If no fish delivery is made to the StarKist Samoa plant by next week Monday, StarKist Co., says the plant will close and hundreds of jobs will be at risk. The largest private employer in American Samoa is faced with many challenges, including closure of traditional fishing grounds, and this is all connected to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty.

Therefore the company has 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 who offload 50% of their catch at the local canneries to fish in the now-closed US exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as well as on the high seas. 

The U.S now closes these specific fishing areas to fishing by 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.

“... 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.

Choe said the StarKist Samoa plant manager has advised the company that no deliveries are currently scheduled for the plant with the “earliest possible deliveries” in the second half of this August.

“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.

“Accordingly, 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. “We are exploring all options and hope to find some sources of raw material that are economically viable, however, options are quite limited and unsustainable over the long term.”

At the outset of the letter, Choe pointed out that direct delivery of raw material for the canneries is an essential building block for the economic viability of the tuna processing industry in American Samoa. Absent direct delivery of tuna for processing in American Samoa, the future of the economy of this remote territory is at risk.

“Further, there is a great urgency to the issue as we have already seen a sharp decline in tuna deliveries from the US fleet over the last several weeks,” he said.

Regarding the South Pacific Tuna Treaty, Choe said that due to the failure to secure adequate fishing days for the US fleet during the most recent renewal of Treaty terms, US vessels based out of American Samoa who deliver their catch back to the local canneries “have been virtually locked out of their traditional fishing grounds.”

Fishing areas available to the fleet in 2015 and likely into the future, are not located within an economically viable distance for delivery to American Samoa for processing, he said.

Choe also said that both the federal government and international organizations such as the Western and Central Pacific Fishery Commission have recognized the dependency of American Samoa’s small developing economy upon the tuna resources and, like other Small Island Developing (SID) States and Territories, “have affirmatively recognized” American Samoa as a SID territory “for the purpose of reasonable accommodation from conservation measures that jeopardize these fragile economies.”

Regarding the globally competitive tuna industry, he said it is a largely commoditized business where profit and loss is determined in pennies. He said American Samoa has historically been an attractive location from which tuna products could be manufactured as a result of three main factors:

• reliable and high quality supply of whole fish directly delivered from purse seine vessels to the canneries;

• duty free access to the US market for finished products; and

• comparatively lower cost of manufacturing relative to the U.S mainland as a result of labor costs.

“All these main advantages are being eroded, if not eliminated,” he said and addressed other issues such as the minimum wage and US free trade agreement.

He said American Samoa’s cost of manufacturing has risen since the federally mandated minimum wage rates were set in 2007. Additionally, multiple bi-lateral and multilateral free trade agreements as well as reductions to the import duties on frozen tuna loins, “have nearly eliminated any free trade benefit from operations” in American Samoa.

“And now, the significant elimination of fishing access during the year for American Samoa based vessels has seriously impacted the availability of raw materials,”

FELICIANO INC.

Also supportive of Tri Marine’s petition is locally based Feliciano Inc., whose owner Antonio H. Feliciano informed NOAA that local families in all sectors of the economy rely on wage earners either directly or indirectly involved in the fishing and fish canning industry to support and care for their families.

He says locally based stevedoring companies such as Feliciano Inc., along with two other companies, employ over 200 local residents providing fish unloading services to the two local canneries and the tuna fleet that offloads in the territory.

“Any impact that diminishes or worse yet, halts the presence of US Flag Vessels in the territory will certainly threaten the survival of our operations and the security of our workforce,” said Feliciano, adding that his company has been operating and providing stevedoring service for over 20 years.

“Simply put, no fishing vessels, no jobs,” he said and noted that US flag vessels “are the most regulated and monitored fleet in the world.”

Feliciano argued that implementing these new regulations on the U.S. fleet delivering to American Samoa “is unjust, and unfairly places them at a disadvantage” when in competition with ever expanding Chinese and Taiwanese fleets which are both unregulated and highly subsidized by their respective governments.

If anything, the U.S. fleet delivering to American Samoa rather than being further regulated, should serve as the extended arms and eyes of NOAA and NMFS to monitor illegal fishing by foreign fleets and gather data that could be used to provide a better scope of view on the health of current fish stocks in the Pacific, he said.

In closing, Feliciano said his company and its entire workforce are in full support of Tri Marine’s petition.