FADs – short for fish aggregating devices – have long been an important part of fishing in Hawai`i. These buoys, placed in the open sea, seem to attract fish in the same way that floating logs or rafts do. For fishermen, FADs can mean the difference between a profitable trip, where the hold is filled quickly, and an unprofitable one, where the hold may still be unfilled by the time fuel runs low.
The state has put in place several dozen FADs around the Main Hawaiian Islands. But around the Big Island, some entrepreneurs appear to have taken matters into their own hands, placing FADs several miles offshore and then threatening bodily harm to anyone who even thinks of fishing near these private buoys.
“Because of how well FADs work,” says Dr. Robert Nishimoto, head of the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Aquatic Resources on the Big Island, “some illegal buoys were placed in the ocean off Pa`auilo. Fishermen took old rowboats, filled them with foam, and anchored them in deep water.” The first of these private buoys appears to have been set in 1999.
“They were catching lots of fish off Pa`auilo. Then other fishermen found out. Some were personally threatened when they fished off the buoys. When the Coast Guard found out, they pulled out the buoys in the shipping lanes.”
But what seems like a bonanza to some fishermen is a bane to others.
“I’m totally against it. Any buoy is a bad buoy – even state buoys,” one longtime Hilo fisherman told Environment Hawai`i. The buoys interfere with the movement of fish, especially yellowfin tuna, he said, and while those who fish the buoys benefit, they do so only to the detriment of others.
“In the old days, we all used to spread out on a ledge offshore of Pepe`ekeo. The main fishing ground covered five to ten miles at the 1,000-fathom ledge. Once the buoy system went in, it changed our traditional patterns. That threw me off a little bit. Nowadays, everyone’s all piled up around the buoys.”
The state buoy system was “originally good,” he said, but then the size and number of the fish diminished. “Scientists tell me yellowfin get close to but rarely over 300 pounds. I personally have never seen one over 300, but when I first started” – nearly three decades ago – “all the time we caught fish in the 260, 270, 280 pound range. It takes six years for them to get this big. Last year I didn’t catch one gorilla this whole season” (a gorilla is a fish over 250 pounds). “And there are not just smaller fish, but fewer ones, too.”
Many of the fish that congregate around the buoys are subadult. That these young fish are being “pounded” before they can become large breeders is disturbing, this fisherman says. “To me, the reason why fish come here every year is mainly for breeding. Yellowfin are here from spring to fall and do a major breeding.” Often, he says, when fishermen take a big female, they can see thousands and thousands of eggs, with the size of eggs increasing as the summer progresses. “The peak of spawning coincides with the peak of fishing effort,” he says. “We should take two weeks off in August and let the fish spawn – the more that spawn, the better.”
His views have some merit, says Dr. Bill Walsh with the Kona office of the Division of Aquatic Resources. “It’s not unreasonable you’ll have depleted populations of yellowfin” if subadult fish continue to be targeted. While FADs “attract animals and concentrate them,” he says, “they also make them more easily harvested, more vulnerable.” He has personally witnessed boats coming to port with hundreds and hundreds of 18-inch-long yellowfin.
In Hawai`i, fisheries managers haven’t had to deal yet with the kind of overfishing problems that their counterparts in the Atlantic Ocean have faced, but, Walsh says, it’s just a question of time. “Pacific fishery managers, particularly in pelagic [open ocean] fisheries, are oblivious to what has happened to the Atlantic. You don’t see limits here on numbers of animals or size limits, but it’s going to happen.” That it hasn’t happened already is because the “Pacific is just a bigger Atlantic.”
“It’s a valid concern that you’re pulling all these pre-reproductive animals out of the system, or that the sport fishery is catching these large adult female marlins and selling them for pennies a pound. It’s the same mentality in both cases, with people saying if we don’t catch it, the longliners will. We have the tragedy of the commons right here.”
Locked and Loaded
The buoys have changed the nature of fishing off the Big Island. Used to be, most of the tuna were caught at night using squid as bait and handlines as gear in a style of fishing developed by second- and third-generation Japanese fishermen. The method was known as “ika-shibi” (Japanese for squid-tuna) and involved small boats, between 18 and 30 feet in length.
Now, this fisherman goes on to say, most of the Big Island fleet revolves around buoys. The size of the boats has increased, so that 30- to 40-foot boats are now the norm. They are able to travel further and carry more fish, typically between 5,000 and 10,000 pounds worth, with most of their catch consists of smaller animals.
“This whole buoy fleet has developed now, with 10 to 20 active boats in Kona and four or five on the Hilo side,” the fisherman says. “And here’s what the smart guys have done: they learned from the state how to make and throw buoys and they’re making better buoys than the state ever did. They stay in place longer and hold more fish – and they’re putting the buoys as far as 60 to 70 miles outÉ. A couple of these guys – a partnership on this really hot buoy that was holding a nice school of winter blue fin – each grossed over $200,000 in a three-month run. They were catching 3,000 to 5,000 pounds a night, making $6,000 to $10,000 a pop.”
In 1999, when new buoys went in about 40 miles from the coast, “I caught fish in October and November, but by December there was nothing on our grounds.” He and other fishermen “raided the buoys, which were holding thousands and thousands of fish. But the guys that own the buoys don’t want anyone else fishing them.”
That year, he paid the “owner” of the buoy a commission to be allowed to fish on “his” buoy. Last year, he steered clear of the buoys altogether, as “the whole scene got really ugly with gear conflicts and fights.”
The conflict “will only intensify now. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen.” In 1999, six private buoys were in place; the next year there were 10. “This year, who knows?” He predicts there will be a “whole ring of buoys in the 30- to 60-mile range. The fish will come back, get caught. If this prevents breeding, it could disrupt the traditional grounds altogether.”
More than that, it has already affected the fishing community, with threats and extortions now commonplace. Few have had the nerve to stand up, although “one guy did tell the buoy owners ‘if you threaten me or extort me, I’ll go straight for the cops.'”
“We all got guns now. When two boats meet at night, everyone’s locked and loaded.”
Fatal Attractions
Are patterns of fish movement in fact disturbed by the buoys? David Itano of the University of Hawai`i’s Hawai`i Institute of Marine Biology, says it’s “a matter of density. For instance, some places, like the Philippines, have very dense arrays of FADs – orders of magnitude more than we have here. In such a situation, it’s conceivable they’re entraining fish. In our local situation, I don’t know. We hope to study that kind of thing, but it’s difficult without tracking or some other kind of means.”
Itano says he’s familiar with the claim that fishing is ultimately harmed by the buoys, “but it hasn’t really been addressed.”
What draws the fish to the buoys in the first place? For as long as tunas have been fished, fishermen have known that they’re attracted to floating objects – logs, for example, that may spend years at sea. After a short time in the water, they attract a community of small marine organisms, which in turn attract larger animals. According to the Hilo fisherman, the artificial fish aggregating devices recently put in place off the Big Island may take several months before they start “holding fish.”
The University of Hawai`i website on FADs (http://www.hawaii.edu/HIMB/FADS) describes current research into the subject: “In order to determine the short-term movement patterns of tunas, researcher attach acoustic transmitters to fish caught at FADs and follow them around for up to 48 hours to see where they go. Using this technique, they have found that subadult yellowfin tuna caught around FADs spend their days around the FADs but leave them at night and venture off as far as 5 miles. This information can be valuable in helping FAD managers determine how far apart FADs should be. Acoustic transmitters attached to the fish also relay information about their depth. Studies have shown that small bigeye tuna spend more time closer to the surface around FADs than when they are in free schools away from the FADs.
“In another use of acoustic transmitters, data loggers attached to some FAD moorings are monitoring the longer term movement patterns of tunas returning to the FADs.
“These studies have found that tunas tagged around seamounts behave very similarly to tunas tagged around FADs. It is thought that maybe the FAD serves the same function as a seamount, providing a point of reference for the tuna.”
Fishing on seamounts – particularly the Cross Seamount, southwest of the Big Island – has also increased tremendously, especially in the wake of closures in the north Pacific. “Fishing at the seamounts is fabulous these days,” says Jim Cook of Pacific Ocean Producers in Honolulu. “Serious amounts of fish are being landed by those guys.”
The vessels fishing the seamounts are the same handliners that drop lines around the FADS. Most are based in Kona, but will deliver their fish to the auction in Honolulu if the market warrants it, Cook says.
Finning On The Move
For all intents and purposes, the practice of finning sharks is over in Hawai`i. Finning got its start here in the early 1990s. Its end arrived last year – not as a result of state legislation to ban it (though that dampened fishermen’s ardor somewhat), but primarily as a result of a federal ban approved by Congress in December.
But the market for shark fins continues to be strong – perhaps even stronger, in light of the reduced supply.
“It’s a global trade,” says Dr. Jeffrey Polovina, a scientist with the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Honolulu laboratory. “Stopping it in one area will only increase pressure in others.”
One area where such pressure has surfaced is the Galapagos Islands, an area where Polovina has done extensive research.
“There’s been some interest expressed by fishermen to fin sharks in the Galapagos – fishermen who previously fished for sea cucumber and lobster,” Polovina says.
Since the vessels they use have short ranges, they would “probably target more coastal sharks – Galapagos sharks, gray reef, hammerheads. It would be devastating to dive operators because so much of the business there is people wanting to dive with aggregations of coastal sharks.”
In late 2000 and early 2001, fishermen in the Galapagos engaged in a fierce show-down with authorities – blockading ports, harassing tourists, setting fire to a National Park office, even holding hostages a group of giant tortoises taken from a breeding center. The fishermen were seeking, and they won, a 60 percent increase in the quota of spiny lobsters.
As The New York Times reported in February, “As a result of last month’s conflict, fishermen obtained an increase in this year’s lobster quotas to 80 tons from 50 and an extension of the fishing season. Emboldened by that success, they are now pushing for wholesale revisions to the statute by demanding a year-round fishing calendar, use of long-line fishing, a lifting of the prohibition on shark fishing and abrogation of an agreement they signed not to fish for sea cucumbers in 2001.”
“The primary market for the lobsters caught here is the United States. Both sea cucumbers and the illicit shark fin catch, on the other hand, are destined for consumers in China, Taiwan, Korea and other parts of East Asia where rising incomes during the last decade have resulted in a voracious demand for these and other marine delicacies.”
The number of legal fishermen in the Galapagos is now in excess of 900, having doubled in just one year, the Times reported. Whether the government of Ecuador can impose on them regulations protective of sharks – or any other marine organism with a high market value – would seem to be an open question.
Are Bottomfish Still in Trouble?
Bottomfish around the Main Hawaiian Islands have been depleted for years. Yet these fish – including onaga, opakapaka, ehu, and hapu`upu`u – have not made it onto the federal government’s list of overfished species.
Why?
The answer lies what some might regard as a scientific sleight of hand. Arguing that the depleted bottomfish stocks around the Main Hawaiian Islands are part of a single population extending all the way up the Northwestern Hawaiian Island chain, scientists in NMFS’ Honolulu laboratory have been able to avoid the ignominy of including such popular species on the overfished list and can list them instead as merely “locally depleted.” To support the idea of single, large population (called a metapopulation) of these bottomfish extending over vast distances, they have postulated the idea of larval drift, in which larvae from the relatively richer bottomfish stocks of the Northwestern Islands drift down the chain and take up residence in the more thinly populated waters of the Main Hawaiian Islands.
No empirical research exists to support this claim. As the laboratory’s Robert Moffitt says, “The trouble with larvae is that they are incredibly rare in sampling programs.” As a consequence, any proof of the single population theory “would be rather difficult.”
Not just difficult – impossible, says Robert Warner, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Warner, an expert on larval dispersal of marine fish, rejects the notion that bottomfish larvae from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands would contribute significantly to stocks in the Main Hawaiian Islands.
“Given that there is increasing evidence that dispersal distances are much shorter than would ever be supposed by combining time in the pelagic environment with average current speedsÉ, I think it is time to challenge the council to provide the evidence that larvae produced in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands ever reach the main islands,” Warner told Environment Hawai`i. “The preponderance of evidence now suggests that they do not – no question of this. I’d love to see evidence to the contrary.”
Warner’s work on larval dispersal is based on the fact that a bone in the ear of a fish, or its otolith, provides a record of the unique chemistry of the different ocean environments in which the animal has lived. So, while the physical tracking of fish in their larval stage is next to impossible, scientists can still determine, with reasonable accuracy, the origins of a given animal.
Why isn’t similar work being done in Hawai`i?
Actually, something along these lines was proposed for opakapaka, but the researcher left the National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory before the project, known as otolith elemental fingerprinting, was completed, says Chris Kelley, a researcher at the University of Hawai`i’s Hawai`i Undersea Research Laboratory. Otolith fingerprinting could provide valuable information on the movement patterns of bottomfish species, which is an absolutely important question, Kelley says.
Like Warner, Kelley advises caution in making claims that metapopulations of bottomfish species exist throughout the Hawaiian archipelago. “There is really only one piece of evidence – and I don’t know if you could even call it that,” Kelley told Environment Hawai`i. “Models of bottomfish larval transport were created from interpretation of Topex satellite altimetry data and seafloor topography. This is the only evidence that there could be larvae from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands repopulating the Main Hawaiian Islands.”
Genetic work carried out by the state shows general uniformity among ehu and onaga across the island chain. But, Kelley says, “Those data just show that the Northwestern Hawaiian Island fish are genetically similar to the Main Hawaiian Islands populations, that there’s some type of mixing. We don’t understand that and don’t know how much mixing there is. It can take just a small amount of genetic exchange to even things out. There could be a lot, there could be a little; we’re not really sure.”
In the meantime, researchers at NMFS and HURL are trying to develop ways of determining the abundance of bottomfish in the reserves set up around the Main Hawaiian Islands two years ago. Those reserves consist of about 20 percent of the bottomfish fishing grounds off each of the major islands. The most direct means of assessing abundance – fishing – has the drawback that it results in the death of the animals whose low numbers caused the reserves to be set up in the first place. Researchers are, therefore, trying to develop novel, non-lethal techniques of assessing bottomfish populations. These include, Kelley says, the development of a sonar system capable of distinguishing the unique acoustic signature of each species of bottomfish, as well as using deep-water cameras.
But, he says, “until we find out more about the deep current as well as shallow current patterns in the Hawaiian islands and get information on spawning frequency, egg production, and the length of planktonic phase of bottomfish larvae,” the overall status of bottomfish populations “is just going to be a big unknown.”
Council Defers Action On EIS For Reef Plan
The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council has prepared what it calls the first ecosystem management plan ever developed to address fishing in coral reefs of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and elsewhere within the council’s jurisdiction. But after years of development, the plan and its draft environmental impact statement is on hold.
At its meeting of March 13, the council decided to defer action to adopt a final EIS, given large uncertainties in the management regime to be carried out in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands following establishment last December of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve.
When the council started work on its coral reef plan, no federal action to protect coral reefs was on the horizon. Then last December came Clinton’s executive order, setting the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands aside as a marine reserve, eventually to become part of the National Marine Sanctuaries program.”
Over the next few months, the federal reserve, which is to be managed eventually as part of the marine sanctuaries office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will be laying out its own plans for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
According to spokespeople for the reserve and the council, some reconciliation of jurisdictional issues may be expected within the next six months.
The Threat Within
Why must coral reef resources be strictly managed? This, ultimately, is the question that goes to the heart of the need for the Western Pacific Council’s coral reef ecosystem fishery management plan. And the answer is: the rampant global market for coral reef products, including aquarium fish, shells, curios, and specialty foods (live groupers and sea cucumbers, among other things).
At the recent meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an entire symposium was devoted to the topic of the commercial exploitation of coral reefs. Titled “Global Trade and Consumer Choices: Coral Reefs in Crisis,” the symposium focused on how coral reefs worldwide are being devastated to feed growing world markets for products that can kindly be described as decorative.
Most destructive fishing in coral reefs occurs in countries that are desperately poor, says Franklin Moore, director of the Global Environment Program of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “Consumers sent out economic incentives to very poor countries,” he said. “The result: overfishing or destructive fishing.” According to Moore, the goods and services provided by coral reef ecosystems amounts to some $375 billion a year.
The high-value products include the live food trade (for the Asian market) and the aquarium trade – almost entirely driven by collectors and hobbyists in the United States. Without the United States, Moore remarked, there would be no global trade in coral reef products.
Most of the imported coral reef products have their origin in Indonesia. The Philippines used to be a major source as well, but recently it has stopped exports of stony corals. More than making up for any loss of exports from the Philippines is Fiji, where coral reef exploitation is on the increase.
Some evidence of the difficulty with which reef ecosystems recover after prolonged exploitation may be found as close as the Kona coast of the Big Island. There, a series of fishing reserve zones was established last year, which, when combined with previously protected areas, bans aquarium fish collecting from 35 percent of a 147-mile-long coast.
The effect is so far negligible. Numbers of yellow tang, an easily censused fish often targeted by collectors, are lower now in all areas than they were a year ago. But, says Division of Aquatic Resource biologist Bill Walsh, numbers in the protected areas still are higher than they are in the adjoining non-protected waters.
Walsh says the lack of recruitment of new fish to the areas was “not surprising.” Particularly in West Hawai`i, he says, “we’re at the bottom of the island chain. There’s nothing upstream. We know that recruitment for many species is sporadic and an iffy proposition. We made it clear to people not to expect changes overnight.”
As an example of the variability in rates of recruitment for reef fish, Walsh cites data from a survey from 1977 to 1981 of yellow tang in an area off Ke`e that is now closed to fish collectors. “Nineteen seventy-seven was a banner year for recruitment,” he says. “The amount of recruitment was 100 times what it was in this past year. This happens every so often. But even if you look at the other years in the study, recruitment was still 10 times what we saw last year. Indications are that this is about as low as it gets. There are some recruits, but not in great numbers.”
Even if juvenile recruitment is strong, rebuilding reef fish populations can still take decades. Although not much is known about the life history of yellow tang, a closely related fish in Australia can live as long as 40 years and probably doesn’t reach reproductive maturity until it’s at least seven years old, Walsh says. Further, the reproductive prowess of fish is a function of their size, so that generally the older and larger a fish is, the more fecund it will be.
Another factor that may affect the ability of these reserves to protect reef fish is that the only two activities banned so far are fish collecting and the recreational feeding of fish, as used to occur at O`ahu’s Hanauma Bay. Fishing with gill-nets and nighttime scuba spear-fishing continue to remove fish, Walsh notes, even though the West Hawai`i Fish Coalition is now trying to put into place “an overlay of rules and management practices that will reduce or, in some cases, eliminate these other things that can impact populations very dramatically.”
An example of how long it can take reef fish to rebuild is the once common manini, Walsh said. “Manini stocks now are very, very low. We looked at commercial catch reports.” While in the 1950s, catches were high, they now are “next to nothing,” he said. “Most areas have very low populations.”
“People think they’re disposable animals,” Walsh said of reef fish in general. “But that’s not the case.
— Patricia Tummons
State-Federal Partnership Surveys Recreational Fishing
Right now, commercial fishermen report their catch to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. Recreational fishermen don’t.
In an effort to improve inshore fishery management, the DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources has been tracking recreational fishermen around the state and interviewing them everywhere from rocky cliffs to local docks, to gather information on their catch.
Recently, DAR partnered with the National Marine Fisheries Service to study the impacts of recreational fishing on the islands’ fisheries. The partnership allows the DAR to use federal money to expand ongoing research under the Main Hawaiian Islands Marine Resources Investigation (MHI-MRI).
The studies are intended to “once and for all, identify the impact of the recreational fishery,” said DAR’s Kimberly Lowe at a February meeting of the Board of Land and Natural Resources.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 11, Number 10 April 2001