A U.S. territory marooned in the heart of the Pacific, American Samoa faces a triple threat of climate change, industrial fishing and the rising push for deep-sea mining. Photo by Jayson Boyd/Pexels
In American Samoa, the ocean is life — but that life is under siege.
The U.S. territory, marooned in the heart of the Pacific, faces a triple threat of climate change, industrial fishing and the rising push for deep-sea mining — forces that threaten to reshape its future.
For many fishermen, whose faith and families are tied to the sea, these waters no longer feel endless or secure. Decisions about their future — and the ocean itself — are now being made far beyond their shores. From Washington boardrooms to global summits, the people most bound to these waters barely register.
As U.S. officials weigh reopening parts of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing fleets — and consider seabed mining — the voices of local fishermen and StarKist cannery workers are reduced to background noise in decisions that will define their survival.
The island’s economy depends on tuna, and every policy shift ripples along Pago Pago’s docks and canneries. This vast region falls under the nation’s largest Fishery Management Council, overseeing 1.5 million-square-nautical miles and an indigenous mix of Samoan, Chamorro, Hawaiian and Carolinian communities — making consensus across this vast ocean anything but simple.
But on Tutuila, the anxiety is direct: fishers speak of shrinking catches, rising fuel costs and the sense that the sea that once sustained them is slipping away — not just to climate change, but to distant powers charting their future.
“Tuna is the economic lifeblood of American Samoa and our fisheries are essential for food security, recreation and the perpetuation of our Samoan culture,” said Nathan Ilaoa, director of American Samoa Department of Marine & Wildlife Resources.
He warned that pitching deep-sea mining as a replacement for a declining fisheries industry may offer some potential short-term economic benefits, but risks destabilizing the tuna sector that still anchors the territory’s economy.
“As this process moves forward, DMWR will remain deeply involved to protect our interests and ensure our fisheries remain stable,” Ilaoa said.
The struggling industry’s survival runs through every deck and dock in American Samoa’s fishing industry. The territory ranks as the nation’s fifth-largest producer of fish, anchored by StarKist’s sprawling cannery in Pago Pago, which employs about 2,000 people who represent about 80% of the territory’s private-sector jobs.
But decades of overfishing have thinned Pacific stocks and island crews are squeezed between rules meant to protect the ocean and corporate fleets that dominate the catch, leaving livelihoods hanging in the balance.
Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council Executive Director Kitty Simonds warned that shutting down Starkist’s cannery could wipe out an estimated $300 million a year in gross domestic product. Council members agree that the company is under increasing pressure from rival canneries in China and across Asia.
U.S. Rep. Aumua Amata Radewagen, American Samoa’s non-voting delegate to Congress, backs calls to expand fishing access — a move she said could boost the territory’s struggling economy. But many coastal fishers said their catches are already shrinking and warn that more exploitation could push a fragile ecosystem beyond recovery.
Fish stocks are collapsing across the Pacific, and the call for sustainable fishing has never been louder. Yet, in American Samoa, local leaders watch helplessly as distant water fleets — led by China’s mega-fishing armada, now estimated at more than 18,000 vessels — sweep through the Western Pacific’s exclusive economic zones, reshaping the seas on which their communities have relied for generations.
For High Chief Taulapapa William Sword, a noncommercial fisherman, and an engineer with the American Samoa Power Authority, fishing is not just commerce; it’s identity.
“Our people grew up with the land and the sea as sources of sustenance, so conservation must guide how we live,” he wrote in an email. But Sword said U.S. National Marine Fisheries policies, driven by global trade interests, have sidelined small island economies and left American Samoa’s last tuna cannery — along with its longline and purse-seine fleets — battling to survive.
Sword said the island’s longline fleet has shrunk, while foreign vessels fill the gap, especially Chinese boats fishing with little U.S. Coast Guard oversight.
“Beijing’s heavily subsidized fleet steals our fish and sells it back to us,” he said at a recent Fishery Council meeting. “China — and its fishermen — follow no one’s rules.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is racing to open the seabed around American Samoa and other U.S. Pacific islands for cobalt, manganese and nickel — minerals now considered national security assets and pillars of the clean energy transition.
Officials argue deep-ocean mining would slash dependence on China for materials needed in defense systems, batteries and high-tech manufacturing.
But for American Samoa’s 50,000 residents, the sudden federal push to open the deep ocean raises troubling questions over consent, environmental risk and who truly benefits.
Marine scientists caution that deep-sea ecosystems remain among the least explored on Earth. Mining could stir up plumes of sediment, smothering fragile coral and disrupting migratory species on which islanders depend.
In a region already reeling from rising seas and coral bleaching, critics argue that deep-sea mining could inflict irreversible harm for short-term economic gain. Once the seabed is scraped and disturbed, there is no guarantee of recovery, at least not within human timeframes.
Local environmental activist Tisa Fa’amuli, who runs a small eco-resort on the island’s north coast, said the idea of seabed mining “feels like another assault on the ocean that feeds and defines us.”
She added in a telephone interview, “We already face the loss of our reefs and rising tides that eat our land. To think that the deep sea — a place we barely understand — could be torn apart without our voice in the matter is heartbreaking.”
The territory’s governor, Pula Nikolao Pula, has taken a measured approach to deep-sea mining. In remarks to local media, he urged a full environmental review before any permits are granted, stressing that American Samoa’s ocean remains its “lifeline.”
He said innovation must not come at the expense of clean waters, healthy reefs or the livelihoods on which future generations depend.
That call for caution is underscored by U.S. Rep. Radewagen, who is pressing federal agencies to place island communities at the center of ocean policy, not on the sidelines. She warned that deep-sea mining companies’ promises of low-impact technology remain unproven.
“Our people do not want our clear blue Pacific waters clouded off our shores,” Radewagen said in an email.
While Washington frames the hunt for undersea minerals as a matter of national security, mining companies see opportunity.
Oliver Gunasekara, co-founder and CEO of Impossible Metals, a California-based company developing autonomous undersea robots to collect minerals without dredging the seabed, insisted that “a responsible, science-driven approach can balance environmental protection with resource needs.”
The tension between environmental risk and economic hope is not new to the Pacific. From phosphate mining in Nauru to nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, the region bears scars of decisions made elsewhere in the name of progress or security.
In that sense, American Samoa’s situation feels achingly familiar — a territory asked once again to absorb the consequences of policies forged far beyond its shores.
Yet, resilience also is here. American Samoans have a long history of self-reliance and stewardship, where community and nature coexist through mutual respect.
Villages already are leading coastal restoration projects, planting mangroves and rebuilding reefs using traditional knowledge. In a telephone interview with Fa’amuli, she said, “Our people understand the ocean’s pulse better than any outside expert, and we just want the chance to decide our own path forward.”
For many Samoans, the ocean is not just geography; it is genealogy — an ancestral inheritance that links generations. The call now is not only to protect that heritage from the encroaching sea, but also to ensure that any development in their waters begins with their consent.
As Fa’amuli put it, “The ocean is our mother. You don’t just take from her without asking.”
James Borton is a non-resident senior fellow at Johns Hopkins/SAIS Foreign Policy Institute and the author of Harvesting the Waves: How Blue Parks Shape Policy, Politics and Peacebuilding in the South China Sea.
