By American Samoa Longline Fleet Member
The recent op-ed defending the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument is beautifully written. Its invocations of fa’a Samoa, of tautua—service—of our ancestors’ wisdom, are genuinely moving. But passion, however sincere, is not a fisheries management plan. And love for our ocean, however deep, does not by itself determine the right policy for the waters surrounding Muliava. When we move past the poetry and examine the actual proposal on the table—allowing six U.S.-flagged, American Samoa-based longline vessels to fish from 12 nautical miles seaward of the reef—a very different picture emerges. One that deserves an honest accounting.
The op-ed speaks powerfully of community—of matais, senators, alia fishers, and village families. But it is silent about who actually owns our longline vessels. They are American Samoans. Their families live in the same villages, worship in the same churches, and feel the same squeeze of a struggling island economy. When the op-ed frames this debate as outside commercial interests versus the local community, it erases us. We are not foreign. We are not outside. We are American Samoa’s longline fleet, and we are asking to fish our own territory’s waters under federal oversight. The op-ed’s framing of this as a battle between community and commerce is a false choice—and it does a disservice to the Samoan men and women who depend on this fleet for their livelihoods.
True fa’a Samoa demands care for the extended family in all directions. Our fleet has demonstrated this repeatedly. When seismic activity threatened Manu’a in 2022, the Department of Homeland Security called usto stand ready to evacuate civilians. We said yes, immediately, asking only for fuel costs. When called upon by a representative needing critical aircraft parts transported to a stranded plane in Manu’a, we volunteered a vessel on the spot. When an alia boat from neighboring Samoa drifted at sea for seven days, it was a longliner from American Samoa that found them. If that is not tautua, what is?
A great deal of the opposition rhetoric treats ’12 miles’ as though it were the edge of the reef itself. It is not. Rose Atoll’s reef structure, its coral, its lagoon, its nesting seabird colonies, its green sea turtle habitat—all of this remains fully protected inside the 12-mile buffer. The proposal only concerns the open, deep-water pelagic ocean beyond that boundary, where migratory species like albacore tuna pass through on their way across the Pacific. To call this outer ocean the ‘last fragile link to our ancestors’ dreams’ confuses two fundamentally different marine environments. The reef ecosystem at Rose Atoll is not touched by what we are proposing. Not by a single hook.
Consider what a 12-mile exclusion zone actually looks like in practice. Imagine drawing a circle from Aunu’u Island all the way to Vaitogi on the opposite shore of Tutuila—that is the scale of the protected buffer that would remain around Rose Atoll. Seven-thousand-plus square nautical miles is not a number to dismiss, but the outer waters of that zone, where pelagic longlines operate, are not the reef, not the lagoon, not the nesting ground. The conflation of these distinct habitats is either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation, and the public deserves clarity.
The op-ed warns of longline bycatch depleting aku, ahi, wahoo, and marlin—the fish that stock local tables. This concern deserves a direct response. Our fleet targets albacore tuna in deep, open-water conditions well beyond the nearshore zones where alia fishermen work. The water column, the gear depth, and the fishing grounds used by longliners and alia boats are not the same. Bycatch of nearshore reef-associated species at 12 to 50 miles from a remote atoll, in deep pelagic waters, is not the documented threat the op-ed implies. Meanwhile, over 95 percent of our catch goes directly to StarKist Samoa—not to local markets. We do not undercut the alia fleet. The foreign Chinese and Taiwanese vessels selling fish directly to local stores and restaurants at a dollar a pound undercut the alia fleet. That is where the market pressure comes from, and it is a problem the opposition has not once addressed.
The op-ed’s most serious factual claim is that the 2016 reduction of the LVPA around the main islands—from 50 miles to 12—failed to deliver economic benefits over the past decade, and that we are now irrationally proposing to repeat that failure at Rose Atoll. This framing deserves direct challenge. What drove the reduction of our fleet during that period? Rising fuel costs. Stagnant cannery prices. Aging vessels and limited access to capital for replacement. COVID-19. Global supply chain disruptions. Labor shortages. These are the documented pressures on small territorial fishing operations across the Pacific. Attributing our fleet’s struggles solely to the fishing zone boundary, while ignoring all of these economic forces, is not analysis—it is assertion. And basing opposition to the Rose Atoll proposal on that assertion is not stewardship. It is a rhetorical shortcut.
History has already run this experiment. In 1993, the Taiwanese longliner Jin Shiang Fa ran aground on Rose Atoll, spilling approximately 100,000 gallons of fuel, 500 gallons of lubricant, and 2,500 pounds of ammonia—devastating the reef ecosystem. That disaster was caused by an unregulated foreign vessel operating beyond the reach of meaningful oversight. Our six U.S.-flagged vessels operate under a completely different standard. Every boat carries a Vessel Monitoring System that reports its location to the National Marine Fisheries Service in real time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Tampering with or disabling a VMS unit is a federal offense carrying penalties our small fleet cannot absorb. No American Samoa longliner has ever run aground on Rose Atoll. The ecological risk argument, when examined against actual history, points in exactly the opposite direction from where the opposition aims it.
Moreover, having our vessels operating legally in the 12-to-50-mile zone would dramatically improve monitoring of that area for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing by the foreign fleets that actually pose a threat to Rose Atoll. With limited Coast Guard and NOAA enforcement assets in our waters, our longliners serve as the eyes and ears of the EEZ. Keeping us out does not protect Rose Atoll—it leaves it unobserved.
There is a sovereignty argument the opposition has overlooked entirely, and it deserves to be named plainly. American Samoa’s Exclusive Economic Zone belongs to American Samoa. Preventing American Samoa-based, U.S.-flagged vesselsfrom fishing in their own territory’s waters, while foreign fleets operate freely elsewhere in the Pacific, is itself a form of dispossession. If the Deeds of Cession mean anything, they mean that our people should have meaningful access to and authority over our ocean. Locking our own fleet out of our own EEZ in the name of conservation, while foreign operators face no equivalent restriction, is not stewardship. It is exclusion wearing stewardship’s clothing.
No one writing in favor of this proposal wants to see Rose Atoll harmed. That is not the choice before us. The choice is whether to permit six heavily regulated, locally based, American-flagged vessels to fish migratory tuna in the open pelagic waters beyond 12 nautical miles from the reef—waters that are not the reef, not the lagoon, not the nesting ground—under continuous federal monitoring, with VMS tracking, under NMFS oversight, in a fishery with zero history of Monument violations by our fleet. That is what is actually being proposed. Measured against that reality, the opposition’s warnings of ecological catastrophe and cultural betrayal are not proportionate to the policy at hand.
The Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources supports this proposal. The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council has the mechanisms to monitor and adjust it. Federal fishery management in the Pacific has successfully balanced conservation and sustainable use for decades. We are not asking to dismantle Rose Atoll’s protections. We are asking to work within them—as Samoans, as regulated U.S. operators, and as members of a community that has earned the right to fish its own waters.
O le ala i le pule o le tautua. The path to leadership is through service. Our fleet has served—in storms, in emergencies, in the quiet daily work of keeping the cannery supplied and our families fed. We ask only for the chance to keep serving, in the waters that belong to all of us.
