The Pearl Harbor destroyer USS Chafee steamed 42,000 nautical miles, conducted fisheries oversight with the Coast Guard in the Pacific, escorted the aircraft carrier USS George Washington around South America and returned Thursday to Hawaii via the Panama Canal.

But what Teri Christensen cared about was that her son-in-law, Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric Amewouamedaketse, 29, was about to be reunited with her daughter and the sailor’s month-old daughter he had yet to see.

“Extremely excited,” Christensen said while waiting for the ship’s return at pier Bravo 22. “I think there’s going to be a lot of tears.”

Her husband, Dale, clutched a bunch of helium balloons that included a large inflated letter “A” and number “16.”

“They call him A16 for short,” explained Dale Christensen: It’s the first letter of his son-in-law’s last name, and the number of letters.

After a seven-month deployment, the Chafee and its more than 300 crew members docked at about 9 a.m. to the cheers of several hundred family members and Navy officials.

“This crew can be justifiably proud to have furthered our nation’s strategic goals,” said commanding officer Cmdr. Shea Thompson.

In August the destroyer patrolled for foreign vessels operating illegally in U.S. Pacific waters as part of a Pentagon program that also aims to boost regional security and help U.S. ships work better with friendly nations.

The Coast Guard is responsible for patrolling the exclusive economic zones that extend 200 nautical miles around U.S. territory. Foreign boats are not allowed to fish in those waters.

The Pentagon program assigns Navy ships transiting the area — including aircraft carriers — to provide oversight of fishing and other activity by having Coast Guard members aboard who take part in ship boardings. About 10 Coast Guard personnel were on the Chafee for the Oceania mission, Thompson said.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing has a significant impact on Pacific island economies, the Navy said. The Coast Guard once estimated $1.7 billion annually was being lost to illegal fishing in Oceania, the Navy Times reported.

“From what I understand, (the Defense Department has) been ramping up this particular mission over the last few years, really increasing the patrols in Oceania,” Thompson said.

According to a news release put out by the Chafee in late August, the Navy- Coast Guard team, including two embarked MH-60R helicopters from Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 37, conducted 19 external visual ship inspections and nine boardings.

The Coast Guard boarding team assisted enforcement officers embarked on the USS Chafee from the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, said Lt. Scott Carr, a spokesman for the 14th Coast Guard District.

The boarding team also conducted high-seas boardings and inspections under the Western Pacific Fisheries Commission. The vessels boarded were flagged from nations including the United States, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, China, Japan, Federated States of Micronesia and Taiwan, Carr said.

Although “some documented violations” were noted by the Navy, the extent of those infractions was not clear.

Oceania contains 43 percent, or approximately 1.3 million square miles, of U.S. exclusive economic zones that are divided among nine island zones: the main Hawaiian Islands, Johnston, Kingman/Palmyra, Jarvis, Howland/Baker, American Samoa, Wake, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, the Navy said.

“It’s very important to our partners out there to make sure that we’re enforcing the regulations in the exclusive economic zones,” Thompson said.

The Chafee also escorted the carrier George Washington from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 through the Strait of Magellan south of Chile between the Pacific and Atlantic as the carrier headed to Norfolk, Va. — and also arrived Thursday — for an overhaul.

At Pearl Harbor, Susan Oswald held aloft a sign that read, “You traveled the world, finally you’re back in mine” as the Chafee pulled in with the “love of my life,” her husband, Chief Petty Officer Matthew Oswald.

Sarah Mellott had her 6-month-old, Leia, as she waited for her husband, Petty Officer 2nd Class Jarod Mellott, 30, a sonar technician. Her husband got to see his daughter on a ship stop in San Diego, she said.

“I really wasn’t that worried about (the deployment),” said Sarah Mellott, who also is in the Navy. “I was kind of lonely not having him around with our daughter.”

Having him home for Christmas is “a really big deal,” though. “First Christmas for our daughter, so we’ve got to make it a special one,” she said.