Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said Monday he wants to \u201cget as much as we can\u201d from a proposed deal by Hawaii longliners to buy half of the CNMI\u2019s tuna fishing quota for a couple of hundred thousand dollars per year, allowing them to fish past their annual catch limits if exhausted.<\/p>\n
The Hawaii Longline Association wrote to Torres in February and offered a three-year deal\u2014with $200,000 paid out each year\u2014to allow their fishing vessels to catch up to 1,000 metric tons of bigeye tuna \u201cagainst the CNMI catch limit,\u201d Saipan Tribune learned. The offer is made on the expectation that Hawaii longliners would exhaust their own catch quota, and similar agreements with the CNMI have been made in the last several years. <\/p>\n
The offered payment is not tied down to whether the longliners actually end up using the CNMI quota, Saipan Tribune learned, and the $200,000 would be paid without regard the amount of catch HLA has in any given year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am trying to get as much as we can,\u201d Torres said on Monday, \u201cby meeting with our stakeholders in Hawaii and utilizing what we have here and seeing what we gave last year and what are giving up in the years coming.\u201d Torres will be in Hawaii for three days and flew out yesterday.<\/p>\n
Asked if he has received any information whether the offer was a \u201clowball,\u201d Torres said the CNMI\u2019s neighboring islands asked for $1 million \u201cand that was shot down right away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as we want a million dollars we will get as much as we can\u201d so \u201cthat the industry continue to grow,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n
Still, an industry source from a neighboring island said the $200,000 price was \u201cnot enough.\u201d <\/p>\n
Using their formula to calculate market value of tons per yen or dollar, the source estimated a market value for the CNMI\u2019s 1,000 metric tons at between $887,280 to $1.2 million.<\/p>\n
The CNMI is allotted 1,000 metric tons for big eye tuna as part of regulations in for fishing in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean as managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). <\/p>\n
Office of the Governor spokesman Ivan Blanco earlier said that the CNMI is \u201cactively reviewing available options including comparable market values from nearby island countries before an acceptance of the offer will be made.\u201d<\/p>\n
Department of Lands and Natural Resource Secretary Richard Seman, for his part, said they always do and hope for money but at the same time, \u201cwe want to be reasonable and extend our assistance to the Hawaii Longline Fishery Association who had been cut short by the overall international\u201d regulations.<\/p>\n
Asked if he thought the offer was market value or \u201ca fair price,\u201d Seman said it was not so much market value as \u201cit is not based on what they catch.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are just assuming that they catch that amount of quota. If they don\u2019t catch anything, it is their loss,\u201d he told reporters Monday.<\/p>\n
Seman said the United States has been in the \u201cforefront of compliance\u201d under the rules that Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission has set up but it was \u201csad that [the U.S.] gets kind of shortchanged at the end of the day when it comes down to allocation\u201d of fishing quota.<\/p>\n
Seman said U.S. longliners are now using \u201cits own territories\u2019 quota\u201d but added they are not going out and seeking other national quotas as compared to other longliners from China who are buying out some of Japan\u2019s quota.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said Monday he wants to \u201cget as much as we can\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,10901,1154,38],"class_list":["post-225360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-hla","tag-ivan-blanco","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}