Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — American Samoa is finally included in the annual Fisheries of the United States report released in May this year for 2020 and issued by the U.S National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

“After many years of requests and complaints to the National Marine Fisheries Service for not including American Samoa in their report, we are finally being recognized,” said Marine and Wildlife Department director, Taotasi Archie Soliai.

“This addition puts American Samoa on the map in comparison to other major US ports — #7 in fishery landed volume and #5 in value,” he said from Honolulu, where he was last week attending the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council.

“This report highlights and provides a different perspective on the importance of the tuna industry to American Samoa. Direct fish delivery to the StarKist cannery has a multitude of other benefits to the territory,” he points out.

At the Council meeting, Taotasi — who is also the Council chairman —  said he expressed appreciation to Samuel Rauch, Deputy Assistant Administrator for regulatory programs of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, for inclusion of American Samoa in this report.

According to NMFS, the report provides data on U.S. recreational catch and commercial fisheries landings and value as well as other aspects of U.S. commercial fishing. In addition, data is reported on the U.S. fishery processing industry, imports and exports of fishery-related products, and domestic supply and per capita consumption of fishery products.

The report points out that commercial landings by U.S. fishermen at ports outside the 50 states provided an additional 417.6 million pounds (189,419 metric tons) valued at $277.1 million. This was a decrease of 12 percent, or 59 million pounds (26,938 metric tons) in quantity and an increase of $12.5 million (5 percent) in value compared with 2019.

Most of these landings consisted of tuna landed in American Samoa and other territorial as well as foreign ports, it says.

For canned fishery products, the report said that the pack of canned fishery products in the 50 states, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico was 846.6 million pounds valued at $1.5 billion—a decrease in volume of 28.6 million pounds and an increase in value of $43.8 million compared to 2019.

The full report and other details online at (https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/sustainable-fisheries/fisheries-united-states).