Who gets to close a fishing ground — a president with a proclamation, or a fisheries council working through stock data and public hearings? That question landed in front of a House subcommittee this week, and the answer could redraw the map for American anglers far beyond the two ocean monuments under the microscope.
The Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries took testimony on June 3 on legislation from Representative Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa) that would bar presidents from using the Antiquities Act to prohibit commercial fishing in marine national monuments. Under the bill, any limits would have to come through the Magnuson-Stevens Act — the existing framework of regional councils, catch limits and public input that already manages most US fisheries.
Two sites anchor the dispute. The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument covers about 4,913 square miles roughly 150 miles off Cape Cod and was created by President Barack Obama in 2016. The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument covers a far larger stretch of the central Pacific. President Donald Trump reopened the Atlantic monument to commercial boats in February 2026; this bill would make such openings harder for any successor to undo.
To the bill's backers, the fight is about who follows the rules. Representative Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming) told the panel that "some of the most serious misuses of the Antiquities Act have occurred in the U.S. exclusive economic zone." Assistant Secretary Tim Petty said the current laws already do the job, describing the Magnuson-Stevens Act as working "together with the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and other laws" to provide "enforceable, adaptive, and science-based mechanisms."
The commercial fleet says the closures lock up too much water. William Gibbons-Fly of the American Tunaboat Association testified that "roughly 53 percent of the U.S. EEZ in the Pacific Islands Region falls within marine national monuments." New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, a vocal supporter of reopening the Atlantic canyons, said the monument was drawn up without the usual scrutiny. "This is the way it usually works under existing federal fisheries law, but when it comes to the Atlantic Canyons and Seamounts, the federal government took a short cut," Mitchell said.
Conservationists reject that framing outright, and several are preparing legal challenges. Erica Fuller, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation, said the Atlantic monument cannot simply be reopened without cost. "The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is a biodiversity hotspot and one of the most biologically productive areas in the Atlantic Ocean," she said. Its canyons plunge deeper than the Grand Canyon, and its waters hold endangered whales, sea turtles and ancient deep-sea corals.
Dr. Jessica Redfern of the New England Aquarium, who studies the area from survey aircraft, said the marine life is visible on every trip. "This monument supports amazing species from the seafloor to the sea surface, and we see evidence of that during every aerial survey," she said. Brad Sewell of the Natural Resources Defense Council called the rollback of protections "unlawful."
The two remote monuments may feel distant to a weekend angler, but the principle is not. The hearing was really about a single question with national reach: whether access to the water is set by executive order or by the slower, science-driven process that anglers deal with every season.