American Somoa Archives - Saving Seafood

American Samoans fear tuna fishing limits in Pacific Ocean sanctuary could threaten their livelihood

July 19, 2023 — Iosefa Tanuvasa is worried.

Life isn’t easy, but she’s able to provide for her six children through her job at the StarKist Co. tuna cannery in Pago Pago, American Samoa. What worries her is the future of her job and family if the proposed Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Sanctuary restricts tuna fishing in the region, a vital piece of the economy to the U.S. territory.

“For now, we need money to survive and help develop our families, we don’t need a proposal that will lead to closure of our cannery due to higher cost of supplying fish for the cannery,” Tanuvasa wrote to the federal government. “This will heavily impact this nation.”

Tanuvasa is among dozens of American Samoans raising the alarm about the proposed marine sanctuary covering 770,000 square miles in the Pacific Ocean, bigger than the entire state of Alaska.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is entering the second phase of the process to protect the area around seven islands in the Pacific Ocean as a marine sanctuary. The land masses are among the nine claimed by the U.S. with no permanent population: Kingman Reef, Wake, Johnson and Palmyra atolls and Howland, Baker and Jarvis islands.

In addition to a variety of fish, the area has habitats for sea birds and coral reefs.

“The area has amazing coral resources that are found almost nowhere else in the U.S. territories,” said Brady Phillips, a senior policy specialist of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

The waters also are ideal for skipjack tuna, which travel the equator. Tuna fishing supports about 5,000 jobs in American Samoa, a U.S. territory with a population of about 49,000, according to Benar News. The StarKist cannery is among the island’s top employers.

National marine sanctuaries are designated to preserve environmental resources. NOAA can require a permit to alter the seabed, for instance, and place restrictions oil and gas drilling.

Many Samoans have implored the agency to avoid restricting commercial fishing, which they say could raise costs for StarKist and lead it to close the cannery.

President Joe Biden in March directed the Department of Commerce, which includes NOAA, to “consider initiating a sanctuary designation” to expand protection of the Pacific islands, part of the president’s announcement creating national monuments in Texas and Nevada.

However Governor Lemanu Palepoi Sialega Mauga said “not a single representative” of the Biden administration contacted anyone in American Samoa’s government before announcing the proposal. He said “without access to these traditional fishing grounds, our tuna industry and entire economy will be annihilated.”

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

To Expand U.S. Reach, Station a Coast Guard Cutter at American Samoa

July 26, 2022 — Regardless of prognostications of future conflict it is clear that the history of the 21st century will be written in the Indo-Pacific. Accordingly, as the United States steams into in an increasingly turbulent maritime security environment, it should not discount harvesting “easy wins” in the region. Compared to the marquee U.S. military installations at Diego Garcia, Yokosuka, or Guam, American Samoa is a U.S. territory that evokes images of idyllic island life rather than strategic competition.

However, by considering American Samoa through the lens of strategic competition, a military installation manned by the U.S. Coast Guard is an easy step to demonstrate commitment in the region that makes imminent sense for several reasons. Due to the sheer distances involved in the Pacific — the closest Coast Guard installations are from Hawaii (2,260 nautical miles) and Guam (3,120 nautical miles) — current sustained operations in region are necessarily expeditionary.

Establishing a Coast Guard installation in American Samoa would lengthen the reach of the Coast Guard’s highly capable Sentinel class cutters, galvanizing partnerships throughout the Southern Pacific. With increasing concerns surrounding illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing (IUUF), the law enforcement presence and know-how of the U.S. Coast Guard will be a boon to safeguarding erosion of geographic and economic sovereignty of island nations in the Southern Pacific.

This approach dovetails with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, which calls for “Build[ing] Connections Within and Beyond the Region.” Notably, the U.S. Coast Guard is one of the few government agencies called out by name in the strategy. One of the great contributions and strengths of the Coast Guard are the multitude of unique service and agency relationships and bi-lateral agreements it shares with international partners. . Expanding Coast Guard presence in the Southern Pacific has the potential to enhance dozens of bilateral and multi-lateral relationships for the United States while bolstering maritime security in the region.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Hawaii’s Longline Fishermen Pushing To Catch More Tuna

October 18th, 2016 — Hawaii’s longline fishermen will be able to go after similar amounts of bigeye tuna next year under a policy passed last week by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

But some have their sights set on doubling or even tripling their annual catch limits through new quota-sharing agreements with Pacific Island territories that don’t currently fish commercially for ahi.

Before that can happen though, the fishermen will need to demonstrate that the species is no longer subject to overfishing and convince federal officials that the pending arrangements with Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands do not violate international agreements to conserve fish stocks.

“We are right at the level of overfishing,” said Jarad Makaiau, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We are right on the razor thin line.”

Wespac manages 1.5 million square miles of ocean in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean and advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on catch limits, endangered species mitigation and stock assessments.