Lobsters in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are in trouble. And, as the lobsters go, so go the monk seals.
This reasoning is at the heart of a recent lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service brought by three environmental groups – Greenpeace Foundation, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network. Lobsters play a key role in the seals’ natural diet, the environmental groups argue. Overfishing of lobsters has left lobster populations in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in a depleted state, and this, they say, has had dire results for the seals. Pending the preparation of an environmental impact statement for the fishery and NMFS’ full compliance with the Endangered Species Act, the groups are seeking an injunction on all lobster fishing in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
“All of the evidence shows that the fishery is helping to drive the Hawaiian monk seal to extinction,” says Paul Achitoff of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs.
But commercial lobster fishers in Hawai`i, supported by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, disagree. At its most recent meeting in Honolulu, which concluded in March, the council voted to recommend keeping the fishery open. In addition, it voted to retain a private attorney to defend the council’s interests in lawsuits brought by non-governmental groups, even though the council is not a party to the litigation.
A hearing on a preliminary injunction to ban lobster fishing is scheduled to be heard before Judge Samuel P. King in U.S. District Court, April 21.
By press time, the National Marine Fisheries Service had made no decision as to whether the lobster fishery should be open in 2000 and, if so, what the quotas would be.
Crashing Numbers
Populations of both lobsters and seals have taken a dive in the last two decades. In the 1980s, what appears in hindsight to have been the convergence of a natural cycle of productivity coming to an end with five years of unrestricted fishing left the slipper and spiny lobster populations in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in a dire state. From a peak of about 2.4 million pounds of lobster caught in 1985, the catch plummeted to 862,000 pounds in 1990, falling two-thirds over half a decade. An equally important indicator of the fishery’s health is the catch per unit effort (CPUE) rate, which, in the case of lobsters, is measured by the number of animals caught in each trap set. Between 1982 and 1991, the catch per unit effort fell nearly 80 percent.
Throughout the 1990s, fishery managers at the National Marine Fisheries Service instituted a series of controls intended to rebuild the lobster populations. For most of the decade, it was a stop-and-go fishery, with closures and reduced quotas.
In 1997, NMFS attempted to resume a large-scale commercial fishery in the islands, with major changes to the ground rules. The fishery was now to be “catch all” – no animal was to be discarded because it was undersize or egg-bearing. This, it was hoped, would reduce the total number of lobsters killed by the fishery, since undersized lobsters and so-called “berried” females thrown back under the previous rules were often released in poor condition and were vulnerable to predatory fish as they drifted from the ship’s deck back down to the ocean floor.
In 1998, the harvest guideline (as the lobster quota is called) was further refined to be bank-specific, that is, each of the banks supporting sizable lobster populations would have a quota. This was done in hopes of better understanding the status of lobster populations at the various banks and of evening out fishing pressure across the archipelago.
Each year, harvest guidelines were scaled back. Each year, effort was strong. Each year, the fishing vessels on the lobster grounds came back short of their quota. Despite the curbs put on the lobster fishery, lobsters have not bounced back. Of the lobster species caught, the spiny is the more valuable, usually commanding prices of up to twice that of the slippers. And while the spiny lobsters made up most of the haul in the 1980s, in the 1990s, the catch was predominantly slippers. Even at Necker Island, the last “stronghold” of spiny lobsters, catch rates are in decline.
After the 1999 season ended, statisticians at NMFS started to re-evaluate their method of determining the lobster stocks’ health. When held up against empirical data from ongoing tagging studies, the population models they had been using were determined to have critical weaknesses. As a result of using these models, the estimates of the exploitable population of lobsters were probably overestimated by some 50 percent, according to Michael Laurs, head of NMFS’ Honolulu laboratory. Under the old models, the exploitable population for the 2000 season had been estimated at 1.5 million animals. Now, the Honolulu lab scientists were saying, this amounted to no more than 1 million individuals. Furthermore, those lobsters were turning out to be more catchable – and thus more vulnerable to overfishing – than scientists had previously believed.
The bad news wasn’t over yet. Laurs pointed out that researchers were seeing a “marked decline in two-year-olds in the last decade.” What that meant, he told the council, was that numbers of adult lobsters would probably continue to decline in the foreseeable future.
When the council’s Advisory Panel on Crustaceans got the news, it voted to recommend suspension of the lobster season this year. By the time the full council was in session, however, NMFS scientists had revisited the issue and were saying that the lobster populations could probably support removal of 130,000 animals in the 2000 season. In keeping with this, several members of Advisory Panel revisited their earlier recommendation. The panel’s chair, Sean Martin (business partner of council Chair Jim Cook and owner of several vessels that participate in the lobster fishery), read a statement signed by him and other lobster permit holders on the panel, who now wished to rescind their earlier recommendation for closure.
The council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee also disputed the need for a moratorium. The 2000 season, it recommended, should be open until the total catch came to 130,000 animals – a figure equal to 13 percent of the estimated catchable population of 1 million lobsters. The National Marine Fisheries Service has generally assumed that quotas at this level would pose no harm to the population.
Enter the Seals
Hanging over the council’s deliberations were mounting concerns by a number of groups – both governmental and non-governmental — over the monk seals and the threat to their recovery that continued lobster fishing might pose.
Last fall, the Marine Mammal Commission, established under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, was briefed on the condition of the monk seals at its annual meeting. In a follow-up letter to Penelope Dalton, head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, John Twiss Jr., executive director of the Marine Mammal Commission, expressed the group’s serious concerns over the health of the species, which NMFS is responsible to protect. The very first recommendation of the MMC was that the National Marine Fisheries Service “prohibit lobster fishing at all major monk seal breeding atolls” until the relationship between the seals and the lobsters is better understood. For several years, the commission had been urging NMFS to curb lobster catches in order to help the seals; in 1999, the recommendation was its strongest yet.
The Hawaiian Monk Seal Recovery Team met in December to assess the health of the seals. Once again, it expressed to NMFS its concern over the possible harm lobster fishing was posing to the monk seals, especially in light of a recent study of fatty acids taken from the animals suggesting that lobsters played an important role in their diet. “With the new knowledge of the potential importance of lobster to the monk seal, the [recovery team] is very concerned that the commercial lobster fishery in the NWHI may be compromising the current recovery of monk seals,” team chairman William G. Gilmartin wrote to NMFS Southwest Region administrator Rod McInnis. “Given the recent diet information and considering the potential commercial competition for the lobster resource with the seals, the HMSRT recommends that NMFS close the lobster fishery in the NWHI for a minimum period of 3 years to allow some recovery of the lobster stock.” Research could continue – and research, Gilmartin pointed out to Environment Hawai`i, inevitably involves fishing, but under closely controlled conditions, usually by a commercial fisherman who, in return for following the research plan set by NMFS scientists, gets to sell the catch.
In February, the Marine Mammal Commission revised its own recommendations to follow those of the Recovery Team. By the time the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council met in late February, then, both these federally sanctioned agencies were recommending unqualified closure of the lobster fishery.
Behind the litigation from the non-governmental groups and the recommendations of the Marine Mammal Commission and the Recovery Team was the latest news from NMFS on the monk seals’ reproductive rates.
The news was not good. With considerable help NMFS, populations at Laysan, Lisianski, Midway, Pearl and Hermes Reef, and Kure atoll were showing some increase. But at French Frigate Shoals, which has the greatest concentrations of seals (about 400 of the total population of 1,400), the population is decreasing. Shark predation, male aggression – against both females and juveniles – and nutritional deficiency are thought to be behind the decline. Entanglement of the seals in discarded fishing gear (usually nets from foreign vessels) also has taken a toll, especially on seals at Lisianski Island.
Coming to a Head
By the time the council considered the matter on February 29, the issue was red-hot. Bud Antonelis, a monk seal expert with NMFS, presented results of his studies of seals.
Rates of pup survival to two years at French Frigate Shoals were described as “terrible” by Antonelis – sometimes as low as 10 percent. This contrasts with survival rates of nearly 90 percent as recently as the mid-1980s. The low survival rate, he said, was prompting scientists to “predict a dramatic decline” in that important sub-population of seals.
McInnis, acting director for NMFS Southwest Region and a voting member of the council, made a motion to close the lobster fishery except for limited experimental fishing, so as not to lose data from tagging studies. In defending his motion, McInnis noted the low catch rates for 1999, in addition to what scientists describe as “low recruitment” – the low numbers of new adults coming into the population.
Council chair Jim Cook was obviously angry. “Closing this fishery is one of the worst things we can do,” he said. Although Cook participates in the fishery, the reasons he gave for wanting to keep it open had to do with science: “I’m wondering what the monitoring alternatives will be,” he said. “I’m concerned that if we don’t have a minimal fishery, we’re going to lose valuable data.”
Although the council is not a party to the lawsuit, the legal action did influence the discussion. In public comment on the matter, a representative of Pacific Seafoods, Inc., described in testimony as the “largest producer of frozen lobster tails in the world,” accused the council of knuckling under. “The Earthjustice lawsuit is influencing the discussion today,” said Brian Ho. Rather than the proposed quota set at 130,000, Ho said it should be 194,350.
Council senior scientist Robert Schroeder defended the 130,000 quota as conservative, noting that “the Scientific and Statistical Committee sees no reason to close the fishery, especially when under threat of a lawsuit.”
When the vote was taken, six members favored the motion to close the fishery; five (including Cook) opposed it. The motion carried.
Cook was not happy. “This is the first time this fishery has been closed by a council vote,” he said. Referring, then, to the construction of a new NMFS laboratory in Honolulu, he went on to say, “I’m going to be disappointed to see a $43 million lab built in Honolulu if we don’t have enough dollars to manage this fishery. I will be looking at NMFS science with a much more critical eye in my time remaining on the council.” (Cook’s term expires in July.)
A Second Chance
At the start of the council’s meeting the following day, Cook announced that there would be another vote on the lobster fishery that morning, March 1 (though none was on the agenda). Before the council broke for lunch, Roy Morioka, member from Hawai`i, made a motion to reconsider the lobster moratorium. Morioka, a council member from Hawai`i, had voted in favor of closure the previous day.
Since the time of the first vote, Morioka said, “I was provided with information from my peers.” They suggested to him, he said, that if the council went forward with the moratorium, it would look as though it had been “pigeonholed” by the litigation. The industry also reminded him of how cooperative it had been in the past with research efforts and the like, he added.
For this vote, Cook announced he had been advised by council to recuse himself. Under the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management Conservation Act, if a council member participates in a fishery at a level where he or she stands to benefit disproportionately from a decision, recusal is required. As it turned out, his vote was not required. The moratorium was rescinded and the council approved – on a vote of six to three – a quota of 130,000 lobsters for the 2000 season.
For all the heated discussion and voting (and re-voting), the council’s decision has little effect on the actual number of lobsters that will be allowed to be taken this season. Under the council’s Crustacean Fishery Management Plan, the administrator of the Southwest Region of NMFS makes that determination. The council’s role is merely to advise.
“The council loves to structure each vote as if it’s a decision of the council,” said one longtime observer. “But the actual council decisions are few and far between – occurring, for example, when it proposes new fishery management plan regulations. In the case of the lobster vote, it’s not for the council to decide how many animals are taken. The regional administrator decides this, and the council’s vote is advisory only.”
Under the council’s fishery management plan for crustaceans, the regional administrator is to announce the harvest guidelines for the coming season at the end of February. By press time, this figure still had not been announced. However, sources closely involved with the decision said that revised lobster population estimates from the Honolulu laboratory suggest that if there is to be any commercial fishing this year, the harvest guideline might be around 88,000 animals, about a third of the number in the last two years. With five or six vessels participating in the fishery, going after such a small number of lobsters may not be commercially viable.
Council chair Cook said that if the harvest guideline was that small, fewer boats would participate, but it could still be worthwhile. To outfit a boat for a lobster fishing trip costs between $200,000 and $250,000 Cook said. “You have to catch about 60,000 pieces to recover that investment,” he said, adding that the exact number depends on the mix of spiny and slipper lobster. Although Cook fished for lobster last year, he said, “I’d have been better off long-lining.”
When the harvest guidelines get so low that full participation in the fishery is uneconomical, Cook says, “the industry cuts a deal among itself” as to how to divide the quota.
Despite the obvious disagreements, almost everyone involved in the discussion over the monk seals and lobsters sees eye-to-eye on the need for further research. But it is questionable whether federal funds will be available to study the problem at the level required.
— Patricia Tummons
For Further Reading
* “The Hawaiian Monk Seal: Biology of an Endangered Species,” by Timothy J. Ragen and David M. Lavigne, in John R. Twiss Jr. and Randall R. Reeves, eds., Conservation and Management of Marine Mammals (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999).
* ” What’s Ailing the Hawaiian Monk Seals?” by Sylvia Spalding, public relations officer for the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, in Hawai’i Fishing News, March 2000.
On the Internet:
From the Environment Hawai’i archives (www.environment-hawaii.org)
*January 1999, “Monk Seals, Precious Corals Linked at French Frigate Shoals”
*November 1995, “Drastic Change in Federal Lobster Fishery Means Trouble for Enforcers of State Rule”
Other sites of interest:
*International Marine Mammal Association
*Hawaii Wildlife Society
*NMFS
*The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council
Volume 10, Number 10 April 2000