American Samoa’s main goal at next week’s Western and Central Pacific Fishery Commission annual fishery meeting is supporting the local canneries and vessels home ported here, according to Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources director Dr. Ruth Matagi-Tofiga, head of the territory’s group, which is part of the US government delegation.

The meeting, from Dec. 5-9, is hosted by Fiji and covers a wide range of fishery issues including Conservation and Management Measure (CMM) for Tropical Tuna, according to a copy of the agenda for the gathering, which includes observers.

“Our main goal [at the meeting] is supporting our local canneries, and all fishing vessels that are home ported in American Samoa,” said Matagi-Tofiga responding to media questions. She points out that when purse seine fishing operations stop and fish supply to canneries obviously diminish this is due to a combination of various economic factors and fishing limits — also known as the Effort Limit Area for Purse Seiners, or ELAPS.

As previously reported by Samoa News, the US National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) published on May 25 an interim rule-making setting a fishing day limitation of 1,828 days for the year 2016 on the US purse seiner fleet fishing in US Exclusive Economic Zones and in the high seas area (ELAPS). (The fishing days limitation was the same in 2015 as 2016.)

Than on Aug. 25, 2016, NMFS published a final rule closing the ELAPS — effective Sept. 2 to Dec. 31, 2016 — as a result of reaching the 2016 fishing day limit. The closure resulted in the US fishing fleet going further out in other fishing grounds to fish and ending up off loading fish at other ports instead of American Samoa.

Matagi-Tofiga says the ELAPS area for purse seiners is under the WCPFC CMM-Tropical Tuna Measure. Additionally, WCPFC CMM 2015-01 also designated catch limits for big-eye tuna.

For the ELAPS fishing day limitation in 2015, Tri Marine International had petitioned early last year the NMFS to undertake an emergency rule making and requested that NOAA fisheries exempt from that high seas limit for US flagged purse seine vessel that deliver at least 50% of its catch to tuna processing facilities in American Samoa, said she recalled.

However, “the petition was denied,” she points out.

Tri Marine chief operation officer Joe Hamby, in a letter in October this year to the Honolulu based Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, states in part that American Samoa’s only advantage besides duty free access to the US market is fish supply. “That advantage has been reduced and may be considered lost due to closure or reduced access to some of American Samoa’s traditional fishing grounds,” he said. “I refer to the Marine Protected Areas, Kiribati and the high seas.”

He noted the NMFS has studied and confirmed the adverse economic impact of the closure on the US purse seiner fleet fishing in the ELAPS.

“When the high seas are closed, less fish is delivered to American Samoa. In these days we are seeing the consequences of restricting the American Samoa based US flagged purse seiners from fishing on the high seas,” he said.

Those consequences, he said, was that StarKist had closed down production for one week in September due to the lack of fish and Samoa Tuna Processors Inc., cannery (owned by Tri Marine) “is suspending canning operations for economic reasons, one of which is related to fish supply.”

Hamby reminded the Council that American Samoa is a small island developing territory, and US flagged American Samoa based purse seiners and longliners should be allowed the same rights afforded other island states and territories, including high seas access.

In a news release following a meeting in Honolulu in mid October this year, the Council says NMFS reported that the American Samoa fisheries and canneries were impacted by closure of the American Samoa based purse-seine fishery due to implementation of the WCPFC-developed ELAPS.

The Council recommended that NMFS continue to develop rule making to address disproportionate impacts to the economy of American Samoa from high seas effort limits applicable to US purse seine vessels. It also recommended a study be undertaken on the impact of the ELAPS closure on the American Samoa economy as a whole.

Besides Matagi-Tofiga and Hamby, other members of the American Samoa delegation to the WCPFC are Commerce director Keniseli Lafaele; American Samoa Fishery Task Force chairman Solip Hong; Fishery Council Scientist Eric Kingman; DMWR Chief Fishery Biologist Dr Domingo Ochavillo; and DMWR supervisor on boat base Tepora Lavata’i.