Nearly nine years ago, responding to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined that the insular population of false killer whales around the Main Hawaiian Islands constituted a distinct population segment and merited … Continued
Talk about splurging. Last June, Western Pacific Fishery Management Council members trumpeted a new Main Hawaiian Islands bottomfish stock assessment that allowed them to recommend to the National Marine Fisheries Service a 60 percent increase in the annual catch limit … Continued
What the National Marine Fisheries Service had proposed was simply unacceptable to Roger Dang, whose family’s longline vessels make up a significant portion of the Hawai‘i swordfish fleet. He likened it to the NBA limiting LeBron James to just two … Continued
Can the 1,424 adult leatherback sea turtles that ply the western Pacific withstand the losses resulting from their interactions with gear set by the Hawai‘i-based longline fishing vessels that target swordfish? A new “internal and deliberative” draft biological opinion (BiOp) … Continued
Another Whale Death: For the second time this year, a Hawai‘i deep-set longline vessel killed a false killer whale while fishing for bigeye tuna. The first incident occurred in January within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone around the state and … Continued
While the Hawai`i longline swordfish fishery has closed because of its incidental take of endangered sea turtles, deep-set longliners targeting bigeye tuna are facing the closure of a huge portion of their fishing grounds due to their recent uptick in … Continued
If the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) approves recommendations made last month by the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, Hawai`i shallow-set longliners will have to immediately return to port in Honolulu for at least three days if they catch five … Continued
At a time when the bigeye tuna stock in the Western and Central Pacific is being overfished — and by some standards, is already in an overfished state — the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council last month asked the National … Continued
This time around, not a single angry word came from Hawai`i’s commercial bottomfish fishers, even though their annual catch limit (ACL) over the next few years will be tens of thousands of pounds less than it’s been in recent … Continued
Last year, the Hawai`i deep-set longline fleet interacted with more Hawaiian false killer whales than it had in more than a decade and most of those interactions resulted in serious injuries, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. This happened … Continued