A set of proposed fishing regulations for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Na tional Marine Sanctuary has been approved by the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council and is to be submitted later this month to the National Marine Sanctuary Program. The Secretary of Commerce will then decide whether those regulations meet the goals and objectives of the sanctuary and the National Marine Sanctuaries Act.
Despite arguments from the thousands of members of the public that the sanctuary should be given the strictest protection pos sible, the council’s proposed regulations would allow bottomfish, crustacean, and pre cious coral fisheries to expand beyond what exists today, a move that some critics say doesn’t comply with the Sanctuaries Act.
The council’s proposed regulations do al low for no-take zones: from 0 to 10 fathoms throughout the NWHI and out to 50 fathoms around sensitive habitats at French Frigate Shoals, Laysan Island and the north half of Midway Atoll. The proposal also calls for a ban on pelagic fishing at depths shallower than 10 fathoms throughout the area and at depths shallower than 50 fathoms around French Frigate Shoals, Laysan and half of Midway. Apart from these areas, the council’s regulations state that bottomfish and pelagic fisheries would continue to be managed pretty much as they are today.
Under its plan, the council would con tinue to manage these areas under the federal Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) and the council’s own Fishery Management Plans, adopted pursuant to the MSA. Some changes would be required in the bottomfish plan; it would be amended to delete the “use it or lose it” permit condition, which requires fishers to take a minimum level of fish from the islands each year or risk losing their permit. The bottomfish plan currently allows for a total of 17 boats to fish in the Mau and Ho‘omalu zones of the NWHI, but only nine boats are active in the fishery.
What’s more, the council’s proposals in clude a moratorium on all other fisheries in the Northwestern islands, with exceptions allowed for Native Hawaiian subsistence use, until a science-based ecosystem management plan is developed in consultation with the Sanctuary Program. That means the lobster fishery (closed since 1999), the fishery for precious corals (long touted for its potential, but never commercially pursued) and other fisheries or extractive industries that do not yet exist, could one day be allowed in the sanctu ary if the Secretary of Commerce approves the council’s plan.
The council also recommended that the National Marine Fisheries Services’ Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Ma rine Sanctuary Program develop a research program to create a working definition of “ecosystem integrity” and support studies to evaluate the integrity of ecosystems in the sanctuary area. It also voted to enter into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Sanc tuary Program to coordinate activities in the NWHI sanctuary.
Although the council’s Statistical and Sci entific Committee, which provides advice to the council, recognized the threat of alien species traveling on boat hulls to the sanctuary’s resources, the council did not include among its proposed regulations a requirement that fishing vessels be scrubbed before entering sanctuary waters, as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration vessels are. Instead, it voted to assess the effectiveness and feasibility of such a require ment.
Linda Paul of the Hawai‘i Audubon Soci ety was happy that SSC’s acknowledged the invasive species threat that fishing vessels pose. “Eight percent of alien algae in Hawai`i is due to hull infestation…. If fishing vessels are not aware of the problem, that is the problem,” she said at the council’s March 16 meeting. Still, she questioned whether bottomfishing should be continued in the NWHI at all.
The council and bottomfishers have often stated that bottomfishing levels are far below maximum sustainable yields and claim that while the fishery’s impact on the NWHI is insignificant, it provides more than a third of the state’s bottomfish catch. Displacing the NWHI bottomfishers would put undue pressure on smaller areas, both within the NWHI and in the main Hawaiian islands, they say.
Given the admittedly light fishing in the area, Paul questioned why nine boats would matter so much. “To say those nine boats will come down to the main Hawaiian Islands, which has 4,000 boats, and will have an impact is a strange argument… The socio economic impact to fishing is insignificant to the importance of this area,” she said, adding that NWHI bottomfish catches are not as fresh and therefore not as desirable to local restaurants as fish caught in the main Hawai ian islands or flown in from elsewhere.
Although he abstained from voting on the proposed regulations, NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office administrator William Robinson noted that the position of the Na tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra tion (parent agency to both NMFS and the Sanctuary Program) is that fishing is compat ible with the sanctuary. However, he added that when NOAA provided its ideal (and more restrictive) fishing regime to the council last September, “that recommendation was put forward as one that met a higher standard that reflected the purpose and goal of a sanctuary. That doesn’t mean there aren’t alternatives or a mix of alternatives that will meet those, but the burden is on the council to prove how its regulations meets those higher standards.”
State Department of Land and Natural Resources director Peter Young, a voting council member, made a statement in ad vance of the council’s vote that clearly op posed the council’s regulatory scheme. Young – the only council member to vote against the proposal – criticized his colleagues for want ing the sanctuary to bend to the fishery, instead of having the fishery bend to meet sanctuary goals.
The principal purpose of the reserve is to protect the resources in their natural state, “not protection of an existing, historic or anticipated fishing protocol,” he said, adding that, except for some “fine-tuning,” the state supported the regulations advanced by the Sanctuary Program. That approach would severely restrict areas open to bottomfishing and, “as appropriate,” prohibit crustacean and precious coral and other fisheries.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 15, Number 10 April 2005
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