Hawai’i has more than fifty fishing areas governed by regulations of the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
At just four is fishing of any kind banned outright. At all the rest, restrictions apply – on gear, on species allowed to be taken and size of fish, on seasons, on daily catches, and the like – but there is no limit on the total quantity of marine animals or plants that can be removed from the regulated areas. And in all other coastal areas, only the most general rules on season, size, and gear apply. These non-designated areas account for by far the largest proportion of coastal waters.
In this sense, Hawai’i is bucking the trend seen in other coastal states both in the U.S. and abroad, where depleted marine resources are being enhanced by the establishment of no-take reserves.
But that trend may well be reversed before it ever reaches Hawai’i’s shores. Elsewhere in the United States, a “right-to-fish” movement is trying to get laws enacted that will limit severely or ban outright such no-take areas.
In Hawai’i, staff at the DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources is re-evaluating the system of Marine Life Conservation Districts and Fishing Management Areas, with an eye to increasing both their size and number in hopes they will prove more useful as refugia and as nurseries for rejuvenating fish stocks. At the same time, in the state Legislature, bills that would set up a system of community-based management for regulating closed or restricted areas faced an uphill slog for the last two years, challenged by local recreational fishers that have taken up the “right-to-fish” battle cry.
Underwater Parks
The first Marine Life Conservation District in Hawai’i was Hanauma Bay, established in 1967. At that time, says Bill Devick, head of the Division of Aquatic Resources, “the rationale for setting up MLCDs did not take into account” the need for protection of marine species. Rather, he told Environment Hawai’i, said, “the areas selected were viewed as high-value sites for access and as underwater parks.” To the extent fishing was regulated, it was not to protect stocks, but rather to protect visitors and enhance their experience of Hawai’i waters. At Hanauma, where a total ban on fishing was put in place, fishing was completely subordinated to tourism.
Ten more MLCDs followed over the next three and a half decades. Rules for most of them attempted to strike a balance between tourism and fishing. Recreational fishing (and at times, even commercial fishing) was allowed in most MLCDs. Sometimes, the districts were divided into take and no-take areas. But total bans on fishing were the exception. Hanauma Bay (O’ahu), Waikiki (O’ahu), Honolua-Mokuleia (Maui) and Wai’opae Tidepools (Hawai’i) are the only MLCDs in the system where fishing or other taking of marine life is banned altogether. At the other MLCDs – Pupukea (O’ahu), Molokini (Maui), Manele-Hulupo’e (Lana’i), Lapakahi (Hawai’i), Old Kona Airport (Hawai’i) Waialea (Hawai’i) and Kealakekua (Hawai’i) – fishing is permitted in at least some part of the reserve.
Regulations every bit as strong as (or stronger than) those governing MLCDs are found in reserves managed by several other state agencies. The ‘Ahihi-Kina’u Natural Area Reserve off the south coast of Maui, managed by the DLNR’s Natural Area Reserves System Commission, has permitted fishing only by a native Hawaiian family with ancestral ties to the region. The Hawai’i Marine Laboratory Refuge, consisting of waters surrounding Moku-o-loe (Coconut Island) in Kane’ohe Bay, is controlled by the University of Hawai’i, which does not allow fishing by the general public. The Kaho’olawe Island Reserve Commission strictly limits access to waters around that island.
Finally, waters around military installations are generally off-limits to most fishers. In these areas, however, closures have nothing to do with protecting marine resources or enhancing tourists’ experience.
Special Interests
Many of the several dozen remaining areas have been put off-limits to protect depleted populations of specific groups of fish. In an effort to restore dwindling bottomfish stocks, 19 off-shore areas have been established where fishing for bottomfish (mostly deep-water snappers) is prohibited. Off the coast of West Hawai’i, nine Fish Replenishment Areas, extending off roughly a third of the coast from North Kohala to South Kona, have been placed off-limits to collection of reef-fish for the aquarium trade.
Yet the idea of establishing no-take marine reserves to serve as fish nurseries and help replenish depleted fish populations in adjoining areas has been slow to gain ground in Hawai’i. Wai’opae Tidepools, designated a MLCD in 2003, was the first to be set aside specifically for its value as a nursery. Studies undertaken by the University of Hawai’i’s Hawai’i Coral Reef Initiative Research Program had found very high counts of juvenile fish in the lagoon. “This habitat may be a critical source for adult fishes along the entire Puna and Ka’u coasts,” the studies determined. On that basis, the Division of Aquatic Resources recommended Wai’opae as a MLCD where no fishing or commercial tours would be permitted.
The state has been sued by a private snorkel tour operator over the Wai’opae closure. And fishers generally are unhappy to see any areas closed to fishing, much as they complain about smaller catches.
Two years ago, the Legislature held hearings on a bill that would have set aside at least 20 percent of coastal areas as marine reserves. In such reserves, where management measures would be recommended by an advisory council, fishing would generally not be allowed except for traditional and customary practices, scientific purposes, and where fishing could be shown to be “sustainable and non-degrading.
With loud and strong objections by the recreational fishing community, a rewritten measure was considered by the Legislature this year. Once again, the bill called for establishment of reserves, which were now renamed “co-managed areas.” The Department of Land and Natural Resources would oversee a network of community-based councils that would advise it on how best to manage marine resources in their respective areas of jurisdiction. Pointedly, the bill contained language intended to address recreational fishers’ concerns over closures: the department, it stated, “shall not completely prohibit fishing in a community-based marine comanaged area.”
This was not good enough for the recreational fishers, however. In a campaign against the measure led by the Hawai’i Fishing News, Mike Sakamoto, former host of a television show on fishing, decried the legislation as a poorly disguised effort to achieve the same results as prior bills: “The words may be different, but the concept is the same, even though this bill never directly says that you’ll not be able to fish or dive,” Sakamoto wrote in the March 2004 Hawai’i Fishing News.
How did Sakamoto read a ban on fishing into the new bill?
To explain his position, he quoted an anonymous fisher who, “upon reading [the bill], asked, ‘does that mean the DLNR will allow us fishing rights from 12 midnight to 12:30 a.m.? Or will they give the right to fish at a junk area where there’s no fish at all anyway?'”
“Either way,” Sakamoto commented, “it’s obvious that fishing will be prohibited, and that’s what we’re against.”
Even though the bill enjoyed strong support from the conservation community, the recreational fishers managed to block the bill from moving out of the House.
Forging Ahead
As important as legislation is, the DLNR already has authority to establish marine reserves with rules as strict or as lenient as it deems appropriate. In only a few of the existing Marine Life Conservation Districts is fishing banned entirely. Yet over the last few years, the department’s Division of Aquatic Resources has been moving in the direction of protecting coastal areas that are natural and fertile nurseries for the reef fish whose populations have been depleted statewide by fishing pressure.
Several years ago, the state (DLNR and the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism) teamed up with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to underwrite a wide-ranging report assessing “Economic Benefits and Costs of Marine Managed Areas in Hawai’i.” One study included in that report examined potential benefits of setting aside “marine managed areas,” or MMAs.
“Coastal fisheries in Hawai’i are facing unprecedented overexploitation and severe depletion,” writes Alan Friedlander, the study’s author. “This decline in fish abundance and size, particularly around the more populated areas of the state, is likely the cumulative result of years of chronic overfishing. Fishing pressure on nearshore resources in heavily populated areas of the main Hawaiian Islands appears to exceed the capacity of these resources to renew themselves.”
Traditional management measures intended to conserve fish populations (size limits, closed seasons, gear restrictions, and the like) have failed, Friedlander notes, and marine biologists have begun looking to the establishment of “marine protected areas” as one way to stem the decline.
To analyze the effectiveness of reserves in Hawai’i, Friedlander looked at several areas where fishing is banned or greatly limited, and compared those to similar areas where fishing was allowed, relying on an earlier study, the Hawai’i Coral Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (CRAMP). The result: “Areas completely protected from fishing had distinct fish assemblages with higher standing stock and diversity than areas where fishing was permitted or areas that were partially protected from fishing,” Friedlander writes.
He concludes with a list of recommendations for reserves in Hawai’i. To be effective in protecting fish, he writes, they should:
Friedlander’s conclusion and recommendations are in line with those of marine ecologists worldwide, although he stops short of recommending any minimum percentage of coastal area that should be managed as reserves.
Bill Devick, head of the Division of Aquatic Resources, agrees that more must be done to protect nearshore resources. “Our staff recognizes that we need to change our approach to protect some areas,” he told Environment Hawai’i.
But, he added, the bills introduced in the 2003 and 2004 legislative session don’t reflect the changes he feels should occur. Those bills, he said, “were highly politicized.” The subject of marine reserves should be addressed “as far as possible” from special interests.
“We need to figure out what we should do,” he said. “What was in the Legislature … was more of the same patchwork” that already exists in the state’s management of its marine resources.
That the state’s marine reserves are a “patchwork” is something all parties can agree upon. A concurrent resolution was introduced in the 2004 Legislature that called for a management audit of the DLNR’s marine life conservation districts, noting, among other things, that “the DLNR has adopted rules concerning prohibited activities, permitted activities, exemptions, and permits that differ significantly from one district to another.” The resolution, which seems to have been triggered by protests over the Wai’opae Tidepools rules, was not adopted.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 15, Number 3 September 2004
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