American Samoans fear tuna fishing limits in Pacific Ocean sanctuary could threaten their livelihood

The long road to designation

Designating a new marine sanctuary won't happen overnight, nor without substantial input from the public.

NOAA's online comment portal includes dozens of form letters from the League of Conservation Voters supporting the designation. The letters say the area’s “diverse tropical marine wildlife” are “highly vulnerable to climate change, invasive species, and debris from industrial fishing and shipping.”

The Sierra Club of Hawaii backs the sanctuary, saying it would create the largest area of protected ocean in the world.

“Protecting wild places like the Pacific Remote Islands is as important as ever in the face of climate change, overfishing and threats like deep-sea mining,” the organization wrote. “Current data and modeling show that expanded protections for the waters of the Pacific Remote Islands would contribute to the climate resilience of the Pacific.”

Lua'itaua Gene Pan, a member of the American Samoa House of Representatives, said beyond providing jobs, StarKist has contributed to development of infrastructure, public service and education, and is a vital source of tax revenue. 

Lua’itaua, who worked at the cannery for 17 years, opined that the proposal poses “a significant threat to our economy and the livelihoods of our citizens.”

“Losing StarKist would not only lead to a decline in employment opportunities but also increase shipping costs, leading to a higher cost of living for our community,” Lua’itaua wrote. “This, in turn, could potentially lead to an economic crisis and a rise in crime rates. StarKist plays a crucial role in shouldering various costs, such as utilities, shipping, transportation, and taxes, which support our infrastructure and contribute to the well-being of our residents.”

NOAA's Phillips said concerns about the tuna cannery were prominent in the public hearings. The portal has received around 57,000 comments about the proposal, which will be synthesized and considered as the agency forms a draft plan and environmental impact statements.

The designation process starts with a notice in the Federal Register. NOAA then seeks information from the public, researches the potential boundaries of protections and which resources may need safeguarding, and publishes a draft proposal covering management, environmental impact and potential regulations. More public meetings follow before the final draft is ready for public review.

In all, designation is a "multi-year process," Phillips said.

Protections old and new

Sitting in the middle of the triangle of Hawaii, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, only three of the islands have even a part-time population. The Air Force has facilities on Johnson and Wake and The Nature Conservancy operates a research station on Palmyra.

Parts of the region's waters were protected through the establishment of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument by President George W. Bush in 2009. The monument, which goes through a less rigorous and public review process, was expanded by President Barack Obama in 2014. 

“Research continues to reveal the importance of these relatively unexplored habitats to the health, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration of the ocean,” Biden wrote in a March memo to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Although uninhabited, the islands' long history dates back to Pacific islanders who navigated the area in antiquity, which would be incorporated into the designation.

“It’s not just all about fishing or fishing for tuna,” Phillips said. “There’s a history. There’s a bigger story.”

Palmyra Atoll was annexed by the independent Kingdom of Hawaii in 1862 and, when the nation was annexed by the U.S. in 1898, Palmyra became part of the new territory.

Wake Island was claimed in 1899 because federal officials felt it would support a telegraph cable station and key coaling station halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines. The Japanese seized Wake in a battle shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and occupied it until the end of World War II.

Meanwhile the other land masses — Baker, Howland, Jarvis, Johnson and Kingman — have a bigger role in an often-overlooked portion of U.S. history revolving around fertilizer.

The islands were among many claimed by the government in the late 1800s as a source of nitrogen-rich guano, the term for bird or bat droppings used as fertilizer. Guano provided vital nutrients to farmers trying to keep their soil fertile enough to keep up with production needs. 

“[S]prinkled in small quantities over the nitrogen-parched farms of North America, the stuff worked miracles,” wrote Daniel Immerwahr, a history professor at Northwestern University, in his 2019 book “How to Hide an Empire.”

Congress passed the Guano Islands Act of 1856, which proclaimed that whenever a U.S. citizen discovered guano on an unclaimed, uninhabited island, the president had discretion to claim the island. When the last claim was filed in 1902, the U.S. had acquired 94 guano islands, including Baker, Howland, Jarvis, Johnson and Kingman.

Phillips noted that NOAA is very early in the designation process and has not made any determination about what regulatory measures it will propose.

NOAA plans to hold workshops in American Samoa in the fall and release a draft proposal in late winter or spring of 2024. After it’s published, the agency will hold more meetings in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

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