{"id":8566,"date":"2015-12-01T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T20:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=8566"},"modified":"2018-06-15T01:06:07","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T01:06:07","slug":"rift-in-u-s-purse-seine-fleet-is-laid-bare-in-comments-on-tri-marine-petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=8566","title":{"rendered":"Rift in U.S. Purse Seine Fleet Is Laid Bare in Comments on Tri Marine Petition"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this issue, <\/em>Environment Hawai`i takes a closer look at the U.S. purse seine fleet fishing in the South Pacific. Although the purse seiners fish thousands of miles from Hawai`i and none regularly pulls into port in Honolulu, they are subject to regulation by the National Marine Fisheries Service\u2019s Pacific Islands Regional Office and the U.S. Coast Guard 14th<\/sup> District, both headquartered in Honolulu.<\/em><\/p>\n

Given that purse seiners account for almost all the take of juvenile bigeye tuna, it is impossible to understand the disputes over depletion of bigeye stocks without some notion of the role played by the purse seine fishery.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The purse seiner Cape Map (Courtesy Tri Marine)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last May, Tri Marine International, owner of one of two tuna canneries in American Samoa, petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service. The goal was to get NMFS to adopt a rule that would allow U.S. purse seiners delivering at least half their catch to American Samoa to keep on fishing in the South Pacific past the time when the vessels would be shut out of fishing on the high seas and in waters of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zones under a fishery management scheme adopted by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC).<\/p>\n

In its petition, Tri Marine cited economic factors that together posed a hardship on purse seiners based in American Samoa and which put \u201cthe ability of these tuna vessels to operate profitably \u2026 in serious question\u2026. The loss of a reliable supply of tuna from these vessels will jeopardize the ability of the canneries in American Samoa to compete in world markets with lower cost competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tri Marine, one of the giants in the tuna industry, has its own purse seine and longline vessels, either owned outright or under contract; processing centers on five continents as well as several Pacific Island states; and a global marketing network. Ten of the 38 purse seiners that currently make up the U.S. fleet fishing in the South Pacific are owned by firms closely affiliated with Tri Marine.<\/p>\n

Apart from the Tri Marine vessels that deliver tuna to the Pago Pago canneries, at least six other U.S.-flagged purse seiners regularly deliver there as well, according to Tri Marine.<\/p>\n

In an effort to provide a legal foundation for the request, Tri Marine\u2019s attorney, James P. Walsh, argued that under the WCPFC, American Samoa has the right, as a Small Island Developing State (SIDS), to develop its fishery without regard to limits established by the commission\u2019s conservation and management measures. This, Walsh contends, is an argument that NMFS had already endorsed as early as December 2013, when the agency published a federal notice regarding longline limits for bigeye tuna for the years 2014-2017 and specifically excluded all U.S. territories from the limits.<\/p>\n

While NMFS denied part of Tri Marine\u2019s petition, leaving its fleet to pursue tuna in regions more distant than those it had traditionally fished for the rest of the year, the agency did agree to consider Tri Marine\u2019s request that it exempt from the fishing limit on the high seas and in U.S. territorial waters \u201cany U.S. flag purse seine vessel which, pursuant to contract or declaration of intent, delivers or will deliver at least 50 percent of its catch to tuna processing facilities based in American Samoa.\u201d On October 23, the agency published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) in the Federal Register,<\/em> stating that it had determined that the limit \u201cis expected to have substantial adverse economic impacts on U.S. purse seine fishing businesses \u2026 and also that adverse impacts in terms of income and employment could occur in business sectors with \u2026 links to the producers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever,\u201d the notice continued, \u201cto sufficiently assess whether such impacts, or other circumstances, warrant the regulatory action requested by the petition would require additional information that is not readily available to NMFS, as well as sufficient time to examine such information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, if the limit for 2015 \u201cis found to impact American Samoa\u2019s fish processing facilities and its economy in the manner alleged in the petition, NMFS would need to determine whether the requested action is appropriate to address the problem and, further, whether it can be implemented consistent with U.S. obligations under the [WCPFC] Convention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, as Michael Tosatto, head of the Pacific Islands Regional Office of NMFS, explained in a statement to Environment Hawai`i, <\/em>\u201cThe petition for rule-making first asserted that an economic impact was the basis for the petitioned action\u2026. [W]e did not have enough information to determine whether the adverse impact complained of would jeopardize the ability of canneries in American Samoa to compete.\u00a0 The petition then asked for a specific action as relief.\u00a0 We also explained that we did not have sufficient information to determine that the requested relief was appropriate to address the adverse impact complained of (if it exists) and whether such relief could be implemented consistent with US obligations under the [WCPFC] Convention and other applicable laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d he continued, \u201cin the ANPR, we are seeking information on both of these issues \u2013 the asserted economic impacts on vessels and shoreside processing in American Samoa and potential relief given our WCPFC obligations overall and specifically with regard to a participating territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ELAPS<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Effort Limit Area for Purse Seine (ELAPS) \u2013 the subject of Tri Marine\u2019s complaint \u2013 is part of a series of measures adopted by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission to regulate the catch of tunas in the region under the commission\u2019s jurisdiction. The United States, as a member of the commission, is legally bound to abide by the commission\u2019s conservation measures. ELAPS limits the number of days that U.S.-flagged purse seiners may fish in the open seas and the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to 1,828 fishing days in 2015 — a limit that was reached in June.<\/p>\n

\"purseseine\"<\/a>U.S. purse seiners may continue to fish in the EEZs of other nations, but to do so, they must pay substantial fees under terms set in the U.S. Tuna Treaty. In addition, some of those nations have severely restricted either the areas in which purse seiners may fish or the number of effort days for purse seiners.<\/p>\n

One of the most significant restrictions is the closure by Kiribati of almost all the waters around the Phoenix islands, due north of American Samoa. Kiribati, which is composed of three discontinuous archipelagos (Gilbert, Line, and Phoenix islands), is small in land mass. Its EEZ, however, is one of the largest in the South Pacific, covering an area of about 1.4 million square miles. Although the Phoenix Islands Protected Area was established in 2008, fishing was prohibited in just 3 percent of the waters. Last January, however, the president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, banned all fishing in the area.<\/p>\n

In addition, Kiribati reduced the number of days of fishing allowed to the U.S. purse seine fleet in waters that remain open. In 2014, Tri Marine stated in its petition, Kiribati had allowed the fleet 4,313 fishing days. This year, that was cut to 300 \u2013 a reduction of roughly 93 percent.<\/p>\n

According to Tracey Chikami, whose family owns the vessel Western Pacific<\/em>, in recent years, Kiribati had accounted \u201cfor almost 45 percent of the U.S. fleet\u2019s fishing effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

One Flag, Two Fleets<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Comments on Tri Marine\u2019s petition were either strongly favorable \u2013 from representatives of the American Samoan government and the Department of Interior\u2019s Office of Insular Affairs, from people who worked at the company\u2019s cannery, from those who provided fuel and services to vessels visiting the port, from StarKist, and from a number of captains of purse seine vessels that supply the two canneries.<\/p>\n

Two environmental groups were opposed. Amanda Nickson for the Pew Charitable Trusts noted that overfishing on bigeye tuna, a bycatch of purse-seining, continued to occur, that the number of purse-seine fishing days has increased 18 percent over the last 10 years, and that there was no way to monitor compliance with the exemption that Tri Marine was seeking. Catherine Kilduff, for the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out that \u201ccreating exemptions from catch limits undermines conservation of bigeye tuna.\u201d In addition, she argued, NMFS had no legal basis to allow such an exemption, which would \u201callow essentially unlimited purse seine fishing on the high seas for any U.S.-flagged vessel\u201d promising to deliver half its catch to American Samoa.<\/p>\n

The most heated opposition, however, came from J. Douglas Hines of South Pacific Tuna Corporation and Bumble Bee\u2019s Chris Lischewski.<\/p>\n

Lischewski claimed the relief sought by Tri Marine was \u201cdesigned to provide an economic benefit to our vertically integrated competitors \u2026 by lowering their production cost. Because U.S. purse seine vessels delivering to those processing facilities, including the vessels owned by our competitors, would not be required to purchase fishing days, the cost to their vessels harvesting tuna would be significantly lower\u2026. Tuna processors in American Samoa are already exempt from local taxes, receive federal tax credits (Sec. 30A) and pay a very low minimum wage (currently $4.76). Providing them with an opportunity to avoid purchasing fishing days or paying less for raw material would only harm Bumble Bee and other tuna processors \u2026 that have made major investment in U.S. facilities.\u201d (Tri Marine\u2019s chief operating officer, Joe Hamby, has stated that Tri Marine is not eligible for tax relief under Section 30A of the tax code, which grants credit for certain investments made in American Samoa.)<\/p>\n

Hines weighed in no fewer than four times over the course of the comment period for the petition, stating that he was representing 22 of the 37 U.S.-flagged purse seiners. By the time he made his last comment, on August 14 \u2013 three days before the comment period closed \u2013 Hines had backed off somewhat from the \u201cstrong opposition\u201d he had initially expressed. \u201cAfter consultation with industry and interested parties,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwe have received clarification on a number of our pending issues \u2026 raised in our initial comment letter.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was still bothered by the fact that the petition would grant \u201ca commercial advantage to one sector of the industry which would be a clear violation of \u2026 the Magnuson Stevens Act,\u201d which governs marine fishing by U.S.-flagged vessels.<\/p>\n

In responding to Hines, Curto recapped some of the history of the purse-seine fleet in the United States. \u201cThe vessels which Mr. Hines claims to represent have nothing to do with the American Samoa tuna purse seine fishery,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey belong to another fishery, one that is based on transshipment and supplying their catch to markets other than American Samoa markets that compete directly with American Samoa\u2019s tuna fishery and industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2001, he wrote, he and his partners purchased eight U.S.-flagged purse seiners. By 2006, as a result of low prices and low-cost competitors, the fleet was at its low point, with no more than 13 U.S. vessels active in the Western and Central Pacific.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2007 \u2026 we became aware of an initiative by U.S. and Taiwanese interests to build a large number of tuna purse seiners in Taiwan for operation in the Western and Central Pacific under the U.S. [Tuna] Treaty\u2026. At first Tri Marine was publicly against this planned expansion of the tuna purse seine fleet as we didn\u2019t see the need for more fishing capacity \u2026 and we didn\u2019t think that the U.S. Treaty needed more boats for its survival.<\/p>\n

\u201c… My view then and still today is that the underlying economic stimulus and financing for this project came from the two Taiwanese shipyards that built these new boats. Those shipyards needed U.S. citizens to own at least 50 percent of these new boats\u2026 Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, as companies, did not qualify as they were and still are majority foreign owned. Instead, certain executives and employees of Bumble Bee and other U.S. citizens joined together to fulfill the U.S. flag citizenship requirements for these boats\u2026. Their model is based on catching as much fish as possible without being tied to a particular processing plant\u2026. Instead of producing canned tuna from whole round fish, they have highly automated factories that use frozen, cooked, and cleaned tuna loins as the raw material.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curto concluded by asking that NMFS \u201cunderstand that there are two different U.S. fisheries operating in the Western and Central Pacific under the same U.S. treaty.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

Violations<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>A closer look at the U.S.-flagged purse seiners currently holding a license to fish in the Western Pacific does show deep divisions.<\/p>\n

Slightly more than half the fleet (20 vessels) were built after 2000. This category includes all of the South Pacific Tuna Corporation purse seiners and the four vessels associated with the Taiwanese company Trans Global Products. Just one of Tri Marine\u2019s fleet is in this category: the Cape Ann<\/em>, built in 2015. Seventeen were built prior to 1990.<\/p>\n

The vessels also fall into two categories when it comes to compliance with U.S. and international laws.<\/p>\n

A review by Environment Hawai`i <\/em>of enforcement actions against the tuna fleet found those belonging to the South Pacific Tuna Corporation were cited many more times than those associated with any other operator:<\/p>\n