Analysis by the Center for American Progress and Marine Conservation Institute finds that three presidential proclamations issued by President Donald Trump would result in the removal of protections for a vast amount of U.S. water within five marine national monuments. As the administration’s directives are implemented, these areas would soon allow industrial fishing and potential deep-sea mining in more than 1 million square miles of American ocean—a combined area four times the size of Texas.
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Using the MPA Guide to measure conservation success
The MPA Guide has undergone peer review and is widely accepted by the community of practice. It creates a shared vocabulary that lets scientists and policymakers assess a marine protected area’s characteristics to predict biological outcomes. As the authors have previously written, it is like a Rosetta Stone for translating ocean conservation.
When scientists designed the MPA Guide, it was done with the expectation that the world was creating new and better conservation. This tool helps scientists and policymakers assess if marine protected area policy is resulting in real-world outcomes. It wasn’t specifically designed with rollbacks in mind, but because it’s grounded in a large body of peer-reviewed evidence and consensus across the community of practice, it works just as well in reverse—allowing scientists to measure how much protection is being lost and to predict what’s likely to happen to these ecosystems once fishing activity resumes.
The MPA Guide assesses marine protected areas (MPAs) across four criteria
- Stage of establishment: Designation of protected areas alone is insufficient for conservation; effective management and enforcement must follow. MPAs vary in the degree to which they’ve been implemented—occurring along a spectrum, they can be proposed, designated, implemented, or actively managed.
- Level of protection: The restrictions in place and the different types of human activities allowed within a protected area affect its outcomes. MPAs vary in their level and degree of protective measures; they can be fully protected, highly protected, lightly protected, or minimally protected. Additionally, some allow sustainable activities, while others prohibit all human impact.
- Enabling conditions: Every community and country has its own unique culture and way of interacting with protected areas. Regulations, funding, community engagement, and cultural norms are ingredients that lead to conservation success or failure. Often, the process to design conservation is as important as the outcome.
- Outcomes: The MPA Guide includes a matrix wherein the “stage of establishment” and “level of protection” of an MPA can be used to predict what types of biological outcomes can be expected. This is influenced by the “enabling conditions,” as the unique attributes specific to a location, such as community support, also play a role in determining the outcomes. Areas with high levels of protection and active management result in the healthiest ecosystems, while areas that are designated with no implementation result in no change.
In recent years, scientists have used the MPA Guide to score the effectiveness of the existing five marine national monuments. This analysis uses the scope and scale of the new fishing proposed by the Trump administration in the five marine national monuments to estimate a new “level of protection” for each.
Ocean conservation changes proposed by the Trump administration
In April 2025, the Trump administration ordered vast sections of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to be opened to commercial fishing. The monument was opened for a short time to longline and purse seine fishing vessels before being closed again by the courts. As of this writing, the fishing restrictions remain in place.
In February 2026, Trump ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to lift the commercial fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The monument was opened to several industrial gear types in April 2026, including bottom trawls in some areas, red crab and lobster pots, and longline fishing vessels. A lawsuit has been filed to stop this action, but as of this writing, the monument remains open to fishing.
In June 2026, Trump ordered the NOAA to remove protections for the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. No changes have been made since the proclamation, but efforts to revise NOAA regulations to allow commercial fishing are underway for each monument. The changes for Papahānaumokuākea would restore access for bottom fishing in the area 0 to 50 nautical miles from shore and allow longlines and purse seines 50 to 200 nautical miles from shore; Rose Atoll would allow small-boat commercial fishing and some large longlines under certain conditions; and the Mariana Trench Islands Unit would allow small-boat commercial fishing.
The Trump administration’s ocean rollbacks remove two decades of conservation progress
There are no proposed changes for the Trench and Volcanic units of the Mariana Trench Monument or for the waters up to 50 nautical miles from the Pacific Islands Heritage monument. Everywhere else, the prohibitions on commercial fishing are in various stages of being lifted. Measured by both scale and significance, once enacted, these actions by the Trump administration mark the largest rollback of marine conservation protections in history.
Nationally, the five rollbacks threaten to eliminate 87 percent of the nation’s highly protected ocean waters; at the same time, they account for a staggering 21 percent loss in high-level marine protection globally. The United States would be left with only 3 percent of its marine waters protected and likely to support biodiversity benefits.
Durable ocean conservation takes a long time
President Theodore Roosevelt first designated the Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation in 1909. Over the next 100 years, six additional presidents added layers of protection and improved management, informed by decades of management experience and centuries of Indigenous knowledge, all culminating in the 2016 expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument to more than half a million square miles. Rolling back this monument undermines more than a century of conservation.
Conservation unfolds over generations, not election cycles. It is still too soon to know whether these actions will ultimately be remembered as a temporary detour on a century-long journey toward ocean recovery or as the moment the United States reversed course.
The rollback of 87 percent of America’s most highly protected marine areas represents a major setback to the global effort to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. But the concern goes far beyond the loss of area. Highly protected marine areas are among the most effective tools available for rebuilding marine life, protecting biodiversity, strengthening ecosystem resilience, and providing scientific baselines for understanding change. This is both a massive quantitative and qualitative loss of protection. Opening these areas to industrial fishing weakens some of the most effective protections currently in place anywhere on the planet.
Conclusion
These projections outline the expected outcomes if the Trump administration successfully executes every proposed rollback—without being stopped by the courts. Grounded in the best available science, the MPA Guide evaluates policy intent, management effectiveness, and human activity to forecast biological outcomes. The ultimate ecological impact will depend on the extent and intensity of industrial fishing, but without a doubt, reopening these waters would diminish many of the conservation benefits that highly protected areas provide.