Ahi is a staple of Hawaii seafood markets, but there’ll be a shuffle in the coming months as fishermen around the state adjust to the closure of the primary fishing grounds for bigeye tuna.
Earlier this month, the National Marine Fisheries Service closed the Western and Central Pacific Ocean zone to Hawaii longline boats after the zone’s yearly quota of 3,502 metric tons of bigeye was met far earlier than expected.
And on Wednesday, the Eastern Pacific Ocean zone, which has a much smaller quota of 500 metric tons, was closed to vessels greater than 24 meters in length.
The Eastern Pacific closure means that about 20 percent of Hawaii’s longline fleet is no longer able to fish for bigeye, said Eric Kingma, international fisheries coordinator for the Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council. Closures happened in 2009 and 2010, he said, but not this early in the year.
“We really don’t know what that impact will be, because it’s never happened like this before,” said Charles Umamoto, chairman and CEO of wholesale distributor Hilo Fish Company.
“For us, our two biggest interests are making sure that the decisions we’re making are maintaining the sustainability of the bigeye stock…[and] the communities that rely on access to the fishery,” said Mike Tosatto, Pacific Islands regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries division.
The Western and Central Pacific bigeye stock is currently at an “adequate” size, he said, but subject to overfishing, meaning that the annual rate of catch is too high to keep populations healthy (the Eastern Pacific stock is not in danger of overfishing).
The quotas, which are established years ahead of time, are an attempt to address sustainability and this year were reached quickly.
2015 has been an odd year, Tosatto said: the fish being caught are larger, and fishing itself “just has been more productive for the same amount of effort.” The Western and Central zone quota was slightly reduced compared to last year’s, but the Eastern zone’s was the same as it has been for several years.
“It sounds funny to say, ‘It’s just been a good year,’” Tosatto said. “And yet when you’re operating under a quota, it means you’re going to hit your quota sooner.”
Nearly all of Hawaii’s longline fleet is based out of Honolulu. Because the closures are so recent, not all fishing boats have returned from sea with their catches, and effects on the bigeye market aren’t likely to be noticeable right away.
“They’re still coming in with a lot of fish,” said Kerry Umamoto, Hilo Fish Company president and chief operating officer. “I think in the next month we’ll really see what the effects are.”
He said this year has largely seen a buyer’s market for bigeye, but that is likely to change.
“You’re impacting fishermen, one, and the Hawaii seafood market,” Kingma said. “You’re reducing supply, but potentially the quality of the fish [as well]. The impact to consumers is usually increased prices.”
Charles Umamoto said he expected the overall impact to the wholesaler to be “quite sizable” because they have offices on all of the main islands and must account for demand.
Umamoto said the Big Island might not be affected as much by the closures, though. Residents here (and to a lesser extent on Kauai) tend to prefer locally-caught fish over that from the Honolulu fleet.
“We normally don’t buy longline,” said Cathy Moon, meat manager at KTA Super Stores. “If there is local fish we always buy local.”
“We do have a good source of our own local production,” Kerry Umamoto said.
And with the supply-and-demand balance shifting in Honolulu, the closure of the longline fisheries could mean that local fishermen, bringing in bigeye by trolling or using handlines, get higher prices for their catches.
“Higher price, higher demand on Oahu,” said Kyle Sumner, fresh fish division manager for Suisan. “That’s good for our economy because it means our fishermen are getting paid more … if we can get a better price sending to Oahu, we will.”
Suisan does not buy longline-caught fish and relies exclusively on catches from about 350 Big Island boats.
Sumner said he didn’t expect significant price increases at the market because the extra profit from Oahu sales would make up the difference.
Kingma said the effects would ultimately depend on how big the void in Honolulu’s market turns out to be. If it’s big enough, more importation might happen, although that would mean lower quality fish because of shipping times.
The quota kicking in only applies to the Hawaii fleet, which makes up less than 3 percent of the entire longline bigeye catch in the Western and Central Pacific zone, the most productive bigeye grounds in the world. The area is managed by an international fisheries commission and other countries — China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea — have far larger quotas.
Tosatto said there is a possiblity the fleet will be able to continue fishing in American territory grounds, like those around Guam. The territories have a quota of 1,000 metric tons, but don’t yet have the fishing infrastructure to meet that number. Last year, NMFS set up a framework so that Hawaiian vessels could use the territory quota, but that has not been put in place yet.
Concern for bigeye first arose in the early 1990s, after the purse-seine method of catching tuna for canning began to deplete juvenile stocks. Kingma estimates that about 3 million metric tons of tuna are harvested in the Western and Central Pacific, and of that, between 80 and 90 percent is caught via purse-seine.
Bigeye aren’t a target species for canned tuna, like skipjack, yellowfin, and aku, but the juveniles ended up as bycatch, creating a trickle-up effect that ultimately hit the longline fishery, which targets adults for the sashimi and tuna steaks market.
Longline fishing, when boats feed out a main line with thousands of hooks attached, has also drawn criticism because of the potential for bycatch. It is not permitted within about 50 miles of the entire Hawaiian island chain, both to reduce the risk of species like Hawaiian monk seals and false killer whales getting caught and to protect the small-scale fishing economy.
But the Hawaii fleet is “sort of the benchmark for how longline fisheries should be managed,” Kingma said. Quotas wouldn’t work if they weren’t enforced. Satellite monitors are on each vessel, and fisheries inspectors travel on the boats.
Still, the efforts to manage the stock are somewhat futile without other countries also participating in conservation attempts.
“It’s not just the US’s problem,” Tosatto said. “There is a large international fishing pressure on that stock from longliners and from purse seiners. It’s not just here in Hawaii, it’s all over the ocean.”
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.