On a fateful day in June 1988, the face of fishing in Hawai’i was forever altered.
On that day, reports The Wall Street Journal one Bruce Mournier, “amid much scoffing from fellow longliners,” decided to take after swordfish in his Honolulu-based boat, the Magic Dragon. “The scoffing stopped when he began returning with groaning boatloads of broadbills from his three-week trips.”
The Journal account, in an essay by Charles Monaghan carried on its “Leisure & Arts” page of January 13, 1994, goes on to say that Mournier had found a “distinctive movement pattern for swordfish about 1,200 miles west of Hawai’i,” which he drew to his lines by employing plastic fluorescing lightsticks. Mournier’s success prompted other local longliners to turn their attention from tunas to swordfish and, before you can say Xiphias gladius, boats from the east and west coasts of the continental United States began streaming into Hawai’i waters.
War at Sea
Many of the new arrivals were from the Gulf of Mexico, whose crews and captains were non-English-speaking Vietnamese, refugees from the war who now were fleeing the fished-out Gulf waters.
Instead of the new arrivals fishing far out to sea, however, most of them chose to set their lines – from 20 to 60 miles long – much closer to shore than was customary among Hawai’i’s small longline fleet. Bob Anderson, writing in the August 1989 edition of Hawai’i Fishing News, told how the new arrivals -“boats from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast” – placed “thousands of baited hooks on miles of line stretching from Ka’ena Point to Barber’s Point,” just a few miles off the coast. Nor was it a fair fight, Anderson wrote: “With all the new technology these boats are equipped with, it’s no contest – the fish lose.”
Trollers and hand-liners were finding fewer and fewer fish close in, for which they blamed the new longline fleet. Local longliners, meanwhile, were upset when the newcomers set their lines at right angles to, rather than parallel with, the locals’ lines.
By mid-1989, the situation had grown out of hand. Local fishermen, particularly the small-craft fleets operating out of Wai’anae, were angry over the inconsiderate fishing practices of some of the new longliner arrivals. They were threatening to destroy gear – and worse – if the newcomers did not get out of their way.
But over the next year, more and more longliners arrived. In three years, the Hawai’i fleet more than tripled, growing from 37 vessels in 1987, to 80 in 1989, to more than 150 in 1990. That was the year when the federal agency regulating fishing in the U.S Exclusive Economic Zone finally decided to limit new entries to the fleet.
In October 1990, the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which has responsibility for regulating fishing in the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone around the Hawaiian islands, imposed an emergency rule that effectively closed the open ocean around Hawai’i to any boats over and above those already here. In April 1991, that emergency rule was converted to a three-year moratorium and made a part of the Council’s Fishery Management Plan for Pelagics Fisheries (covering tuna, marlin, and swordfish, among other fish). This month, on April 22, 1994, the moratorium will expire.
What Next?
In January, the Regional Fishery Management Council published notice of its intent to adopt rules for its Pelagics Fishery Management Plan that would continue the present cap on entries to the longline fishery. Given the time it takes for the proposed Amendment 7 to the plan to take effect, the new rules are not likely to have force of law until several weeks after the moratorium expires.
While that could open the door temporarily to new entries in the Hawai’i longline fleet, the Fishery Management Council staff and others believe this is not likely to occur. According to Council staff, it would hardly be worthwhile for unpermitted longline vessels to come to Hawai’i for the short interval between the end of the existing moratorium and the start of the new rules.
The proposed rules will allow 167 longline vessels (the number of boats that are now qualified to obtain permits) to take pelagic (open-ocean) fish from the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone around the Main Hawaiian Islands (the populated ones, for the most part) and the long string of atolls, islets and rocks that extend to Kure Atoll (the Northwestern Islands). But in other respects, operations and characteristics of the longline fleet may change substantially when the new rules take effect.
Transferable Permits
First, under the new rules, permits may be transferred, where they could not be under the old rules. This could mean that a market will open up for the 45 or so inactive permits that, for all practical purposes, could not be sold or transferred under the previous system. Given the relatively high capital costs of entry to the fishery, few expect all of the inactive permits to be snatched up on the newly created permit market. Still, if any of the inactive permits are transferred, this will increase the active fleet size and, in all likelihood, increase the total longline fishing effort in the northwestern Hawaiian islands.
Just this point was made by Walter Ikehara at the September 1993 meeting of the Fishery Management Council. According to the meeting minutes, Ikehara, a biologist with the state Division of Aquatic Resources and chairman of the Council’s Plan Team for the pelagic fishery, predicted that a gradual increase in the number of active vessels and effort is likely under the new rules.
Larger Boats
Second, under the old rules, vessels could not be upgraded. The new rules will allow permit holders to increase the size of their fishing vessels to the length of the longest vessel now permitted (roughly 100 feet).
There is debate over the practical effect of this change. Some people believe that inevitably, this will lead to more hooks being set in the fishery as the average vessel size in the fleet increases. (The larger the vessel, the greater the size of the hold and the length of line that can be carried.)
Others, however, say that after a certain point, the factor that limits fishing capacity is time it takes to set a line (about a day) rather than the vessel size.
In fact, some argue that increased vessel size may lead, if anything, to reduced level of effort (as measured by the number of hooks set). Larger boats tend to target swordfish instead of tunas – and the average number of hooks set per trip by boats targeting swordfish is slightly smaller than the average number set for boats targeting tunas. In 1992, for example, large boats (those longer than 74 feet) targeting swordfish set 11,250 hooks per trip – a number slightly smaller than the 11,700 hooks per trip set by vessels of the same size targeting tuna. According to this reasoning, then, an upgrading of the fleet to the point that most boats are targeting swordfish could actually lead to a diminishment of effort (as measured by hooks set).
Pressure on Swordfish
But if this type of upgrading occurs, it will lead to another problem: the prospect of increased pressures on swordfish stocks. Ironically, this is one of the problems that Amendment 7 is intended to address. According to the amendment, “swordfish is the only stock that the U.S. longline fishery has the potential, if unregulated, to negatively impact on a stock-wide basis. Hawai’i-based longliners now take about 15 percent of the Pacific-wide swordfish harvest and about 42 percent of the total eastern central Pacific catch…. Managing the growth of the longline fleet that is permitted to land their catch in Hawai’i is considered a prudent measure to address stock conservation concerns.” Already, according to the amendment, the amount of swordfish caught by the Hawai’i longline fishery exceeds the 25,000 metric tons that is the estimated maximum sustainable yield for annual swordfish takes in the area.
In fact, language in the amendment itself cautions that swordfish stocks may need enhanced protection. “From 1990-1992 the Hawai’i longline fishery directed at swordfish increased its catch from 1,500 tons to almost 5,000 [metric] tons… Whether the recent increases in yield can be sustained at the present level of fishing effort is unknown, but the severe growth-overfishing of the Atlantic stocks… suggests that close attention should be paid to the possibility of over-utilization of the swordfish stock exploited by the Hawai’i longline fishery.”
But discussions of increased pressure on swordfish stocks played no role in the Council’s discussions on whether to allow vessel upgrading. Instead, during the debate, the upgrade was presented for the most part as providing for enhanced fleet safety since the smaller boats in the fleet tended to be at greater risk when fishing in some of the fishery’s more distant waters.
Watch at Sea
One major change in fleet operation has already been instituted. Starting in March, the National Marine Fisheries Service has begun placing observers on selected long-line vessels. The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council authorized this in September 1993, along with a requirement that all permitted vessels be equipped with a tracking system that allows NMFS to monitor their position when they are at sea.
The observer program is intended to provide NMFS with two types of information. Observers are, above all, to take note of interactions between the fishing vessel and protected species (including dolphins, turtles, and seabirds). Also, they are to note all types of animals hooked, including those discarded, so that NMFS will have a better understanding of the by-catch.
Vessel operators are supposed to provide this information in their logbooks, submitted to NMFS. But in 1991, when the agency compared the data in the logbooks to data it could gather independently (from market and auction receipts, for example), “only 47 percent of the logbooks submitted to NMFS were considered acceptable,” according to its 1993 biological opinion issued in conjunction with the Pelagics Fishery Management Plan. In 1992, the percentage of acceptable logbook reports on fish landings rose to near 80 percent, NMFS said, but, it added, “the take of protected species cannot be verified except by on-board observers.”
By-catch
So what, exactly, do the longliners catch? Historically, the Hawai’i longline fleet targeted tuna. Marlin, mahimahi, and ono (wahoo) were secondary catches. Most of the catch was consumed locally.
But after Mournier’s swordfish haul, all that changed. At the same time that he demonstrated that Pacific swordfish stocks could be targeted commercially, Atlantic stocks of swordfish were collapsing (having been over-fished by many of the same vessels now in Hawaiian waters). In 1988, just 50,000 pounds of swordfish were landed in Hawai’i. By 1992, the swordfish catch was 12.6 million pounds, with almost all of that shipped to out-of-state markets. By comparison, the total catch for tunas in 1992 came to 9.5 million pounds.
The fish that turn up at auction do not include all fish caught. Many, if not most, of the fish caught are thrown back, dead or alive. Much of the by-catch consists of perfectly good fish, including mahimahi, marlin, and other billfish. With prices for swordfish generally exceeding prices of all other fish except big eye tuna and ono, space in the holds of most longline vessels is reserved for swordfish, with other fish thrown in only to the extent the swordfish aren’t taking the bait.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 4, Number 10 April 1994