While much of the debate over the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands’ management scenarios has been between federal agencies competing for jurisdiction, waters governed by the state of Hawai’i contain more than a third of the archipelago’s coral reefs.
But just what counts as state waters has also been the subject of some dispute. At times, the state has claimed its jurisdiction extends to all archipelagic waters (waters between islands), even though the federal government’s view, which usually trumps that of the state, is that state waters extend no further than three miles from the shore.
Under the executive order establishing the NWHI reserve, the governor of Hawai’i may choose to include all state waters in the sanctuary, some of them, or none.
Before the executive orders were ever signed, the state of Hawai’i had developed draft regulations for state waters in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, although it stopped short of issuing fishing regulations. In May 1999, the Marine Mammal Commission, out of concern for the endangered monk seal, advised the Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources to gain control over lobster fishing in its waters.
In 2001, the DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources proposed regulations for a NWHI fishery management area. After members of the public expressed concern that the proposal seemed geared toward encouraging fishing in state waters, the DAR changed its proposal so that it now describes a “marine refuge.”
Last July and August, DAR held its second round of public hearings. The refuge would require an access permit to enter all state waters in the NWHI. Extraction of any kind would be prohibited except for certain areas around the southernmost atolls of Nihoa and Necker. All uses would have to be reported.
By the end of August, the DAR had received 23,000 emails in addition to written and oral testimony. The DAR’s Athline Clark says that the comments were generally receptive to the idea of the refuge. Suggested changes were complimentary to the purpose and included things like requests to close loopholes, close waters to commercial uses, and require boats in the NWHI to have vessel monitoring systems, she told the Marine Mammal Commission in October.
Clark says her division is still sorting through the comments and hopes to be done by January. If only minor changes are made to the proposed rules, DAR will then bring the proposal to the state Board of Land and Natural Resources for approval.
While it seems the state is a step ahead of the National Marine Sanctuary Program in its rulemaking efforts, program policy analyst Ed Lindelof says his office has been coordinating closely with state on what kinds of activities will take place in NWHI.
“For the most part, we’re in sync,” he says. The sanctuary program’s vision for the state’s shallow water areas is to have them as Sanctuary Preservation Areas where very little activity and no consumptive uses are allowed, he says. That vision is similar to state’s, he adds, except for the state’s plans to allow extraction at Nihoa and Necker.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 15, Number 6 December 2004