If the StarKist Samoa plant doesn’t receive any fish by next Monday, StarKist Co., says the plant will close and hundreds of jobs will be at risk as the largest private employer in American Samoa is faced with many challenges including closure of traditional fishing grounds — connected to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty.

Therefore the company urged the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) to “quickly adopt” Tri Marine International’s petition to allow the US purse seine fleet when off loading 50% of its catches to local canneries, to fish in the now closed US exclusive economic zone and on the high seas. 

These specific fishing areas are now closed to fishing by the U.S. purse seiner fleet until the end of 2015, and the deadline to submit comments on Tri Marine’s petition is no later than Aug. 17.

“As of today, because of the closure of high seas, the US EEZs and the traditional fishing grounds, nearly the entire American Samoan purse seine fleet has left the region in order to fish in waters too distant from American Samoa for direct delivery of their catch,” StarKist Co., president and chief executive officer, Andrew Choe wrote in an Aug. 10 letter to NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office in Honolulu.

“While we always hold a certain amount of raw material in our cold storage in order to smooth minor disruption to our supply chain, if no deliver of fish is made to our [StarKist Samoa] plant by Aug. 17, our plant will close and over 2,000 jobs will be at risk,” he said.

“We are preparing contingency plans in the event that we are unable to secure the raw material necessary to keep our plant in operation,” Choe pointed out.

See tomorrow’s edition for more details.