For years, environmental groups and some members of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) have groused about the Hawai`i longline fleet being allowed to skirt its international bigeye tuna quota by attributing some of its catch to U.S. Pacific island territories.<\/p>\n
In 2014, the Conservation Council for Hawai`i, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in federal court, seeking a ruling that would end the practice. But on December 23, U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi denied their plea, stating in her decision that despite the plaintiffs\u2019 arguments to the contrary, all of WCPFC\u2019s conservation and management measures (CMMs) regarding bigeye seem to treat the United States separately from the territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. For this reason, among others, Kobayashi found that NMFS\u2019s rule \u2014 known as Amendment 7 \u2014 allowing quota transfers of up to 3,000 metric tons a year from the territories to the Hawai`i fleet is not arbitrary or capricious.<\/p>\n
Because the commission\u2019s most recent tuna conservation measures (CMM 2013-01 and 2014-01) are \u201cambiguous as to the issue of whether [participating territories] are separate entities from their responsible Contracting Parties for purposes of catch allocation limits,\u201d Kobayashi stated that she looked to the prior relevant CMMs, which do, indeed, separate the territories from the United States in their list of flag states.<\/p>\n
\u201cRequiring each [participating territory] to attribute its catch to its responsible Contracting Party would be a major policy change [that] would be contrary to other policy statements in CMM 2013-01,\u201d she wrote, referring to language in a number of WCPFC conservation measures that seeks to avoid imposing a disproportionate burden on small island developing states (SIDS) or participating territories (PT).<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only is CMM 2013-01 silent on the purported change in the policy regarding the allocation of the PTs\u2019 bigeye tuna catch, the Commission\u2019s Summary Report of the session during which that measure was adopted does not reflect any discussion of the purported change,\u201d she continued, adding that the commission in 2013 also adopted two measures addressing SIDS and PTs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThus, the interpretation of CMM 2013-01 that Plaintiffs advocate \u2013 in which PTs are no longer recognized as separate entities for purposes of catch allocation \u2013 is inconsistent with the Convention\u2019s and the Commission\u2019s policies, and it is not supported by the record of the Commission\u2019s session during which the measure was adopted,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
She further argued that requiring American Samoa to attribute its catch to the United States would \u201cput a disproportionate burden of conservation efforts on it and would prejudice its ability to develop its fishery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given the fact that the Hawai`i fleet hit its quota early this year, \u201c[t]he American Samoa fishery would likely be unable to catch its annual average, let alone a larger amount if it decided to responsibly expand its fishery,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThe more sophisticated Hawai`i-based longline fishery \u2013 already faced with a reduced catch limit \u2013 would likely reach the United States\u2019s annual catch limit before American Samoa reached its annual average, and the fishery for the United States and all of the U.S. PTs would be closed thereafter. Further, the Hawai`i-based longline fishery would have no incentive to support the development of the American Samoa fishery because the expansion of the American Samoa fishery would reduce the amount of bigeye tuna that the Hawai`i-based fishery could catch,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Teresa Dawson<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For years, environmental groups and some members of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) have groused about the Hawai`i longline fleet being allowed to skirt its international bigeye tuna quota by attributing some of its catch to U.S. … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-8620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-january-2016","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8620","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=8620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}