Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Marine and Wildlife Resources (DMWR) director, Taotasi Archie Soliai has informed the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) that “bottomfishing is a culturally-important fishery in our islands” and that this “fishery was “damaged by the 2009 tsunami and has been declining.”

Toatasi shared his views and comments in a Mar. 18 letter to Mike Tosatto, the Regional Administrator of NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office in Honolulu.

Last month, NMFS issued a notice, which proposes to implement a rebuilding plan that includes the Annual Catch Limit (ACL) and accountability measures for the overfished bottomfish stock complex in American Samoa.

NMFS said this action is necessary to end overfishing and rebuild the overfished stock consistent with the requirements of the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act).

Public comments were accepted through Mar. 21 and according to the DMWR director, the proposed ACL plan of 5,000 pounds is significantly lower than the average of 13,000 pounds per year. “Although this has been deemed the best ACL option for stocks to rebuild, the biggest negative impact will be on the fishermen who depend on this fishery,” he said.

Taotasi argued that: “Our indigenous communities depend on local fish catch to provide them with the fish they need for meals and cultural purposes. The fishermen depend on these fisheries for their livelihoods.”

“This fishery is historically small — 20 participants — with most catch for family consumption and cultural obligations,” he said and pointed out that this fishery was damaged by the 2009 tsunami and has been declining.

“Given the significant economic stress that the COVID pandemic has inflicted to American Samoa, we request that NMFS assist our department and territory [to] make the rebuilding plan less painful to our fishing community,” he wrote.

Taotasi outlined five issues in American Samoa’s request asking that NMFS — among other things —  nullify the rebuilding plan of 10 years if the next stock assessment provides a healthier outlook of our bottomfish stocks and assist DMWR in developing a bottomfish community development plan to cushion the impact of fishery economic and cultural loss.

Furthermore, assist DMWR in “developing the territorial bottomfish management plan and the data-limited stock assessment tools that are more appropriate for our fishery; and support DMWR by providing our staff the tools and training to improve creel data collection, understand the life history of these exploited stocks and enforce and develop appropriate fisheries regulations.”

He also requested that NMFS support regional initiatives in managing these bottomfish stocks. “The best available scientific information suggest that we may be sharing these stocks with nearby countries and therefore management needs to be regional in scope,” Taotasi pointed out.

Therefore, a “regional management approach recognizes that exploitation of these stocks in nearby countries impact our local stocks,” he said.

Although it is a small fishery, the DMWR director pointed out that “bottomfishing is a culturally-important fishery in our islands. It is part of what makes us Samoans. The deep-water snappers have nourished our cultural traditions for thousands of years.”

 “It is important to keep our fishery, traditions and culture alive now more than ever,” he said and asked NMFS to support American Samoa’s requests as “part of the rebuilding our bottomfish stocks.”

In conclusion, he said, “we support integrating this rebuilding plan to the Fishery Ecosystem Plan as this would enhance an integrated local and federal support in managing our fisheries.”

Specific details of the NMFS proposal on the federal portal at (www.regulations.gov).