To Charles Helsley, fishing for wild stocks is like hunting buffalo. “It’s fine while you have buffalo, but you’d better have some cows in the wings.”
Helsley, who is director of the Sea Grant College Program at the University of Hawai’i, recently was awarded a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct research into the economic and ecological possibilities of open-ocean aquaculture in Hawai’i. Until now, aquaculture in Hawai’i has been restricted to coastal ponds, such as those built by the ancient Hawaiians, or land-based ranks. Open-ocean aquaculture, or mariculture, involves growing fish in stationary cages held in place in the water column. It is an increasingly important source of commercial seafood products.
Helsley has used part of the grant to purchase a cage from Ocean Spar Technologies in Bainbridge Island, Washington. He expects the cage, costing $70,000 to $90,000, to arrive next month. If it does, the cage should be in the water by February and stocked with about 100,000 moi fingerling, raised by the Oceanic Institute. Moi, or Pacific threadfin, is considered a delicacy and was once eaten only by Hawaiian royalty. Moi is overfished in the wild and until recently, was unavailable commercially. It is now being raised by local aquaculturists. (Helsley is not planning to compete with them by putting his fish on the local market. Instead, he will seek new markets abroad.)
The frame of the cage is made up of a buoyant steel ring, 82 feet in diameter, encircling a vertical, 50-foot-long steel spar. Stretched from the top and bottom of the spar to the center ring are filaments made of Spectra, a polyethelene fiber nearly as strong as steel, but thin and light enough to reduce drag and biological fouling. The taut, closely spaced filaments make up a rigid wall, preventing predators from reaching the fish, protecting turtles and birds from getting entangled, and reduces stress on the fish by holding a constant shape. In addition, Helsley says, the cage is easy to clean by divers using a high-pressure hose something that would not be possible with looser nets.
Because this is a research project, Helsley can use students and volunteers, limiting his costs. He estimates it will take an average of six hours a day of work to raise the fish. “You have to be there twice a day every day with about 500 pounds of feed,” he told Environment Hawai’i About 60 tons of feed will be needed to produce 40 tons of fish over four months. (Fish convert food more efficiently than beef. A pound and a half of fish food is needed for every pound of fish grown in an aquaculture setting. By contrast, about ten pounds of food are needed to produce a pound of beef)
A New Venture
On February 20, 1998, an agreement was signed creating the Pacific Marine Aquaculture Center, the entity behind the new open-ocean aquaculture venture. Members are the Oceanic Institute, UH’s Sea Grant, and the state Aquaculture Development Program. Helsley’s Sea Grant secured the funds. The Oceanic Institute is providing the fingerlings and technological research. The ADP is charged with obtaining needed permits and, if required, amendments to existing laws. There are a lot of permits.
For example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has to give its approval for any structures placed in navigable waters. The cage might need a Section 10 permit under the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 (governing the placement of objects in navigable waters) in addition to a Section 404 permit under the Clean Water Act.
If the Corps decides the project needs to obtain just the Section 10 permit, no further permitting is needed with respect to federal laws. If a 404 permit is required, then the state Department of Health would also insist that the project apply for and a state Water Quality Certification, to ensure that the project will not cause any degradation of water quality.
One of the 12 areas Helsley said he is considering is within Navy Restricted Zone waters in Pearl Harbor. The site is not far from some sewage discharge systems, which, Helsley says, means that the fish’s waste in 150 feet of water would have less impact on the quality of the surrounding water.
If the project is allowed in federal waters, it may be able to skip some state requirements, an option that a commercial venture would not enjoy.
From 1981 to 1986, the state Legislature considered a bill that would have allowed ocean leasing. The idea went against the prevailing view that the ocean was common property held in public trust and could not be made exclusive in any way. After years of debate, the 1986 Legislature enacted a law that has become Chapter 190D, Hawai’i Revised Statutes: The Hawai’i Ocean and Submerged Lands Leasing Act. The Department of Land and Natural Resources gained jurisdiction over all the ocean surrounding Hawai’i, from the high tide line to the seaward limit of the state’s management authority (usually considered three miles out).
“Mariculture” is defined as a research and demonstration project in Chapter 190D, and the size of any mariculture project is limited to four acres. No commercial uses of mariculture are taken into account. Because commercial ocean aquaculture (or mariculture) is not listed as a legal use of state water, some people wonder if it might be illegal. The maximum penalty for illegal mariculture activity is $10,000 a day for each offense.
To lease state marine waters, an applicant must request not only the use of the ceded lands, but also apply for a Conservation District Use Permit. This entails compliance with Chapter 343, which usually means preparation of an environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement.
Should the Conservation District permit be granted, the Board of Land and Natural Resources may lease the state waters and submerged lands with the concurrence of the director of the Department of Transportation, and in accordance with another law, Section 173-53. This section states that the Land Board can lease submerged lands only with the prior approval of the governor and the prior authorization of the Legislature by concurrent resolution.
In the 1998 Legislature, John Corbin, manager of the Aquaculture Development Program, attempted to amend Chapter 190D to make commercial mariculture an allowed activity in Hawai’i waters. The bill died in committee, hut a similar one will probably be introduced in the 1999 session.
However, the 1998 Legislature did adopt House Concurrent Resolution 114, authorizing the Land Board to issue a lease to Sea Grant to test the viability of open-ocean aquaculture. The resolution recommended also that the Department of Health relax its permitting process for the project and “encourage the university in this effort by allowing the experiment to take place subject only to the submittal of a report on any significant changes in water quality or environmental impacts that maybe associated with production of fish in an offshore cage system.”
A Mixed Blessing?
As with any new enterprise, there are fears that commercial mariculture could bring hardship to existing businesses. The Hawai’i Fishermen’s Foundation and the Hawai’i Aquaculture Association are concerned that open-ocean aquaculture will be developed here by large-scale investors who can afford the required infrastructure to make it profitable. These companies could raise fish that are already being cultivated by local aquaculturists or are caught in the wild by commercial fishers. The maricultured product might easily flood the market, wreaking commercial havoc on the locals.
Bob Endreson, president of the Hawai’i Fishermen’s Foundation, did praise the Sea Grant project for its selection of moi to cultivate, since it is not restricted to local markets. It also cannot be caught commercially, for fear of wiping out a species already struggling. “Local fishermen are not dependent on this species for their livelihood,” he said. Ronald Weidenbach, president of the Hawai’i Aquaculture Association, agreed with the selection of moi, so long as it was not used to collapse local markets but to expand new ones overseas. He said he is interested in gaining an ocean site himself and will be watching this research very closely. By having someone do the testing locally, with no fear of economic loss, Weidenbach and others who might want to invest in their own cages would have pertinent information to give to banks when asking for loans. The project will show “what is appropriate for Hawai’i,” he said. “You can only use talks and paper studies for so long.”
— Heidi Guth
Volume 9, Number 6 December 1998