For years, the Honolulu-based longline fishing fleet has been lobbying for an increase in the bigeye tuna allotment it has in that part of the ocean under the jurisdiction of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. Finally, last month, the WCPFC granted the fleet its wish, increasing the fleet\u2019s allocation by 3,000 metric tons for an annual allotment of 6,554 metric tons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, the commission dropped a provision in its tropical tuna measures that had allowed the U.S.-flagged Pacific territories to sell a portion of their allowed catches to the Honolulu-based longliners. For years, the longliners had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Sustainable Fisheries Fund to support marine conservation plans (MCPs) for each of the territorial governments, in return for increasing their haul of bigeye. Those payments allowed the Honolulu fleet to continue catching bigeye through the end of the calendar year, long after its WCPFC quota had been met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the meeting of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (Wespac) last month, council members harshly criticized some members of the U.S. delegation to WCPFC for not including territorial representatives in discussions over tuna allocations. The council approved a measure directing staff to convey to the head of the National Marine Fisheries Service the \u201cshortcomings\u201d of the U.S. delegation on this matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, the council voted to have its staff request from NMFS and \u201cother federal agencies\u201d funding to the territorial governments to make up for the income stream lost now that the Honolulu longliners no longer need to purchase part of the territorial bigeye quotas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCouncil members, the [Wespac] chair, the heads of delegation for American Samoa and [Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands], and the executive director [Kitty Simonds] were alarmed and frustrated about the lack of communications during the negotiations within the U.S. delegation,\u201d according to a press release issued by Wespac following the council meeting. The council accused commissioners representing the U.S. government of being \u201chighly restrictive on all communications with other delegations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHawai\u02bbi won, but the territories lost,\u201d council chair Will Sword, of American Samoa, was quoted as saying. \u201cWe appreciate the funding received from the Hawai\u02bbi Longline Association over the past 10 years, but the funding gap needs to be filled immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also fueling the council\u2019s anger was the handling of a proposal that would have exempted some of the U.S.-flagged purse seine vessels from the limits on fishing efforts on the high seas. American Samoa pushed for this as a measure that would encourage more purse-seine visits to its sole cannery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her report to the council, Simonds said she regretted that this measure wasn\u2019t adopted, but said that it had been brought up \u201clate in the process.\u201d One of the actions the council took was to urge the National Marine Fisheries Service to \u201cproceed with rulemaking to recognize a distinct American Samoa purse seine fishery.\u201d Also, the council directed staff to coordinate with the territorial governments, NMFS, and the general counsel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the \u201cexploring the possibility of Pacific Insular Area Fishing Agreements.\u201d PIAFAs, which allow foreign-flagged vessels to fish in U.S. waters, could be one way of the territories recouping the revenue lost now that the Honolulu longliners no longer need to purchase part of the territorial quotas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Patricia Tummons<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For years, the Honolulu-based longline fishing fleet has been lobbying for an increase in the bigeye tuna allotment it has in that part of the ocean under the jurisdiction of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. Finally, last month, … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,520],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-15577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-519","category-january-2024","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}