November 18, 2019 — “Fishing forms the backbone of our local economy,” said Republican Congresswoman, Aumua Amata Radewagen, speaking at the opening of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council’s (WPRFMC) 180th meeting in Pago Pago, American Samoa. Radewagen is a delegate for the U.S. House of Representatives from American Samoa. The sustainable future of the nations purse seine fishery was also the issue in Lt. Governor Lemanu Peleti Mauga’s speech in which he referred to the importance of fishing for the livelihood of the island.
Radewagen mentioned that US purse seiners pay annually up to USD 2 million per vessel to have access to foreign EEZ’s for fishing. Due to marine national monument regulations, these parts of US EEZ’s are now closed for purse seiners.
The seiner fleet provides skipjack and yellowfin tuna for the American Samoa-based cannery owned by StarKist Samoa Co. The fleet has exceeded the limit of fishing days in 2018 and therefore by US regulations, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced the closure on October 1, whereby US-flagged vessels have no access to the fishing grounds within the nations’ EEZ which also includes the waters around American Samoa.
The Congresswoman finds it her priority to get the lifting of the fishing closure within the Marine parks – which is still recommended by the US Interior Department – onto President Trump’s agenda. From her perspective, the latest negotiations for the South Pacific Tuna Treaty between the US and the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) nations went backward when 700 fewer fishing days were agreed.
According to a report by the American Samoa Department of Commerce, the Pago Pago cannery provides 25 percent of the territory’s jobs and effectively subsidizes the cost of freight and fuel to American Samoa. If it should shut down, it would be a USD 200 million loss annually to the local economy.
Actually, most employees of StarKist’s American Samoa processing plant are inhabitants of the neighboring country, Samoa, located 137 miles away from American Samoa.
US-flagged purse seiners are owned by US entities and a minority by foreign companies. Only the South Pacific albacore longlining fleet is in American Samoan hands. The reduction of that fleet – that targets albacore – to 13 vessels while China enlarged its fleet is something Radewagen is concerned about. In her view, the US should constantly be active and engaged in the Pacific region and monitor foreign actions that affect the domestic fleet.