A contentious proposal to reopen aquarium fishing in West Hawaii stalled Friday after hours of public opposition.
At Friday’s meeting of the Board of Land and Natural Resources, the state Division of Aquatic Resources submitted a request to establish a process to grant permits to commercial aquarium fishers to operate in West Hawaii, something that hasn’t been allowed since 2017.
A Hawaii Supreme Court injunction issued in 2017 that prohibited the issuance or renewal of aquarium fishing permits in West Hawaii waters was lifted last year. And despite substantial opposition from environmental groups, DAR is considering opening the West Hawaii Regional Fishery Management Area to aquarium fishing once again.
According to DAR’s request, permits would be tightly controlled, and would only be issued to no more than seven qualified applicants. Permittees would only be allowed to catch eight different fish species, with yearly catch limits imposed for each one — for example, fishers would be allowed to catch up to 28,571 yellow tang in a year, and up to 49 bird wrasse.
David Sakoda, DAR fisheries program manager, told the BLNR that limited take of those eight species shouldn’t have a significant impact on their populations, which itself shouldn’t impact cultural practices relating to those species.
Permittees would be required to submit a report to DAR within a day of the end of each aquarium fishing trip with a margin of error no greater than 5%. They would also be required to prove they can “maintain fish alive and in reasonable health,” and any violation of any term or condition of the permit, or of any state statute relating to aquatic resources, would void the permit.
Anyone with a criminal conviction for an aquatic resource violation within the past five years would be ineligible for a permit.
“We recognize that this has been a really contentious issue,” Sakoda said. “We at DAR are really passionate about good resource management, making sure that we’re managing … the resources for the benefit of the people of Hawaii. We’re very conscious about how present management decisions on this issue may impact other stakeholders in the future.”
Dozens of residents spoke at Friday’s meeting, and thousands of pages of written testimony were submitted in advance of the meeting. Opponents of the request outnumbered supporters, and argued that the ban on aquarium fishing has only been beneficial for the fragile reef ecosystems in the West Hawaii Fishery Management Area.
“My grandparents’ era shared the experiences of the reef ecology before the 1960s, before the aquarium industry degraded our reefs significantly from the 1960s into the 1990s, destroying the balance,” said Holualoa resident Maki Morinoue at the meeting.
Morinoue added in written testimony that, as climate change continues to ravage the planet, protecting reef ecosystems — where dwell phytoplankton, which produce an estimated 50% of the oxygen on earth — will become increasingly imperative.
“I go out three to four times a week, diving,” said Miloli‘i resident William Mae-Huihui. “And I do have to say, our resources are under stress … I feel that aquarium collection has no place here in Hawaii.”
Mae-Huihui echoed other Hawaiians, who argued that harvesting fish for purposes other than sustenance is an alien practice incompatible with treating nature with aloha.
“I come from an ohana of lawai‘a (fisher) practitioners who gather fish, limu, crustaceans for food and medicine,” Kona resident Malia Kipapa. “The concept of aquarium fishing has always been unsettling and foreign to me … Environmental concerns such as overharvesting, biodiversity loss, coral reef impact, habitat destruction, bycatch, disease and invasive species are significant issues related to aquarium fishing (and) justify the ban on aquarium fish collection.”
Supporters of aquarium fishing were fewer but no less passionate.
“A lot of people here today are here out of the goodness and kindness of their heart, but I will say, I have over 30 years of experience, and they are misinformed,” said fisher Jerry Isham. “Half of them don’t go diving, they don’t see it for themselves … But the fact is, we don’t have to break the coral, it’s not in our best interest … I’m sorry, we live in Hawaii, we live on a rock, we import everything. If the whole world were to think like we do in this room, where we don’t give up our resources, we’d never get nothing. It’s OK to use our resources if it’s well-managed.”
Fisher Randy Cates said continuing to ban aquarium fishing will have knock-on effects to other industries, writing that “several large-scale investments in Hawaii have raised concerns and are considering defunding their projects,” while the University of Hawaii’s Aquaculture program is also suffering.
“Aquarium fish often are used for education and research, and teaches the public how to become better stewards of our resources,” Cates wrote. “Prohibition of aquarium fish collection is an issue that should go before the legislature and follow State regulatory processes and procedures; just as it has in the past, and has failed for good reason.”
After hours of testimony, several attendees petitioned for a contested case in the matter. Board Chair Dawn Chang halted any further decision-making on the matter until the contested case is resolved, concluding the meeting with DAR’s request still up in the air.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.