Swaths of ocean that are the last holdouts for hundreds of rare species are at risk of losing the federal protections put in place by Presidents Obama and Bush.

As the Trump administration sows doubt over vaccines, climate science, and environmental protections offered by agencies like the EPA, lawmakers are now taking aim at the otherwise uncontroversial research on tracking the movement and abundance of ocean life.



At a hearing on Wednesday, fishing industry representatives and some Congressmen asserted that there is no good scientific reason to preserve the five regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans designated as “marine monuments” by the past two presidents.

"Limiting fishing via marine monuments makes no sense whatsoever," testified Brian Halland, executive director of the American Tunaboat Association, which represents tuna fishing fleets.

“This is once again at attempt to control the seabeds without scientific information,” Rep. Don Young of Alaska said.



But scientists who study ocean life say there are many good reasons. These protected ocean areas host some of the oldest and rarest bird and animal species in the US. Ocean sanctuaries, where commercial fishing is limited, are known to have a rejuvenating effect on fish populations, who linger there, breed, and fill out their numbers. Also, scientists say, monument boundaries were marked out by mapping the movement and habitat of the species needing preservation.

Without pointing to any specific shortcomings in the evidence, and despite hearing a marine ecologist as witness say otherwise, those who opposed the monuments claimed that scientific evidence was not included in the decisions. Halland, of the Tunaboat Association, said the ban on fishing was based on “junk science.”

“The reality is that there’s a huge body of science, and it’s publicly available science,” hearing witness John Bruno, professor of biology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s frustrating as a scientist to hear lobbyists for the oil industry and the industrial tuna industry claim that there is no science behind these monument designations.”

Allowing commercial fishing in these zones would be “a travesty,” Bruno said, because it would remove protections for species that exist almost nowhere else in the ocean.