West Hawaii Today on June 20 had two interesting pieces that sort of played off each other, whether intentionally or not. One was an article about a new, albeit temporary, installation of a wide screen TV in the Hawaii County Council chambers in West Hawaii. The other was a very well thought out letter to the editor about how to get some management of the aquarium collecting industry by only allowing a certain number of boxes of aquarium fish to be shipped out of the airport. This letter by D. Davis says that he was involved in the issue of aquarium collecting from the early days of the Save the Fish Coalition (sic). It’s actually the Lost Fish Coalition, and I have been its executive director for 18 years. I’m sorry to hear that Mr. Davis received threats on his life. So did I. That was the situation way back when.
We tried everything we could, including limiting or banning the export of our fish from the airport. Unfortunately, the Interstate Commerce Act forbids such action.
All the avenues we tried failed, except the avenue of compromise.
However, the situation has radically changed since those days. There are no more death threats. There is no more vandalizing of boats, like there used to be. The reason why is that since those days, the Lost Fish Coalition, through the venue of the West Hawaii Fisheries Council, has been working with many stakeholders to get a reasonable settlement to the long-standing problem of the aquarium industry harvest. In almost 16 years, we have accomplished the following management actions:
• We have 55-plus miles of coastline where reef fish cannot be taken. These areas allow the fish to grow large enough to be very successful breeders. These areas — Fish Replenishment Areas — are the nurseries for the reef fish to spread out to the rest of the reefs. No place else in the state has such protections.
• We have size limits for the collecting of yellow tang and bag limits for anyone taking large yellow tang, so the breeders are protected.
• We have limited the number of species that can be taken from “anything and everything” to a list of only 40 species. This allows the vast number of rare and beautiful fish, eels, shrimps, crabs and other invertibrates complete protection.
• We have the ability to confirm catch reports by comparing them with receipts from the dealers who bought the fish.
• Aquarium boats and gear are all registered with the state and clearly visible on the water as being aquarium boats for enforcement purposes.
Thanks to these measures, West Hawaii has more fish than most every other widely accessed reef in the state, especially the beautiful ornamentals that give tourists and residents so much delight. If someone says that nothing has been done in West Hawaii, they are either lying, unaware or are being duped by someone else’s lies about the situation.
That segues nicely to the wide-screen TV, which is a cool idea. A virtual aquarium is a great idea. However, the purpose behind it being put there is not.
There are a few “outsiders,” by which I mean people who don’t live here, who have decided that West Hawaii doesn’t know what it’s doing. This group, headed by Maui resident Robert Wintner, decided it was going to be the ones to get aquarium collecting banned, to make themselves the “rescuers of the reef.”
They began by spending years in the Hawaii State Legislature trying to get a ban by law. They went to the Hawaii County Council, which actually has no jurisdiction over state waters. Not much happened. They tried to sue the state saying that no environmental impact statement had ever been done. They lost that case. They recently tried bringing in a group of hard-core eco-terrorists, noted worldwide for their aggressive and bullying tactics, which resulted in an expected (and I believe anticipated) outcome of violence on the reef. I think they’ve gone home as no one has seen much of them recently.
However, the hard truth is the state sees no rationale in banning an industry that can be managed. And we here in West Hawaii have proven that it can be and is being managed with great success.
Clearly if the goal is to get rid of the industry and management prevents that goal being reached, then discrediting the benefits and successes of management would seem the only way left to go. And so they have taken that path.
They have held community meetings and displayed a lot of false or twisted data, quoting from papers outdated by more than 15 years, and “re-interpreting” data from scientific papers. They have been telling people that “there are no fish left,” which is patently untrue. I once had a woman tell me with great passion and assurance that there are no fish left anywhere in West Hawaii. I asked her why she thought that, and she replied that everyone knew it. I asked if she swam in the ocean. No. Did she dive? No. Did she know anything about the management strategies in place? No. She had, however, just come from an “information session” in which she heard these things from Wintner’s frontman Rene Umberger.
Anyway, a great deal of the “sky is falling” news you’ve heard about the reef recently is just plain not true. Try giving credit to the thousands of volunteer hours given by your neighbors to the West Hawaii Fisheries Council to get the gains you are now free to enjoy.
Which brings me back to the wide-screen TV. The TV runs a 90-minute loop of undisturbed, natural activity of fish on the reef. Apparently, the footage was filmed on West Hawaii reefs. The article states: “Wintner praised the videos. ‘It shows what abundance looks like,’ Wintner said.”
At least he got that right.
Tina Owens is executive director of the LOST FISH Coalition and resident of Kailua-Kona.
Viewpoint articles are the opinion of the writer and not necessarily the opinion of West Hawaii Today.