American Long Liner Captains Replaced By Filipino’sff

Several local American long liner captains are upset and have expressed their disappointment to the Samoa News about the excessive number of them being out of a job due to the long liners opting to hire Filipino and New Zealanders fishermen for a much lower price.

According to a local spokesperson, who also serves as an advisor for the Western Pacific Fisheries Council, his main focus is to address concerns voiced by local fishermen pertaining to any issues relative to commercial fishing. He then presents those same issues before the council during scheduled meetings.

The local spokesperson told over a telephone interview recently that during an earlier teleconference, linked to Washington D.C. and other locations across the United States, another local council member -who is also a commercial fishermen-, openly voiced his frustration with non-U.S. captains being allowed to operate long line fishing vessels in the Territory.

“The real issue at hand is safety. Federal law says that all U.S. long liners used for commercial fishing should be operated by a U.S. citizen; however, that same law is not specific and therefore has loop holes which local long line owners are wiggling through, trying to make all the dollars they can,” the spokesperson stated.

Other local commercial fishermen may be attributing the problem to the lack of enforcement by the local office of the United States Coast Guard (USCG) in regards to the general rule, that all long liner captains traveling to and from the local port must be U.S. captains.

United States Coast Guard's Marine Safety Detachment Supervisor Lt. Kostecki explained, “Federal law states that a U.S. citizen has to be in charge of the vessel, and that includes American Samoa citizens. There is currently no standard outlining the necessary training or skill that a person is required to have in order to operate any vessel under 200 gross tons.”

Lt. Kostecki added that many fishing vessels are putting “paper captains” on board. This basically means that the paper captain, usually an American Samoan citizen who has no qualifications, is listed in the logbook as the captain of the vessel. Consequently, when the USCG is on board to conduct their inspections, the crewmembers of the vessel claim that the paper captain is the captain of the vessel.

Lt. Kostecki added, “As long as that person is a citizen of the U.S. or American Samoa, there is really nothing the local USCG office can do about it because there are no standards in place to necessitate the validity of the qualifications and ability of the named paper captain.”

The local council advisor confirmed that he spoke with Lt. Kostecki in regards to this issue of foreign long liner captains, and was also informed about the loopholes in the federal law.

“There is really nothing the local USCG office can do” says the frustrated local council advisor.

Lt. Kostecki explained that although he and his staff members do not conduct vessel inspections on a daily or weekly basis, they do so whenever the need arises.