Marine sanctuary to have little effect on commercial fishing, study finds

By: Mark Ladao. Originally published on staradvertiser.com.

A recent analysis found nearly zero commercial fishing recently in an area in the Pacific Ocean set to become a marine sanctuary, sparking another disagreement on data between sanctuary advocates and opponents.

The analysis, conducted by researchers at the Environmental Markets Lab (emLab), housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara, analyzed monitoring data for commercial fishing boats in the proposed expansion area of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.

The monument, established in 2009, covers all the federal waters surrounding Wake Atoll, Johnston Atoll and Jarvis Island. Additionally, some of the waters around Howland and Baker islands and Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll are protected within the monument, but President Joe Biden in March directed NOAA to start a marine sanctuary process that would expand protections so they would also cover all federal waters around those areas.

The emLab researchers found that the U.S. purse seine fleet spent 0.5% of its fishing effort in the proposed expansion area from 2018 to 2022, and the drifting longline fleet spent none of its effort in the area during that time. According to the NOAA website, a purse seine is a large wall of netting deployed around an entire area or school of fish.

A more specific finding in the study is the recent use of the proposed sanctuary area to the economy of American Samoa, which lies about 1,110 miles south of Howland and Baker islands and 1,500 miles from Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll. The researchers found that just 4.2% of total effort of purse seine vessels and none of the effort of longline vessels that docked in American Samoa were spent in the proposed area.

Figuring out the impact to American Samoa is significant, as American Samoa Gov. Lemanu Mauga wrote in a letter to Biden in March that the sanctuary “will be yet another devastating nail in the coffin for the tuna industry that supports our small, fragile economy.”

The single cannery that’s left in American Samoa continues to play a major role in its economy.

Still, the study, along with a recent Science magazine article that found “spillover” benefits to fishing populations as a result of the protections in marine protected areas, are being used to promote its creation.

“These studies show that marine protected areas work,” said Pacific Remote Islands Coalition member Rick Gaffney in a statement. “The fishing industry should embrace these marine protected areas because the science and numbers show that they help, not hinder, their fishing efforts.”

The coalition has urged for the expansion of the protected area and its sanctuary designation.

A limitation of the study that’s been acknowledged by researchers, advocates and opponents of the sanctuary was the tracking data used to monitor the vessels. The data is based on the voluntary use of onboard tracking equipment, which can be turned off to protect valuable information on fishing grounds.

The emLab study said data from the devices, also known as Automatic Identification System, on the vessels and other problems means the activity measured “is generally an underestimate.”

Mark Fitchett, a pelagic fisheries ecosystem scientist, said that data is unreliable because it isn’t a thorough monitoring of fishing activity.

Fitchett is also a staff member of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, the primary opponent of the monuments, sanctuaries and efforts to increase fishing regulations in the Pacific. It also argued against findings in the Science magazine article and has done so again with the emLab study.

Fitchett said that the time frame used in the study, which follows the creation of the Pacific Remote Islands monument, represents already depleted fishing activity caused by existing restrictions.

“Ultimately, it’s looking at unreliable data without looking at the cumulative fishery closures in U.S. waters and the reality of the existing regulatory landscape,” he said. “It leads to false narratives on the value of the Pacific Remote Islands Area to the U.S., especially to American Samoa.”

He added, “Using this time series is misleading because you’ve already shrunk where they can fish. … I think it’s two-thirds of the Pacific Remote Islands Area are already closed.”

PRI Coalition member William Aila Jr., while acknowledging the limitations of the study, said it still represents the best available data.

He also said that the fate of American Samoa’s cannery, owned by a company in South Korea, will be more a consequence of “global economics” rather than the expansion of the PRI protected area.

“The decision to keep the cannery in American Samoa is based upon how much labor costs are, how much raw material … how much taxes the American Samoan and U.S. government collects. Those are all things that go into making decisions,” Aila said.

Tuna supply, labor availability and production costs appear to be troubling the cannery and were noted as issues in recent cannery closures in American Samoa.