Conflicts over commercial uses of Hawai`i’s coastal areas receive attention because they have an impact on lots of people. Fistfights are not uncommon in disputes over who stays and who goes in certain desirable areas. While overuse by tourists and tour operators impacts marine resources (i.e. dolphins, whales, turtles, and their nesting habitats, monk seals, coral reefs, and fish stocks), tourism is just one of many threats to Hawai’i’s coastal ecosystems. With so many species in the sea, state regulations and enforcement don’t always keep up with the threats. The following is just a sample of some of those areas:
Live Rock: While it is illegal to remove any substrate with living material attached, it is not illegal to scrape the organisms off that substrate (thus making it dead rock, which can then be taken).
`Opihi: Skippy Hau of the Division of Aquatic Resources on Maui is the only person in the state monitoring populations of this endemic species, which has seen dramatic declines. According to some, this species probably deserves listing as threatened or endangered.
The Aquarium Trade: This growing fishery is largely unregulated. On the Kona Coast, years of community meetings led to the establishment of a series of marine protected areas, encompassing about a third of the entire coast, designed to control overfishing by aquarium collectors. Outside protected areas, however, an a aquarium fish collector can take any thing at any size as long as it’s not protected under another rule. There are no limits on the number of fish that can be taken, or the species, except for fish that fall under food fishing regulations (and which, in any case, are generally not valued by aquarium aficionados), also the taking of shrimp from anchialine ponds to use in aquaculture is completely unregulated.
Alien Aquatic Species: The state has given out conflicting messages on this point. It spent more than $1 million to clear Salvinia molesta from Lake Wilson, even though this artificial body of water has dubious ecological value (it accepts treated sewage) and supports only alien species.
Last month, in an event orchestrated by the DLNR, school children released large-mouth bass that they had raised into the lake, to promote recreational fishing. While the lake’s cleanup and recent celebration made multiple evening newscasts, threats to Hawai’i’s unique marine resources have received little attention. For example, the extinction of an endemic coral Montipora dilitata, which was documented around the time of the Lake Wilson cleanup, went largely unnoticed.
In addition to encouraging the introduction of alien fish into Hawai’i’s waterways, the state, through its Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, has recently received $420,000 through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to encourage cultivation of new species of ornamental aquatic species (an activity that would being in even more alien aquatic species than Hawai’i now has).
While DBEDT and DLNR condone the proliferation of certain alien aquatic species, the state’s Aquatic Invasive Advisory Committee (part of the state Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species) was created to prevent the introduction of invasive aquatic species. The state also has an Aquatic Invasive Species Management Plan which was prepared by The Nature Conservancy.
At 205 pages, including countless specific strategies to help control invasive aquatic alien species, the plan in comprehensive. However, as far as priorities for controlling aliens in the marine environment, the plan focuses more on full fouling and ballast water than on aquaculture and research, despite the fact that a significant proportion of the alien species that are shifting the very nature of Hawai’i’s coral reef ecosystems came to Hawai`i in precisely such ways.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 15, Number 4 October 2004
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