If we couldn’t be doing any worse with environmental conservation, Trump’s latest executive order calls to permit commercial fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument –– one of the world’s largest protected fishing reserves. This decision rides on Trump’s larger plan to make the U.S. the dominant supplier of seafood in the world, another lousy attempt at trying to make something “great again.”
The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument lies 750 miles west of Hawaii. The monument was established by President George H. W. Bush in 2009 and was expanded by Obama in 2014. This protection has helped sustain many of the endangered wildlife populations of the region, like birds, turtles and fish.
Robert H. Richmond, a marine ecologist at the University of Hawaii, says this marine reservation is a place fish can lay their eggs and repopulate.
“What they are really are bank accounts where fish are the principal and their reproductive output is the interest,” said Richmond.
Highly protected marine areas such as this are actually a good thing for commercial fishermen. Marine protected areas (MPAs) sustain nearby commercial fisheries by providing a safe haven for commercially important species to lay a large amount of eggs and grow to a desirable size. Commercial fishermen capitalize when these fish migrate outside of the protected area.
In addition, MPAs are critical for scientific research. Because this area is largely untouched by humans, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists are able to collect valuable data on the natural behaviors of marine life such as rays and sharks. The site also has deep ocean corals that scientists use to analyze the effects of climate change. Permitted commercial fishing will disrupt the nature of this delicate ecosystem and the critical research being done by NOAA.
Yet, Trump’s decision overlooks these services. The order to unlock the MPA for commercial fishing comes from a recent push by American Samoan representatives. Because more than 80% of the US territory’s economy depends on fishing, they see the MPA as a financial burden.
With the MPA ban on commercial fishing, Samoan fishermen are forced to fish further offshore in international waters to compete against poorly regulated and highly subsidized foreign fleets. If Trump’s order is passed through Congress, it would be an economic boom for the Pacific island territory, ensuring his political favoritism throughout the region. However, without the block on commercial fishing, this boom will only be for a short term while the economic bust will be much longer once fish populations are depleted.
Trump’s bad ideas don’t stop there. His executive order calls for a complete review of all existing marine national monuments to see if any should be opened to commercial fishing, a slap in the face to ocean conservationists.
This order is really just a part of Trump’s larger plan to restore American dominance in the global seafood industry. His ideas are all laid out in his latest order, “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.” I’m sure if we followed the plan, our dominance could be restored, but only for a couple of years before all domestic fisheries collapse, a mistake this country has made in the past. But one we cannot afford to make again.
The irony is that we are already a dominant leader in the global market. In a recent report, the U.S. ranks 5th in the nation, after China, India, Indonesia and Peru. However, the U.S. leads every other nation in imports at 90% of its supply. This number places the U.S. at a 20 billion dollar trade deficit in the fish market once you split the difference on how much the U.S. exports to other countries.
Like many other industries, Trump wants to end U.S. dependence on foreign imports by placing hefty tariffs and scaling domestic supply chains, regardless if it creates a trade war that crashes financial markets or harms the environment. The U.S. fish market trade deficit is very high, but fixing it should not come at the expense of our oceans.
According to the USDA, consumer demand for seafood has risen over the last three decades to 20.5 pounds per person. And to meet this ridiculous demand, markets shifted to outsourcing from foreign imports. For instance, in 2022 $8 billion of imports was just shrimp. To fix this problem, perhaps demand should just be left unmatched. I would much rather have a fish shortage in supermarkets, expensive cat food, and a healthy trade balance than leaving behind a depleted ocean for future generations.
That said, with the current population, U.S. fisheries could not possibly provide domestic markets with a long-term supply without MPAs to sustain wild catches. Removing these protections would simply make our trade deficit worse because little to none would be left to export.
Even if we did scale up commercial fishing, Trump’s order does not discuss the horrific issues with bycatch or any effort to reduce microplastic pollution coming from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is 1.6 million square kilometers or about triple the size of France. Ironically, NOAA does work at cleaning it up, but Trump had the bright idea to downsize the organization.
If Trump wants to improve U.S. commercial fishing and reduce the trade deficit, he needs to invest in activities that will come to fruition in the long term. That means leaving the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument alone and advocating for increased protections in other marine areas. For instance, in Florida, the output of commercial fishing in the Gulf of Mexico (not the Gulf of America), has drastically fallen due to frequent algae blooms caused by harmful runoff; however, we continue to subsidize the same agricultural industries that are causing it.
Unfortunately, fisheries around the world are being inundated by commercial fishermen, and many are on the brink of collapse. As a result, the industry has never been more competitive, so many nations are heavily subsidizing fleets to stay ahead. At this rate, the industry is heading towards complete market failure and the U.S. should not participate. Without a doubt, the U.S. trade deficit is messed up but the fix lies in rolling back consumer demand, not marine protections. Furthermore, American Samoan representatives can consider nuanced solutions such as a benefit sharing agreement between tourism and fishermen or granting local fishermen exclusive access rights to fish in the areas outside the MPA in exchange for their support in enforcing the fully protected MPA.