Zinke’s rec­om­men­da­tion also issues an equal­ly dan­ger­ous attack on marine mon­u­ments in both the Pacif­ic and Atlantic Oceans. He rec­om­mends shrink­ing the Pacif­ic Remote Islands Marine Mon­u­ment, a net­work of islands and atolls that forms the world’s largest marine reserve at near­ly 500,000 square nau­ti­cal miles. Zinke also advo­cat­ed that the com­mer­cial fish­ing ban in the monument’s waters be revoked.

Zinke’s ensu­ing review pro­pos­es changes to 10 mon­u­ments: It rec­om­mends that the size of four be reduced, and that eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, such as com­mer­cial fish­ing, min­ing and log­ging, be rein­stat­ed in anoth­er six. Even before the final review was released Dec. 5, 2017, Trump began to take action on these rec­om­men­da­tions, cut­ting Bear Ears Nation­al Mon­u­ment by 85 per­cent and shrink­ing Grand Stair­case-Escalante Nation­al Mon­u­ment to half of its orig­i­nal size to pave the road for oil and gas explo­ration .

In April 2017, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed an exec­u­tive order direct­ing Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary Ryan Zinke to pro­duce the review, declar­ing that America’s net­work of nation­al mon­u­ments is the result of ​“an egre­gious abuse of pow­er” and ​“a mas­sive fed­er­al land grab.”

Cur­rent­ly, com­mer­cial fish­ing is banned in the ocean area that extends out to 200 nau­ti­cal miles from the islands’ shore­lines. Zinke pre­scribes a trans­fer of man­age­ment of the mon­u­ment from the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA) to the his­tor­i­cal­ly cor­rupt West­ern Pacif­ic Region­al Fish­ery Man­age­ment Coun­cil (Wes­pac), which cur­rent­ly over­sees a vast ter­ri­to­ry of 1.5 mil­lion nau­ti­cal square miles.

Trump has not yet act­ed, but con­ser­va­tion­ists are con­cerned that Zinke’s rec­om­men­da­tions could spell dis­as­ter for the mon­u­ment, and wor­ry that Wes­pac would priv­i­lege com­mer­cial fish­ing over the needs of the ecosystems.

“I’m not aware of any enti­ty that is as con­sis­tent­ly anti-con­ser­va­tion as Wes­pac,” says Paul Achitoff, a Hon­olu­lu-based envi­ron­men­tal attorney.

Wespac’s Cor­po­rate Agenda

The Pacif­ic Remote Islands Marine Mon­u­ment, locat­ed about 1000 miles from Hawaii, is home to more than 300 species of fish and 100 species of coral. The mon­u­ment serves as a sanc­tu­ary for aquat­ic endan­gered and deplet­ed organ­isms, includ­ing sea tur­tles, pearl oys­ters, giant clams, reef sharks and coconut crabs.

Bob Rich­mond, a coral reef biol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii at Manoa, tells In These Times that the islands were select­ed to receive pro­tec­tion in part because of cli­mate change. The West­ern Pacif­ic Warm Pool—a migrat­ing body of warm water in the open ocean — is pro­ject­ed to push species of fish towards the Pacif­ic Remote Islands, Rich­mond explains, and thus the region will be an impor­tant refuge.

For near­ly a decade, com­mer­cial fish­ing has been banned in the monument’s waters. In 2009, Pres­i­dent Bush inau­gu­rat­ed the islands as a nation­al mon­u­ment and pro­tect­ed the monument’s waters out to 50 miles from the islands’ shores. In 2014, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma expand­ed that ter­ri­to­ry and fish­ing ban to cov­er the 200 nau­ti­cal miles of sea that cir­cle the monument’s islands.

Long­line fish­eries present a major threat to the Pacif­ic Remote Islands. As the name sug­gests, long­line fish­ing is a tech­nique employed by com­mer­cial fish­ers, in which 10-kilo­me­ter lines hold­ing thou­sands of bait­ed fish­ing hooks are let out to drift for hours or days. Long­lin­ers catch not only the tar­get­ed fish, but also larg­er ani­mals like seabirds, tur­tles, sharks and whales. ​“One of the issues with the long­lin­ers is that they were catch­ing basi­cal­ly one shark for every two big­eye,” says Rich­mond. ​“We know apex preda­tors, like sharks, are very impor­tant in main­tain­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of ecosys­tems like coral reefs.”

This sta­bil­i­ty has helped the islands evade the glob­al trends of coral mor­tal­i­ty. The ecosystem’s bio­di­ver­si­ty enables it to endure and bounce back from the warm­ing and acid­i­fi­ca­tion that have dev­as­tat­ed reefs else­where. All this could change if Wes­pac is put in charge of the monument’s future.

Long­lin­ers face inter­na­tion­al quo­tas designed to com­bat over­fish­ing, and Hawai­ian long­lin­ers have con­sis­tent­ly met these quo­tas even with­out access to the marine mon­u­ments. (Upon meet­ing the quo­ta, they have to close down for the year.) But in the past, Wes­pac has arranged agree­ments through which U.S. long­lin­ers buy up unused quo­tas from Samoa and Guam, enabling them to restart fish­ing. If the monument’s com­mer­cial fish­ing ban is revoked, the Hawai­ian long­lin­er fleet could quick­ly car­pet the cur­rent buffer zone of the Pacif­ic Remote Islands.

The con­nec­tion between the coun­cil and long­line com­mer­cial fish­ing indus­try is seam­less. Sean Mar­tin, a Wes­pac coun­cilmem­ber, is also the pres­i­dent of the Hawaii Long­line Asso­ci­a­tion, a trade group that rep­re­sents the com­mer­cial inter­ests of longliners.

In Feb­ru­ary 2017, Wes­pac exec­u­tive direc­tor Kit­ty Simonds solicit­ed the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to remove fish­ing restric­tions with­in marine mon­u­ments. Invok­ing Trump rhetoric, a page of her pre­sen­ta­tion read: ​“Make Amer­i­ca Great Again, Return U.S. Fish­er­men to U.S. Waters.”

Wes­pac is fund­ed by grants from the Depart­ment of Com­merce, and as a fed­er­al grant recip­i­ent, is pro­hib­it­ed from using fed­er­al funds to engage in lob­by­ing activ­i­ties at both the fed­er­al and state lev­el. Achitoff believes that Wespac’s plea to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was unlaw­ful: ​“There’s no ques­tion that they did lob­by the admin­is­tra­tion. Their posi­tion has been that the law only pro­hibits leg­is­la­tors. Well I’ve read the laws and my view is that those lob­by­ing laws apply to the exec­u­tive branch as well as the legislature.”

In recent years, Wes­pac orga­nized to cut fed­er­al pro­tec­tions for green sea tur­tles, advo­cat­ed for Hawaii’s fish­er­men to catch more big­eye tuna than they’re allowed under inter­na­tion­al agree­ments, and active­ly opposed Obama’s expan­sion of both the Papahā­naumokuākea­he Mon­u­ment and the Pacif­ic Remote Islands. ​“I’ve nev­er seen any oth­er coun­cil take such a con­sis­tent­ly stri­dent posi­tion against any and all marine pro­tect­ed areas,” said for­mer Wes­pac mem­ber Rick Gaffney to Earth Island Jour­nal.

The Trump administration’s plan to ran­sack pro­tec­tions from marine mon­u­ments is com­pound­ed by a bill approved by the U.S. House Com­mit­tee on Nat­ur­al Resources in Decem­ber 2017. The bill excus­es some fish­eries from annu­al catch lim­its and allows fish­ery coun­cils to over­rule mon­u­ment protections.

But stud­ies show that fish­ing-free MPAs actu­al­ly help the fish­ing econ­o­my. Well man­aged MPAs result in an increase in fish stocks — on aver­age, MPAs see an increase of 446 per­cent with­in a decade. This repro­duc­tion has a spillover effect, which pos­i­tive­ly impacts adja­cent fish­eries. ​“Marine pro­tect­ed areas are like a bank account that pro­vides inter­est,” Rich­mond says. ​“When the long­line fish­eries are out­side of the 200 mile lim­it [of the Pacif­ic Remote Islands], they can basi­cal­ly draw on that inter­est that’s being pro­duced. That’s the key to sus­tain­able fisheries.”

Marine Reserves Are Cli­mate Reserves

In addi­tion to over­fish­ing, cli­mate change rav­ages the oceans. Sea­wa­ter absorbs and retains car­bon diox­ide, which make sea­wa­ter more acidic, a phe­nom­e­non called ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion. Even a small increase in ocean acid­i­ty inter­feres with the way many marine organ­isms, includ­ing coral, pro­duce shells or plates. Increased sea­wa­ter tem­per­a­tures bleach and kill coral, while ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion hin­ders its abil­i­ty to recov­er. As a result, as of ear­ly 2016, 33 to 50 per­cent of the ocean’s reefs were seri­ous­ly dam­aged or destroyed.

In June 2017, an inter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists through the Uni­ver­si­ty of York (U.K.) pub­lished a study which shows that MPAs help not just ecosys­tems, but also humans adapt to cli­mate change. For exam­ple, the study found that MPAs safe­guard coastal com­mu­ni­ties from sea lev­el rise and grant them more time for adap­ta­tion. ​“We were keen­ly aware that marine reserves can increase species’ abun­dance and help alle­vi­ate food scarci­ty, but our eval­u­a­tion showed reserves are a viable low-tech, cost-effec­tive adap­ta­tion strat­e­gy,” said Beth O’Leary, a co-author of the paper.

The Pacif­ic Remote Islands serve as ide­al sci­en­tif­ic lab­o­ra­to­ries. ​“We need pris­tine reefs to see what we’ve lost else­where, to bet­ter man­age dam­aged reefs and to iso­late the effects of cli­mate change,” said Alan Fried­lan­der, a marine con­ser­va­tion biol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

If Trump fol­lows through on Zinke’s cor­po­rate pro­tec­tion­ist agen­da it would jeop­ar­dize one of the world’s last thriv­ing coral reef ecosys­tems. Despite their claims, the U.S. fish­ing econ­o­my and U.S. soci­ety need MPAs like the Pacif­ic Remote Islands to fos­ter resilience in the face of cli­mate change and overfishing.