Pacific Island Fishing Culture
is Under Attack

Op-Ed by Edwin Ebisui Jr. and Kitty Simonds

Commercial fishing is a vital industry in the western Pacific Ocean and a cornerstone of the economies of Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific territories. But over the years, area fishermen have been repeatedly constrained by federal efforts that have created vast new marine preserves that prohibit fishing.

The latest, an expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM), is the largest such preserve in the world. While touted as a major step forward for conservation, it will instead likely lead to increased costs and an increased reliance on imported seafood, already 90 percent of the U.S. market. These are concerns that the federal government needs to more effectively consider in future marine conservation policy.

President Obama’s initial expansion proposal would have excluded commercial fishermen from nearly 782,000 square miles of U.S. waters around seven U.S. islands and atolls. Practically, this would require local fisheries to rely increasingly on the high seas and foreign fishing grounds, which, among other effects, would drastically alter and impede traditional Pacific Island fishing culture.

The president’s final action, announced on Sept. 25, formally proclaimed 490,000 square miles of these waters as part of the PRIMNM. This modification reduced, but did not remove, the harm to our fishermen and communities who depend on these waters for their livelihoods and sustenance and to supply legal, reported and regulated seafood to U.S. consumers.

It can be hard for the concerns of Pacific Island communities to reach Washington, D.C. Six thousand miles separate the Oval Office from the newly expanded monument, near Hawaii and the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Our islands sit far from both the mainland and the mainstream media. Other than Hawaii, our communities are represented in Congress by only nonvoting delegates, and we are recognized internationally as “small island developing states.” In addition to economic issues, many in the region voiced concern over whether the monument would be ecologically effective.

The pre-existing monument already protected critical shallow reef habitats. The species that are nominally protected in the expanded monument waters — 50 to 200 miles offshore — are highly migratory, meaning they’ll move freely within and beyond these new boundaries. These U.S. waters were already subject to the strictest management standards in the world, allowing only a limited number of highly regulated and monitored U.S. longline and purse-seine fishermen to operate within them.

In aspiring to the bragging rights of having the largest marine protected area in the world, PRIMNM proponents actually detract from our nation’s attempts to promote environmental conservation and fight illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by putting our law-abiding U.S. fishermen at a disadvantage in the international arena.

U.S. Pacific Island fishermen have fished these waters for centuries. But over the last decade, they’ve been kicked out of more and more of these waters. In fact, all of America’s marine national monuments are in the U.S. Pacific Islands, accounting for about 76 percent of U.S. marine protected areas. If any more U.S. Pacific Island waters become subject to presidential mandates, the marine-based traditions and economies of those of us who live in these remote, underrepresented islands will crumble.

Seattle Times Originally published Friday, November 14, 2014 Edwin Ebisui Jr. is a commercial fisherman in Hawaii and the acting chairman of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council. Kitty Simonds is the council’s executive director.