So after a pre-trial conference this morning, I got to get away from the office/dungeon that most civil litigators are confined to for a little bit to statutory explanations for conference the at the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources ("DMWR"). DMWR is implementing a program where the coastal villages can set up their own marine reserves and establish their own fishing regulations that both the village and DMWR enforcement officers can enforce. I got asked to attend this meeting by one of the Samoans I met at the talofa barbecue I went to last weekend for a departing member of DMWR.
The talk sounded a little on the legal-nerd end of the spectrum, just the kind of thing for an attorney on the environmental kick back on the mainland. The meeting turned out to be interesting in a few, non-legal ways. The whole events started with a buffet breakfast, I caught more than a few looks for not eating a big plate from the available food. I didn't realize it was going to be catered and had a meal before commuting into Pago Pago. The meeting then kicked off with a hymn sung in Samoan and was followed by two prayers, also in Samoan, led by different members of the group. The group of village mayors, or matais from the participating villages, then gave reports on the enforcement they had done in the last year as a part of the program. This whole presentation was, also in Samoan, so I gathered little outside of there were a lot of "thank you's" and they referred to the "rules" a bunch. Knowing only about two-dozen Samoan words will hold you back in this context.
After these presentations I got up and did my presentation on the rules, the first part of the program to be in English. This was followed by a break for brunch, which consisted of a buffet of the left overs from breakfast along with some rice, beef stew and meat pies. Again, I caught some looks for turning down a soda and a big plate of food at 10:20 in the morning. Participating in Samoa events is calorie intensive.
The DMWR enforcement officers then did more explanations of the fisheries program and some specifics from the regulations, again, also in Samoan. I had an easier time following these talks, since they had power point slides with the code sections and many of the legal terms had no practical Samoa translations so there would be acronyms and legal terms mixed in to the explanations.
This session went OK until the end. The events started to get side tracked when the matais started asking about creating village specific regulations. Most of the sought regulations involved closing the fishing to non-villagers. Unfortunately, I had to be the bearer of bad tidings and make it clear that any regulation passed by the village had to apply equally to the villages and outsiders. This upset some of the representatives. Apparently excluding everyone else seemed to be what most of them hoped to achieve. Sigh. Sometimes the hardest thing about being an attorney is telling people "no."
I hopefully conveyed it clearly enough to convince them that's not what the fisheries and marine sanctuary program was about, but a number of the representatives were still up in arms by the time this portion ended. Hopefully these hard feelings were smoothed over by the large lunch, I dashed out before the 3rd buffet of the morning got too far underway. The Samoans running the event caught me in the hallway when I was talking to a few biologists who work for DMWR and gave me a take-out tray piled with food. They must have assumed I was in dire need of food, since it was heaped with beef chow mien, battered and fried chicken, pork stir-fry, a fried banana, rice and two soft drinks. Too much food and most of it that's not in my diet. I ended up gaving it to one of the Samoans I work with.
We'll see if this program is a success, since these villages really are the front line for protecting these natural resources.
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