Bangkok – US President Donald Trump has opened a vast Pacific sailor sanctuary with commercial fishing in a move which, according to the administration, will benefit the American Samoa, an American territory depends on the economic level of a single tuna preserver.
A Trump proclamation last week allows American flag ships to fish at 50-200 sea miles from the earth inside the protected area. The sanctuary includes waters around several islands, atolls and reefs which, according to scientists, are home to the most diverse marine life on the planet.
The protection of the sanctuary of 1.3 million square kilometers (495,000 square miles) does not do much to protect itself against overfishing because tuna and other species of fish at sea is migrant, according to proclamation.
American fishing fleets have lost access to almost half of the exclusive economic zone of the United States in the Pacific due to commercial fishing bans, he said.
“It prompted American fishermen to fish off the coast in international waters to compete with poorly regulated and highly subsidized foreign fleets,” the proclamation said. An information sheet on the White House on the decision specified the Chinese falsification fishing ships as the most notable of the foreign fishing fleets.
China’s high -seas fishing fleet is the largest in the world, including thousands of ships and a significant proportion of world fish. Subsidized by Beijing and subject to illegality, he plays a key role both in the exhaustion of the populations of oceanic fish and the influence of 1.4 billion people from China.
The American proclamation is a subject about its ocean conservation efforts. The previous American administration of President Joe Biden had planned to extend the sanctuary to 2 million square kilometers (770,000 square miles), larger than the Gulf of Mexico.
Some research suggests that marine sanctuaries, if they are sufficiently important, have overflow effects that stimulate populations of migratory fish such as tuna.
Using data accessible to the public of nine sanctuaries in the Pacific and Indian oceans, researchers from the University of Hawaii and the University of Stanford said that tuna intakes increased by 12% to 18% almost near the limits of the protected area. Further on the limits, the increase was smaller.
The American Samoa, who as a territory not constituted in society have only a non -voting representative at the Congress, had opposed the expansion of the sanctuary. Local officials had declared that he would probably devastate the economy of the territory.
Tuna fishing offers approximately 5,000 jobs in American samoa, where a Starkist tuna cannery belonging to Korean is its biggest company, but has declined. The American Samoan Islands, located south of the sea sanctuary, are home to less than 50,000 people after having undergone a narrowed population for at least the last decade.
The Samoa American Congress Member, Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, said that allowing fishing in the sanctuary is a “sensible” decision.
The proclamation is “important for the stability and the future of the American economy of the Samoa, but it is also a fantastic new for American food security,” said Amata in a statement.
“The vast region of the Pacific islands cannot fall under the domination of an increasingly aggressive CCP,” she said, referring to the Communist Party leader of China.
Published by Mike Firn and Tajun Kang.