Source: Samoa Observer
Fisheries play an extremely important role in the economy of Samoa.
Our local tuna fishing fleet operates within a small EEZ of approximately 120,000 km2.
Samoa’s Tuna Fishery is exclusively domestic and is principally dominated by commercial longline fishing, which occurs throughout the year.
There are however very strong seasonal variations in catch rates for the longline fleet.
The tuna longline fishing involves fishing vessel ranging from 11metres to over 20.5 meters in length targeting albacore tuna. Catch rates from the longline fleet shows strong recovery in 2009 from persistent low catch rates experienced from 2006 to 2008.
Sixty domestic fishing vessels are engaged in longline fishing within our EEZ in 2010.
Troll fishing in Samoa is of a small commercial scale and target mostly skipjack tuna mainly by fishing alia vessels less than 11 meters in length and much of their catches are sold at our main fish markets. These vessels were the pioneer of Samoa’s domestic tuna fishing fleet that were originally designed for bottom fishing and trolling for surface pelagic species around Fish Aggregating Devices or the open offshore waters just a few miles off the reef.
The design was slightly modified in the early 1990s to accommodate on board the manually operated longline drum and associated longline gears.
As a result, the alias could switch gears from time to time depending on the availability of the target species for each gear from time to time.
Port sampling activities continues to provide the main data for the estimation of annual catch and effort levels for the domestic longline fleet.
During the year high catches are from bigger vessels in Class D & E with moderate catches by alias (Class A). Mid year especially June to July are usually peak months for albacore catches.
The lengths data for all species landed however are sent to SPC for research purposes. Market landings survey provides catch estimates for troll catches.
Samoa Fisheries is currently looking at strategies to strengthen tuna fisheries data collected from troll vessels.
Most of our fresh chilled catches are exported to Los Angeles, Honolulu and New Zealand while all the frozen catches are exported to the cannery in Pago Pago.
According to previous years’ status, there was a shipment to Japan by one of the exporters where the initial returns were favorable.
Currently, our seafood safety project looks are reviewing our seafood safety legislation, with regards to the exportation of fish as well as identifying capacity needs of the competent authority as well as industry in terms of quality assurance program.
All of the exporters in Samoa have upgraded their quality systems to HACCP to assure trading partners that quality fish is consistently being exported from Samoa.