In July 2004, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve’s advisory council developed a preferred fishing alternative for the proposed NWHI National Marine Sanctuary. It included a 40 nautical mile zone around the islands stretching from Nihoa to Kure, where all commercial fishing would be prohibited one year after designa tion of the new sanctuary. It also included Sanctuary Preservation Areas – where no commercial, recreational, or sustenance har vesting is allowed – around each of the islands.
Earlier this year, a RAC subcommittee working on alternatives to be included in the proposed sanctuary’s draft environmen tal impact statement came up with three more possible options, two of which were a mix of zones and various boundaries; the other option was to make the entire sanctu ary a SPA.
Last month, after hearing heartfelt argu ments from U.S. Representative Ed Case, speaking in favor of his bill to end all extractive use in the uninhabited archipelago (except for Native Hawaiian subsistence uses), and from bottomfisherman Bobby Gomes, arguing to keep the fisheries open, the Reserve Advisory Council scrapped all of the Sanctuary Preser vation Areas it had painstakingly drawn around each island, as well as its original recommendation to phase out in one year commercial bottomfishing and trolling.
The decision was based, in part, on re serve acting coordinator ‘Aulani Wilhelm’s statements that endorsing one, strong, unique management alternative would in crease the odds that a RAC alternative would make it into the DEIS.
“The more shades of gray you give us, the harder it is for us,” she said.
So instead of endorsing any of its sub committee recommendations, the RAC chose to give the nine fishermen who hold current federal permits to catch bottomfish in the area the option of either being bought out of the fishery within one year of sanctu ary designation, or fishing for 20 more years, so long as their permits are not trans ferred in any way. This way, many RAC members felt, the existing fishermen can continue their livelihood under existing fed eral and state regulations. But as those per mittees leave the fishery, the entire sanctu ary becomes a Sanctuary Preservation Area, in which all activities and access are prohib ited unless specifically authorized.
The recommendation was developed “to meet the spirit and intent of the Case legis lation and remarks Representative Case shared with the RAC at their meeting on June 1,” Wilhelm wrote in an email to Environment Hawai‘i.
Whether or not the RAC’s new manage ment alternative, which it approved on June 2, will turn up as one of the several alternatives included in DEIS, remains to be seen. Follow ing the RAC vote, Wilhelm said she couldn’t guarantee that all of the provisions in the RAC’s alternative will make it into the DEIS. In her email to Environment Hawai‘i, she added that the DEIS will include an alterna tive that “analyzes the key provisions and level of restrictions contained in both the Case legislation and the RAC recommendation.”
Dissenters
While most advisory council members sup ported the change in direction, Tim Johns, chair of the council and appointed to repre sent the state of Hawai‘i’s interests, and Native Hawaiian representative Buzzy Agard opposed it. Johns, who was absent during the discussion leading up to the council’s change of heart, said he opposed the measure be cause it was such a departure from what the state had supported in the past.
“We spent an inordinate amount of time discussing Sanctuary Preservation Areas. I’m gone for two hours and now there’s no SPAs,” he said. In commenting on Rep. Case’s proposed refuge, Johns also noted that the state, at least with regard to the proposed sanctuary, has been supportive of recreational fishing, bottomfishing, and ocean tourism in the area. The new RAC option would prohibit recreational fishing, and ocean tourism would only be allowed as part of research or educational activities that complemented the sanctuary’s management goals.
“The state’s not in a position to depart from that without running it up the flag pole,” he said.
On the other end of the spectrum was Agard. He dissented, he said, because the RAC measure was not close enough to Case’s vision, which prohibits all commercial and extractive uses except for sustenance fishing, Native Hawaiian practices, and certain re search activities.
Although the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council is a non-voting mem ber of the RAC, its delegate, Eric Kingma, reaffirmed the fishery council’s opposition to any ban on recreational fishing and trolling. He noted also that the fishery council op poses the phase-out of bottomfishing, whether in one year or in 20, as well as the closure of commercial pelagic fishing be tween 30 and 50 miles out from the islets and atolls.
After the vote, Cha Smith, executive di rector of the Hawaiian and environmental group KaHEA, testified that the proposed buy-out or phase-out of bottomfishing per mit holders should have been conditioned on a determination that the fishing is having no impact on the resources.
“Fishermen shouldn’t be given carte blanche for 20 years,” she said, adding that the RAC decision was not based on science but rather an emotional response to testi mony.
Case’s Bill
On June 1, a day before the RAC vote, Rep. Case appealed to the council to recommend that the management regime spelled out in his Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Marine Refuge bill be included in the DEIS.
His bill, introduced to Congress on May 16, is needed, he said, because the National Marine Sanctuary Program’s sanctuary des ignation process requires balancing com peting uses – weighing extractive uses against resource protection. As a result, some form of extractive use is allowed in all national marine sanctuaries, he noted.
“There is simply not the regime in place to create what truly would be a sanctuary in the literal sense of the word, to forge a world such as my State of Hawai‘i just proudly did in the creation in its waters of the North western Hawaiian Islands Marine Refuge,” he wrote in a statement to Congress.
On May 13, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources approved rules estab lishing the state refuge, which prohibits any extractive use, except for some Native Ha waiian uses, within three miles of shore, an area containing roughly a third of the NWHI’s coral reefs. Case’s bill does much the same thing with regard to extraction, but extends the area of protection out to 50 nautical miles.
Case’s refuge would not include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Hawaiian Is lands National Wildlife Refuge, Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, or Kure atoll. (The bill does not call out the seaward boundary of the state’s recently established marine refuge, but state Department of Land and Natural Resources director Peter Young says that it is his understanding that the bill deals only with federal waters.)
The bill states that vessels more than 25 feet long traveling through or in the refuge must be certified to be free of alien species; must carry a vessel monitoring system and a federal government observer; must post a $1 million vessel-grounding bond or insur ance; and must notify the refuge manager when then are entering and leaving the refuge.
The bill also states that except for per mitted activities (for certain research, na tive Hawaiian subsistence practices, suste nance fishing, marine debris removal, and “other activities in furtherance of this Act”), taking, injuring, destroying, causing the loss of, or disturbing and refuge resources is prohibited. Existing bottomfish permit holders would be able to continue fishing until they were bought out or left the fishery on their own, but their permits could not be transferred.
Case’s bill also would expand the existing reserve to waters fished by the Honolulu fleet of longline vessels.
Case argued strongly for his model being included as an alternative in the DEIS. “It’s ideal that one of the alternatives… is a true non-extractive alternative,” he said. “That will keep the ball rolling.”
Johns asked Case his opinion of the odds that the bill might become law.
“Pretty long,” Case said, adding that a lot of unknowns could influence the outcome. “If the press decided to embrace this, and Governor Lingle, that would clearly enhance the odds. Will the people opposing decide to not fight? That would clearly affect it. Institutional opposition from WesPac and other [fishery management] councils would affect the odds.”
Gomes noted that there is a viable fishery in the NWHI and that it would be a waste of the resource to not utilize it. “Most of the boats up there fishing now are … environ mentalists, ourselves. We protect the ocean,” he said.
While Case said he thought the fisher men were good stewards, he noted that other values must be considered. There needs to be a “heightened discussion of if we have a non-extractive regime, are we going to end access to a culture we grew up with? What is fair compensation? What really will make you whole? I don’t think those ques tions have been answered,” he said.
He said that he has been watching how the sanctuary designation process has been unfolding. When he saw the management regime proposed earlier this year by the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council – a proposal that calls pretty much for retention of the status quo, with the possibility of reopening the lobster fishery and starting up a precious corals fishery in the future – Case said, “I started thinking we’re not on the same page… I’m skeptical over time we can have a true sanctuary if we allow extractive use.”
Marcia Hamilton of the fisheries council defended its recommendations. If the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are so pris tine, she said, “it’s not clear to me what the area’s being protected from… It’s disturbing to see that we would close a healthy fishery and take [fish] from somewhere else… We get this nice feeling of a marine park when you’re exploiting other areas not as well managed.”
In the end, Case repeated his request for support.
“I need the sanctuary process to acknowl edge this,” he said, adding that the sanctuary process should not stop while his bill works its way though Congress. Everything that’s al ready been done is still applicable, he said.
Endorsing Case
The next day, the RAC met to discuss Case’s proposal, as well as its other options.
“As a practical matter, I believe that we do not have the ability to determine where this goes… It’s an intellectual exercise. There will be a sanctuary that doesn’t look anything like these maps,” said RAC member Paul Achitoff of his stack of colored and shaded maps of fishing management regimes that he and fellow RAC members were expected to sift through and pick a favorite from.
The RAC is only an advisory body, whose wishes may or may not be included in the DEIS. Achitoff said, in the end, “It’s a matter of politics and power with [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] and WesPac, with us on the outside with our nose pressed up against the glass.”
He continued that Case’s bill “is closer to what I’d like to see… It cuts WesPac out of the picture.”
But other RAC members could not embrace the bill so easily. Johns, for example, noted that the Case legislation creates a “shotgun sanctu ary,” where “It’s not voluntary for the state to include its waters… Ed’s bill restructures the sanctuary program and eliminates the state as a voting member of the Sanctuary Advisory Council. The state will not be supporting this because it’s different from [what the sanctuary had been proposing] two weeks ago and the state has not been able to review it.
Don Palawski of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a non-voting member, said his agency is also still analyzing the issues and that he would not take a position on Case’s bill.
After much discussion, the RAC chose not to endorse or recommend that Case’s bill be included in the DEIS and instead chose to incorporate many of the bill’s proposals into its own recommendation.
In her email to Environment Hawai‘i, Wilhelm writes that because Case’s bill is still in draft form and was only recently intro duced, it doesn’t affect the sanctuary designa tion process.
“Until it or any other legislation passes that would change our course, our responsibility is to move forward with the sanctuary designa tion process as laid out under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act,” she writes, adding that NOAA does not have a position on the bill.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 16, Number 1 July 2005
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