MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Far out in the Pacific Ocean, more than a million square miles of ocean around tiny islands and atolls are protected by the U.S. government. The Trump administration is now opening some of those waters to commercial fishing. Few people have seen some of these places, but NPR's Lauren Sommer made a rare visit to one of these federally protected atolls a thousand miles south of Hawaii.
LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: Packing for a trip to Palmyra Atoll takes some extra work.
OK. So now, my clothes, my shoes - everything is bagged, and...
(SOUNDBITE OF ITEMS RUSTLING)
SOMMER: All of it has to be frozen. It goes in your freezer for 48 hours.
(SOUNDBITE OF ITEMS RUSTLING)
SOMMER: Now I can't close the freezer.
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SOMMER: The reason is to kill off any hitchhikers - insects or seeds that could inadvertently catch a ride. It's to protect one of the most pristine ecosystems in the world.
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SOMMER: Palmyra Atoll is made up of tiny, low-lying islands. They're turquoise water surrounded by the deep blue Pacific.
CHRIS RYEN: So, first off, welcome to Palmyra, for those of you that haven't been here before.
SOMMER: Chris Ryen is the Palmyra Atoll Preserve manager. When I arrive, there are just 22 people at a research station that's run by The Nature Conservancy, a conservation nonprofit. Liking isolation is key for working here.
RYEN: When the space station was going overhead, that was our closest human neighbor for a little while. That was pretty neat.
SOMMER: Atolls are slightly different from islands. They form from an ancient volcano that erodes away under the sea. The coral reef around it is left because it continues to grow upwards.
RYEN: So everything that we're on here, everything that we stand on here is on a base of dead coral, like coral skeletons, and then the fringing reef continues to expand out.
SOMMER: Both the land and the ocean here are federally protected, but you can still see the history of human impact. There are concrete bunkers tucked into the tropical forest. Like a lot of Pacific atolls, Palmyra was used to station troops during World War II. But now it belongs to the wildlife.
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SOMMER: These are sooty terns, black-and-white seabirds. A huge colony of them are sitting on eggs and feeding their fuzzy chicks.
ALEX WEGMANN: There are probably about 20- to 30,000 birds in front of us right here.
SOMMER: Alex Wegmann is The Nature Conservancy's lead scientist for island resilience.
WEGMANN: It's like a snowstorm of birds.
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SOMMER: These birds rely on the ocean, where they catch small fish and squid, because the ocean is where the real action is.
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SOMMER: Underwater, the coral reef is an explosion of color. Delicate branching corals are as big as city buses. Fish are darting in and out, and blacktip reef sharks cruise the outskirts. When researchers first started diving here, they were shocked at the number of sharks. It's a rare example of an ecosystem that's still largely intact.
WEGMANN: Atolls are small when you look at them on the map, but they have an oversized impact on the ocean around them.
SOMMER: Wegmann says atolls are like busy cafes. They attract sharks and tuna that swim hundreds of miles to get there.
WEGMANN: And that is why atolls are so important, because they are nutrient concentrators. They're oases in this vast ocean scape.
SOMMER: It's one reason the ocean around Palmyra Atoll was protected as a national marine monument. It's part of the four monuments established by President George W. Bush in the 2000s. Some were later expanded by President Obama, who made them the largest fully protected areas in the U.S. and banned commercial fishing. That's something President Trump is trying to change.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: These people weren't allowed to fish. Can you imagine that?
SOMMER: In June, Trump announced he's opening three Pacific marine monuments to commercial fishing. It'll be permitted in waters more than 57 miles from the shoreline.
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TRUMP: America's fishermen have never had a better ally in the White House than Donald Trump. That I will say.
SOMMER: Trump also rolled back protections for the fourth Pacific monument last year, the one that includes Palmyra Atoll. But conservation groups sued, and a judge ruled that the federal government couldn't do that without a full environmental review. So for now, it's protected. Hawaii's fishing fleet is hoping that changes.
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ERIC KINGMA: Yeah. So the auction basically starts at 5:30 every morning.
SOMMER: Eric Kingma walks into a large, refrigerated warehouse that's home to the Honolulu Tuna Auction. He's the executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association, which represents the fishing fleet here. The warehouse is full of silvery blue tuna packed on ice.
KINGMA: So we've got 66,000 pounds of fish on the block today.
SOMMER: Each yellowfin or bigeye tuna is sold individually by the auctioneer.
UNIDENTIFIED AUCTIONEER: (Auction chanting).
SOMMER: Most of his tuna stays in Hawaii, eaten raw in sushi or poke. The vessels that catch it travel hundreds of miles using thousands of baited hooks in deep water. Kingma says the fishery is worth more than $100 million, but the economics are getting tougher.
KINGMA: The industry has been grinding along, but the profitability side hasn't been all that great. And then you add basically a doubling of fuel prices.
SOMMER: Kingma says they're also facing more competition on the high seas from foreign boats, mostly from Asian countries. Opening up the marine monuments would give Hawaii's fleet more options in U.S. waters.
KINGMA: It's really about the opportunity to fish away from foreign competition, sustainably, highly monitored and more efficiently.
SOMMER: But other communities in Hawaii are pushing back.
KEKUEWA KIKILOI: We're not against fishing. We're just against fishing in this particular spot (laughter).
SOMMER: Kekuewa Kikiloi is an associate professor of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The biggest marine monument is Papahanaumokuakea in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which Trump is now opening to fishing. Kikiloi has been part of a cultural work group that's helped manage the monument alongside the federal government. He says the area is considered sacred for Native Hawaiians.
KIKILOI: That region is sort of thought to be like a region of where our spirits go after we pass and where all life originated from.
SOMMER: For him, protecting the monument is about marine life and the people who have been connected to the ecosystem for centuries. Conservation groups also warn that rolling back protections could hurt the ecosystem. Alan Friedlander is an affiliate researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. He says when the fishing fleet is catching tuna, they inadvertently catch other species, too.
ALAN FRIEDLANDER: They kill a lot of sharks. Some of them are critically endangered, like oceanic white tip sharks.
SOMMER: Friedlander says the protections will become even more important because of climate change. Even remote places, like Pacific atolls, can't escape the impacts of warming oceans.
FRIEDLANDER: These places are just so special and so unique that it's really incumbent upon us to make sure that they're here for not only us but for future generations.
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SOMMER: The Trump administration did not respond to questions about opening the Pacific marine monuments to commercial fishing. Conservation groups say they plan to file a lawsuit to preserve the protections soon.
Lauren Sommer, NPR News.
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KELLY: This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. And as we mentioned, this area way out in the Pacific Ocean rarely gets visitors, but you can visit virtually thanks to Lauren and other NPR journalists who traveled there to document the wildlife. You can check out their images on the NPR app. Go to npr.org/troubledwaters.
(SOUNDBITE OF VITAMIN STRING QUARTET'S "OCEAN AVENUE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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