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In response to our April 28 “Island Voices” piece about American Samoa’s economic plight, authors Archie Soliai and Craig Severance in separate columns published June 20 launch vituperative attacks but dodge the issue.
Soliai stated: “Today, only StarKist Samoa is still in business, providing more than 70% of the territory’s private employment and is our main economic driver.” That is why we said: “The perilous state of American Samoa’s tuna cannery is an outcome that experts have long warned about.”
Competition in tuna canning is extreme, and lower pay scales and heavily subsidized fisheries elsewhere limit the future of StarKist’s cannery, and “70% of the territory’s private employment.”
Using twisted science, Soliai and Severance opine that current fishing practices are sustainable, when rapacious purse seine fishing is anathema to the survival of numerous species that are often killed by seiners targeting tunas. Purse seining is not a sustainable fishing practice!
William Aila
Waianae
Rick Gaffney
Kailua-Kona
EXPRESS YOURSELF
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