# Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument The largest single protected area the United States has ever created, and — because of where it sits in the national ledger — the load-bearing structure under every claim about American ocean conservation. It is also, since June 2026, the largest reduction in marine protection in American history, executed without moving a single boundary. ## The boundary record | Date | President | Instrument | Result | |---|---|---|---| | Jun 15, 2006 | [[George W. Bush]] | Proclamation 8031 | ~140,000 sq mi — designated as Northwestern Hawaiian Islands MNM, extending ~50 nm around the chain | | Feb 28, 2007 | [[George W. Bush]] | Proclamation 8112 | Renamed **Papahānaumokuākea**, "for the purpose of giving the monument a Native Hawaiian name" | | Aug 26, 2016 | [[Barack Obama]] | Proclamation 9478 | Adds ~442,781 sq mi to the EEZ limit west of 163°W — **total 582,578 sq mi** | | Mar 3, 2025 | (NOAA rulemaking) | 90 FR 4856 | Becomes the **18th national marine sanctuary** — a second, independent legal layer | | Jun 11, 2026 | [[Donald Trump]] | Proclamation 11035 | Reopens the Mau and Hoʻomalu zones and waters seaward of 50 nm to commercial fishing | At its 2016 designation it was the largest marine protected area in the world. ## What it is The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — roughly 1,200 miles of atolls, seamounts, banks and shoals running from Nihoa to Kure, including Midway. Some 7,000 marine species, about a quarter of them endemic to the Hawaiian archipelago; roughly 70 percent of all US shallow coral reef area; the world's largest tropical seabird rookery. The deep-water black coral *Leiopathes annosa*, described from these waters, can live more than four thousand years — the longest-lived marine organism known. **It is a cultural landscape, not only an ecological one.** In Native Hawaiian cosmology the region is **Pō** — the primordial realm of darkness from which all life emerged and to which ancestral spirits return — as against **Ao**, the realm of light and consciousness associated with the main islands. **Mokumanamana** sits on the Tropic of Cancer, *Ke Ala Polohiwa a Kāne*, and holds the highest concentration of heiau in the archipelago, with upright stones aligned to solstice and equinox; it is understood as the axis between the two realms. **Nihoa** carries more than eighty documented cultural sites and evidence of permanent habitation into the 1700s. That dual character is why UNESCO inscribed it in 2010 as a **mixed natural and cultural World Heritage Site** — the first mixed site in the United States. Management runs through four co-trustees: NOAA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the State of Hawaiʻi, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, advised by a Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group. ## Why the acreage matters nationally Peer-reviewed analysis published in 2022 found that **96 percent of total US marine protected area, and 99 percent of the fully or highly protected area, sits in the central Pacific** — overwhelmingly in this monument and its neighbors. Outside those Pacific monuments, under 2 percent of US waters carry high-level protection. Which means the "United States protects 26 percent of its ocean" statistic — the number that made the marine half of the [[30x30 Conservation Initiative]] look nearly met on the day it was announced — is very largely *this place*. Almost all of the national eggs are in one remote basket, and that is precisely what made the basket a target. ## The 2026 reopening **Proclamation 11035, "Restoring American Commercial Fishing in the Pacific," signed June 11, 2026** (91 FR 36741), amends five prior proclamations at once and opens the **Mau Zone**, the **Hoʻomalu Zone**, and all waters seaward of 50 nautical miles to US-flagged commercial fishing — along with the Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench monument and the waters between 12 and 50 nautical miles around Rose Atoll. NOAA's figures put the Papahānaumokuākea component at 442,781 square miles and the three units together at roughly 477,000 — the "nearly half a million square miles" of the White House fact sheet. The operative finding: *"appropriately managed commercial fishing under existing statutory authorities will not put the historic and scientific objects within these areas at risk."* The reasoning is that the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act already do the work, making monument-based prohibitions "not necessary at this time for the proper care and management." **Note the legal architecture, because it is not what it appears to be.** The proclamation does not shrink the monument. The boundaries are untouched, and the May 2025 [[Office of Legal Counsel]] opinion on revoking monuments is never invoked. What is amended is the *management regime* — the clauses in the predecessor proclamations directing the Secretaries to impose prohibitions. That is a third mechanism, distinct from both revocation and boundary reduction, and it is essentially untested. The legal scholarship taxonomizing it treats "reductions in legal protections" as its own category, separate from the "smallest area compatible" question the Tenth Circuit reached in *Garfield County v. Trump*. See [[Antiquities Act]]. **And there is a second lock the proclamation cannot reach.** Papahānaumokuākea became a **national marine sanctuary** effective March 3, 2025, under regulations finalized in the last days of the Biden administration. Sanctuary regulations independently prohibit commercial fishing throughout, and they were promulgated under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act — not the [[Antiquities Act]]. A presidential proclamation modifying a *monument* does not repeal *sanctuary* rules; removing those requires separate NMSA rulemaking. Neither the White House fact sheet nor NOAA's announcement addresses this. **As of August 14, 2026, no commercial fishing has begun.** NOAA must complete review, environmental analysis, and public comment first. No lawsuit against Proclamation 11035 has been filed, though [[Earthjustice]] and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs have said they will sue. Earthjustice's David Henkin: "The proclamation itself is unconstitutional, illegal, and any efforts to implement it would be likewise illegal." Cultural Working Group co-chair Dr. Kekuewa Kikiloi: "Papahānaumokuākea is a sacred place for Native Hawaiians; it's part of our origin stories." **The precedent to watch is the Atlantic.** For the Northeast Canyons monument, NOAA issued a final rule on April 6, 2026 rescinding the fishing restrictions and used the APA "good cause" exemption to skip public comment entirely. Conservation groups sued in D.D.C. on May 4, 2026. That shortcut is exactly the move a federal court in Hawaiʻi rejected in August 2025 — see [[Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument]]. --- *See also: [[Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument]] · [[Antiquities Act]] · [[Antiquities Act Timeline]] · [[30x30 Conservation Initiative]]*