Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Locally based fishermen who supply the lone Starkist tuna cannery in American Samoa are facing a perfect storm of obstacles that are threatening their economic survival. A battle is now on in the U.S. territory to fend off those looming challenges, from rising fuel costs to international competition. Special correspondent Mike Taibbi reports with support from Pacific Islanders in Communications.

• Mike Taibbi:

  Morning prayers at the start of the old cannery's 6 AM shift. Charlie Tuna's cannery: Starkist. Some 2,400 workers troop to this 56-year old operation every day.

  'Let us celebrate,' they sing in unison. 'Bless our workers,' implores a supervisor, adding 'as well as our leaders, and management.' Those leaders of an iconic American brand serve a company that's now owned and managed by a South Korean conglomerate Dongwon.

  Inside the cannery, trays are loaded with several types of thawed, cooked, cooled and ready to process tuna.

• Archie Soliai:

  Skipjack, bigeye, yellowfin and albacore..

• Mike Taibbi:

  The trays are then rolled to the stands where most of Starkist's employees, explains government relations manager Archie Soliai, do the hardest hands-on work.

• Archie Soliai:

  Seventy percent of that workforce is cleaning the fish. We're skinning, taking out the bones.

• Mike Taibbi:

  Once cleaned, it's measured by hand into pouches, a packaging option gaining consumer popularity, or by automation into cans, the old standby.

• Archie Soliai:

  We process close to two million cans per day, individual cans.

• Mike Taibbi:

  Plus, tons and tons of fishmeal, oil and other by-products used in agriculture, medicine and nutritional supplements.

  It's an output that's kept Starkist at the top of the consumer tuna pyramid for most of the company's existence and that from the early '60s made Charlie Tuna one of the advertising industry's enduring icons.

• Starkist Commercial:

  Whatcha doing with it, Charlie?… Sending it to Starkist so they'll notice what good taste I got!

• Mike Taibbi:

  But today, Starkist's dominance as well as its very existence in American Samoa is not just at risk, it's at the cliff's edge.

  The main problems? A declining market generally for processed tuna products, down 40 percent in the three decades ending in 2017. An American Samoa- mandated minimum wage for its vast workforce that's three and four times the wage paid to cannery workers in other countries in the region like Thailand. A $100 million dollar fine levied against Starkist last September after the company admitted its role in a price-fixing conspiracy, with potentially crippling consumer lawsuits still pending. And finally, an increasingly bitter dispute over which boats get to fish which waters.

  Consider these locally-based longline boats, boats over 100 feet long that spool out miles of line and thousands of hooks in a single set, often returning with more than 30 tons of prized albacore tuna. They've fished this way for decades.

  Carlos Sanchez is a veteran longliner, but he's in the process of giving it up.

• Carlos Sanchez:

  All my boats are for sale. I have seven boats, and they are for sale.

• Mike Taibbi:

  "You have no hope for the industry?

• Carlos Sanchez:

  We have no help for the industry!…"

• Mike Taibbi:

  In 2002, the U.S. federal agency National Marine Fisheries Service banned large-vessel longliners like Sanchez's boat, as well as even bigger boats called purse-seiners.. from fishing within 50 miles of American Samoa. Those close-in waters were reserved to protect a handful of local small boat fishermen called alia fishermen from competition from larger boats. The alias represent the traditional subsistence fishing that's nourished these islands for centuries.

• Ma’atulimanu Sausi Maea:

  Behind this is a ridge here, another good fishing ground.

• Mike Taibbi:

  Alias like Ma'atulimanu Sausi Maea mostly a charter and sport fisherman.

• Ma’atulimanu Sausi Maea:

  Once you allow the bigger vessels to enter the 50-mile zone that's native to the local traditional alias, then we will be out of fish! barely–i can catch, sometimes i go out and don't catch nothing!

• Mike Taibbi:

  Nonsense, insist longliners like Vince Haleck and Rasela Feliciano. The alias hardly need a 50 mile limit.

  Click to read the full transcript and to see the PBS broadcast