Fishing Area Closures in the U.S. EEZ and the Impact on Purse Seine and Longline Fishing Effort and Catch

The Hawaiʻi-based longline fisheries and the American Samoa-based longline and purse seine fisheries have historically fished in the area now designated as the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM) and the Pacific Remote Islands Area (PRIA). Since 2015, the American Samoa-based purse seine and Hawaiʻi-based longline fisheries have continued to maintain effort in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around the PRIA that are not currently part of the PRIMNM (Howland and Baker and Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll). For this report, the catch and effort are aggregated by the calendar year; however, the formation of the PRIMNM expansion was in September of 2014.