Leaders of a quasi-government agency tasked with helping manage Pacific fisheries are urging President Donald Trump to reverse restrictions on commercial fishing within the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument that were expanded by former President Barack Obama just months before he left office.

The efforts by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council to roll back the marine protections in areas surrounding the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, as well as other protected waters, are angering members of environmental groups, who gathered outside a council meeting at the Ala Moana Hotel on Tuesday afternoon to voice their opposition.

“They have been pushing for years to fish, fish, fish, fish at the expense of endangered monk seals, at the expense of sea turtles, at the expense of albatross,” said Paul Achitoff, an attorney with Honolulu’s Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. “It goes on and on, and frankly Wespac has never seen a conservation measure that it hasn’t … opposed.”

Achitoff was joined by leaders of other local environmental groups, including the Hawaii Sierra Club, the Conservation Council for Hawaii and Hui Hoomalu i ka Aina.

The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, commonly known as Wespac, is one of eight fishery management councils throughout the country established by Congress in 1978 to prevent overfishing, minimize by-catch and protect fish habitats. The agency advises the federal government on policies that affect fishing.

Management ‘disrupted’

Last month, during a meeting of leaders from the eight management councils in Arlington, Va., Wespac’s executive director, Kitty Simonds, and its chairman, Ed Ebisui, delivered a presentation in which they urged the committee to ask the Trump administration to remove fishing restrictions from monument areas.

“Make America Great Again, Return US fishermen to US waters,” read one of the pages of the presentation that was provided by environmental groups to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

The presentation references several marine monument areas, including Papahanaumokuakea.

On Friday the leaders of all eight councils also sent a letter to Trump saying that the marine monument designations had “disrupted the ability of councils to manage fisheries throughout their range.”

“Our experience with marine monument designations to date is that they are counterproductive to domestic fishery goals, as they have displaced and concentrated U.S. fishing effort into less productive fishing grounds and increased dependency on foreign fisheries that are not as sustainably managed as United States fisheries,” according to the letter, a copy of which was provided by Wespac.

The letter goes on to argue that the removal of American fishing vessels from U.S. waters “eliminates their ability to act as watchdogs over U.S. fishing grounds threatened by foreign fishing and other incursions.”

While Wespac’s mission is to help manage fisheries sustainably, the agency for years has clashed with environmental groups that accuse it of being too cozy with large fishing interests, valuing business interests over the environment.

“They seem to view their mission as increasing the short-term profits of the longliners at any and all expense, period,” Achitoff said. “Anything that they feel may get in the way of that, they have opposed.”

The environmental groups are asking Hawaii’s congressional delegation to look into Wespac’s activities, arguing that it amounts to lobbying, which the government-funded agency is not supposed to engage in.

Neither Simonds nor Ebisui responded to interview requests.

In August, Obama announced that he was expanding the Papahanaumokuakea Monument by hundreds of thousands of square miles, creating the world’s largest marine reserve and protecting coral reef and deep-sea marine habitats from activities such as commercial fishing and mineral mining.

Unilateral power

The designation quadrupled the size of the protected area surrounding the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which had been designated as a national monument by President George W. Bush in 2006.

Presidents have unilateral power to designate U.S. lands and waters as national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906.

At the time, Obama’s decision seemed to bring an end to months of debate in Hawaii over whether to increase the size of the monument. The longline industry, which opposed the expansion, attracted support from figures such as former U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka and former Hawaii Gov. George Ariyoshi, as well as more than two dozen state lawmakers.

Supporters of expanding the protected area also counted many among their ranks, including U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and Gov. David Ige.

Trump’s surprise victory in November and his vows to reverse Obama executive orders and reduce environmental regulations quickly elicited concern among environmental groups in Hawaii that he would try to roll back protections around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The marine monument is believed to help protect more than 7,000 marine species, including endangered whales and sea turtles, as well as black coral, which are believed to be the longest-living marine species in the world, capable of living more than 4,500 years, the Obama administration said when it announced the expansion of Papahanaumokuakea last year.