both a healthy environment and a thriving ocean economy."
The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, whose jurisdiction covers the waters nearest the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument, has expressed consistent support for the direction Trump and Congress are now moving. The council in August 2025 approved recommendations that included reopening the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing, with a spokesperson noting that Trump's proclamation "aligns with the Council's previous recommendations" from August, and as far back as 2016. The council's position is that fishing in the monument should be handled through the same "science-based, participatory process" as other areas, and that "this approach provides the best path for balancing sustainable fishing opportunities with the protection of important marine ecosystems."
Regional Councils: The Industry's Preferred Framework
The argument for deferring to the regional fishery management councils rather than executive proclamations is rooted in how the Magnuson-Stevens Act actually works in practice. The eight regional councils established by the MSA were specifically designed to integrate commercial fishing interests, scientific expertise, and conservation goals into a transparent, public rulemaking process. The fishery management councils issued a resolution in May 2016 emphasizing that fisheries management decisions should be made in accordance with provisions in the MSA and its "public, transparent, science-based process." That resolution came out the same year Obama created the Atlantic monument — and its message was clear: fishermen wanted a seat at the table, not a presidential decree handed down from above.
In the Pacific, that council-based approach has its own advocates. The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council chair Will Sword stated: "The council has long supported restoring commercial fishing access to waters around Wake, Johnston, and Jarvis, and welcomed the President's proclamation reopening those areas. Now, under the executive order, the council is preparing its comments on the broader review of opening the three remaining U.S. marine monuments in the Pacific to commercial fishing. We are engaging with islanders across the region to ensure our input reflects both the best available science and the needs of our fishing communities."
The Opposition: Scientists, Conservationists, and the Courts
The bill and the broader deregulatory push have drawn fierce opposition from marine scientists, conservation organizations, and Democratic lawmakers who argue that the ecological stakes are too high to leave monument protection to the goodwill of rotating fishery management bodies.
Other lawmakers have asked Trump to reinstate commercial fishing bans within the monuments. In March, a group of nine Democratic senators signed a joint letter asking the president to reverse his order directing the resumption of commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. Their letter was pointed. "New Englanders largely favor the establishment of permanently protected ocean areas, but you baselessly justify this proclamation and its devastating environmental impacts by claiming that it will benefit commercial fishermen. The science suggests otherwise. Multiple studies show that creating well-managed marine protected areas that prohibit fishing has little to no harmful economic impact on commercial fishermen," the lawmakers said.
They further pointed out that "when your administration opened the monument for fishing in 2020, 99 percent of fishing activity still took place outside of the monument. In an era where fish stocks are shifting and being depleted, fishing communities need our support more than ever, but selling out the monument to earn political points does nothing to actually help fishermen."
Environmental groups have been equally aggressive. A coalition sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in October 2025 warning them that opening up marine national monuments to "industrial-scale fishing" not only endangers "sensitive ocean ecosystems," but also "the local economies that rely on them" if permanent damage is caused. The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument has been characterized as a hotspot of biodiversity, sheltering endangered whales, undiscovered deep-sea life, and cold-water corals that can take centuries to grow.
The conservation nonprofit community has also marshaled marine biologists. "Scientific studies have shown that protecting the resources within protected areas like the monument increases the amount of fish available to commercial fishers in waters outside the protected areas," explained marine biologist Bob Richmond. Richmond's argument is the scientific counterweight to the administration's position: that monuments effectively function as marine banks, maintaining stock abundance that spills into surrounding fishable waters.
The Litigation Front
The legal challenges have been flying from multiple directions, and the courts have already weighed in at least once against the Trump administration's methods — though not necessarily its ultimate goals. On May 22, 2025, conservation groups filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii against President Trump and several administration officials to challenge the Pacific Remote Islands Monument proclamation. As of August 8, 2025, tuna fishing is once again prohibited in the monument because U.S. District Judge Micah Smith granted the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment on the issue of whether the proclamation repealed the relevant fishing regulations — it did not, and the court vacated NMFS's April letter opening the monument to fishing.
That ruling turned not on whether the president has authority to shrink a monument's protections, but on a procedural question: whether NMFS could notify permit holders that an area was open to fishing without first going through notice-and-comment rulemaking as required by the Administrative Procedure Act. NMFS had sent the relevant letter following Trump's "Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Pacific" proclamation, and a federal judge concluded the agency had jumped the gun. The substantive constitutional question — whether presidents can legally use the Antiquities Act to reduce monument protections created by a prior administration — remains unresolved in the courts.
On the Atlantic side, lawsuits have followed with equal urgency. The Conservation Law Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and whale-watch naturalist Zack Klyver sued the Trump administration to block its attempt to open the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. The lawsuit argues that Trump has no legal authority to abolish or diminish national monuments established by a prior president. The whale-watch industry, notably, has joined the fight as a direct economic stakeholder — not just a conservation interest. "I have taken over 750,000 people out on the ocean to see wildlife, so I know how important it is to protect this marine monument. My business depends on a healthy ocean," said Zack Klyver, co-chair of the North Atlantic Whale Watch Naturalist Association.
The Economic Reality: How Much Do These Waters Actually Matter to Fishermen?
One of the most persistent tensions in this debate is the gap between the symbolic importance of monument access and its measurable economic value. Fishermen have pushed hard to regain access to these waters, but the data on how much commercial activity they would actually generate is, at minimum, ambiguous.
Multiple analyses suggest the economic case is weak. Historic data indicate that less than one percent of New England fishing grounds were affected by the original closure, and most commercial landings have long occurred outside the monument. A study conducted in 2022 found even more granular confirmation of this: the monument had little to no impact on fisheries, and fishing activity in the squid/butterfish, mackerel, and tuna fisheries remained relatively equal before the area's closure, after its closure, and after its reopening.
Yet those numbers don't fully capture the fishermen's grievance. For the fleet operating out of New Bedford, Gloucester, and other New England ports, the monument is less about the tons of fish inside it and more about the principle of exclusion — the idea that the federal government can simply shut them out of ocean waters they've fished for generations, on the unilateral say-so of a president operating under a law designed for dinosaur bones in Arizona. For fishermen in American Samoa, the calculation is more concrete: a shrinking Pacific fleet translates directly into fewer boats, fewer jobs at the cannery, and a territory whose private economy is built almost entirely around tuna.
As tuna longliner and Hawaii Longline Association board member Peter Webster notes, the industry has gone to great lengths to become a model fishery: "We have to jump through all these hoops to prove we're fishing sustainably and ethically." The HLA boats are certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, yet as Webster puts it, "our guys don't see a return on that. And if they don't have the label, they can't sell, but buyers will buy from the Chinese longliners." The monument fishing debate, in other words, exists within a broader competitive crisis: American fishermen playing by rigorous environmental rules while competing against fleets that face no comparable restrictions.
What the Bill Would Actually Change — and What It Wouldn't
The proposed legislation does not propose dismantling marine national monuments. It does not eliminate protections for deep-sea corals, endangered whales, or seamount ecosystems. What it does is transfer the authority to regulate fishing activity inside monument boundaries from the president's proclamation pen to the established statutory framework of the Magnuson-Stevens Act — the same rules that govern every other commercially fished body of federal water in the United States.
That means fishery management councils, public comment periods, stock assessments, and catch limits would apply inside monuments just as they do outside them. The argument, as framed by the bill's supporters, is not that monument ecosystems deserve less protection — it is that the MSA already provides that protection through a proven, science-based system. As one industry advocate put it: "Any fishing that resumes in the monument will remain subject to the full force of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, a law these same groups routinely hail as a global benchmark for sustainable fishery management."
The practical effect, if the bill passes, would be significant: no future president could recreate the Obama-era blanket fishing ban using the Antiquities Act. Monument designations could still happen — but they could not, on their own, exclude commercial fishermen without a separate act of Congress. That would mark a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the executive branch and the fishing industry, and it would end a decade of whiplash policy that has left harbor towns from New Bedford to Pago Pago unable to plan past the next election.
The Deeper Question: Who Gets to Decide What Happens Under the Water?
Beneath the specific fights over trawl gear and tuna quotas lies a constitutional question that the courts have not yet fully answered and that Congress has been reluctant to address directly: does the Antiquities Act actually give a president the authority to shrink or eliminate protections created by a predecessor? Some legal scholars argue that President Trump's April 2025 opening of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing should be deemed ultra vires and contrary to the Antiquities Act. When presidents act pursuant to statutory delegations of Congress's authority rather than pursuant to their own constitutional powers, they should be treated the same as a federal agency — and federal agencies cannot simply undo prior rules without going through the proper process.
That argument cuts both ways. If the Antiquities Act does not give presidents the power to reduce monument protections, then Trump's proclamations are legally vulnerable regardless of whether Congress acts. But it also means that Obama's original ban was built on an interpretation of executive power that could be reversed in the next Democratic administration. The congressional bill, whatever its other merits, would at least settle that particular question by grounding fishing access in statute rather than executive will.
Marine national monuments and marine sanctuaries protect over one million square miles of ocean ecosystems, preserve cultural resources, and provide opportunities for recreation and tourism — and they are at risk of being downsized or exposed to commercial fishing and other activities that compromise their protection. How Congress and the courts ultimately resolve the tension between those protections and the legitimate needs of the American commercial fishing industry will shape the management of those waters for generations. The bill before the House subcommittee may be the clearest signal yet that legislators from fishing states are no longer willing to leave that answer to the discretion of whoever happens to occupy the White House.
