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 endangered loggerhead sea turtles in a single trip.
The shallow-set fishery, which targets swordfish, closed on May 8 in accordance with a settlement agreement between NMFS, the Hawai`i Longline Association (HLA), and plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the agency’s 2012 decision to increase the fishery’s annual loggerhead and leatherback sea turtle interaction limits from 17 to 34 and from 16 to 26, respectively.
Under the agreement, unless NMFS completes a new biological opinion (BiOp) — and issues new hard caps in accordance with that opinion — before the year’s end, the fishery’ annual loggerhead take limit starting January 1 will be 17, and will stay that way until a new BiOp is completed.
Independent of the lawsuit, NMFS already started the process of preparing a new BiOp in April, in response to the fishery exceeding its allowable take of olive ridley sea turtles and recording its first interaction with a threatened Guadalupe fur seal, as well as the fisheries service’s listing two new species as threatened (the oceanic whitetip shark and the giant manta ray).
According to Ann Garret, supervisor of NMFS’s Protected Resources division, a new BiOp for the fishery will completed by the end of October.
NMFS’s Sustainable Fisheries division has already estimated that the fishery will likely interact with up to 37 loggerheads and 21 leatherbacks in a given year. And at its meeting last month, the council recommended that NMFS set new caps at those levels starting next year. Whether or not NMFS agrees will likely depend on what the expected effect that higher level of loggerhead take will have on the population. Mike Tosatto, head of NMFS’s Pacific Islands Regional Office, says his agency would like to set limits on the fishery so that no more than one adult female loggerhead is killed in a given year.
At the council’s meeting, scientists with the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center suggested that the loggerhead population was “robust” — despite being listed as endangered — considering nesting increases in recent years.
Whatever the annual hard caps turn out to be, the council’s recommended trip cap would prevent vessels from soaking their hooks too long in turtle hot spots, which is what some vessels apparently did this year, bringing the fleet one take away from hitting its loggerhead hard cap. Had the fishery not closed under the settlement agreement, it would likely have closed anyway given the rate at which it was hooking loggerheads. In most years, a vessel may catch a single turtle in a trip. This year, some vessels continued to fish in areas where they hooked eight or nine turtles.
According to the HLA’s Roger Dang, some vessels owners denied catching any turtles this year, despite reports to the contrary. “When we first started getting reports saying there’s a high rate of sea turtle takes, our knee jerk reaction was to call all the other [vessel] owners … asking, ‘Are you catching any turtles?’ Their answer was no,” he told the council.
“In any case, we said, ‘We’re in a high level of take, so please move. … Then we had another take and another take. Maybe we realized it was not as effective as we hoped it would be,” he continued.
In a draft environmental assessment for its proposed framework to manage loggerhead and leatherback fishery interactions, council staff estimated that a trip cap of five interactions would have reduced the level of loggerhead take this year by 30 percent. It would have reduced last year’s loggerhead take of 21, which was the highest it had been in more than a decade, by 14 percent. In comparison, a trip cap of three would have reduced loggerhead takes by 24 percent last year and 45 percent this year.
At its June meeting, members of the council’s scientific and statistical committee failed to agree on what the ideal trip cap number should be. Some reportedly supported a cap as low as three; others preferred four or five. The council ultimately went with the number that was most beneficial to the fishery — five. This, despite a caution from its counsel, Kristen Johns.
“Our office advises the council to carefully consider the trip limit of five, … whether it’s reasonably calculated to protect the species,” she said noting that the fishery had historically only interacted with five turtles in a given trip 2.7 percent of the time (between 2004 and February 2018).
Council member John Gourley responded that the hypothetical take reductions put forth by council staff suggest that a loggerhead trip limit of five “would work really well” to reduce interactions.
Having such a trip limit will allow the swordfish fishing season to continue “as long as possible,” said council member Mike Goto, whose company United Fishing Agency runs the Honolulu fish auction. “The last time we had a closure was 2011. It wasn’t really felt that deeply because it was in the latter part of the year, but this earlier closure really saw a deep effect,” he said.
Council member Archie Soliai also said he supported the higher trip cap because he believed it would allow the fleet to develop voluntary sea turtle avoidance measures. “A lower limit would hinder the fleet’s ability,” he said.
The council also recommended that NMFS assist the industry in developing and implementing a three-year turtle interaction avoidance pilot program to improve data sharing and communication across the fleet, which includes about 15 vessels. At the end of the program, the council would determine whether regulatory management measures needed modifying to further mitigate the fishery’s effects on sea turtles.
For Further Reading
Environment Hawaii has written extensively on the Hawai`i shallow-set longline fleet’s effects on sea turtles. The following is an abbreviated list of articles. All and more are available at www.environment-hawaii.org:
- “Court Orders Closure of Swordfish Fishery to Protect Loggerhead Turtles,” EH-XTRA May 11, 2018;
- With Looming Threat of Fishery Closure, Council Seeks New Ways to Save Turtles,” and “Court Finds Federal Agencies Violated Law In Granting Permit, Setting Loggerhead Cap,” April 2018;
- “Council Seeks To End Hard Caps On Swordfish Fleet’s Turtle Takes,” November 2017;
- “New NMFS Rule Allows Increased Injury to Turtles by Hawai`i Swordfish Fleet,” November 2012.
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Council Recommends
Higher Bottomfish Limit
The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council has recommended that NMFS set the annual catch limit for Hawai`i’s Deep 7 bottomfish species at 492,000 pounds, a dramatic increase from the current limit of 306,000 pounds. The new limit, which would be in effect until 2021, poses a 40 percent risk of overfishing, according to council staff.
A recent stock assessment developed by fisheries scientists with the assistance of some bottomfish fishermen showed that the fishery was far from overfished or subject to overfishing.
“The recent stock assessment is really a validation of the health of the fishery … and the council has been on track since the 1980s,” said council chair and part-time bottomfish fisherman Ed Ebisui.
“This is an excellent example when the scientific community engages with the fishing community … and develops accurate results,” added council member Dean Sensui.
— Teresa Dawson
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