{"id":10041,"date":"2017-11-01T05:36:35","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T05:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=10041"},"modified":"2018-06-06T22:31:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T22:31:14","slug":"after-attempt-to-force-his-hand-judge-rules-that-aquarium-collecting-permits-are-invalid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=10041","title":{"rendered":"After Attempt to Force His Hand, Judge Rules That Aquarium Collecting Permits Are Invalid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In September, when the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court ruled that commercial aquarium fish collection permits issued by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources require an environmental review, many thought an injunction closing the fishery would soon follow. The high court had remanded the matter of crafting an injunction to the lower court. Last month, Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree allowed fishery representatives to intervene in the case and had not issued an injunction by mid-month.<\/p>\n

Displeased with the pace at which Crabtree was implementing the high court\u2019s order, as well as his decision to allow the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC) to join the case, the plaintiffs \u2014 Rene Umberger, Mike Nakachi, Willie and Kaimi Kaupiko, Conservation Council for Hawai\u2018i, and the Humane Society of the United States \u2014 filed on October 23 a petition for a writ of mandamus with the state Supreme Court, seeking to force an immediate closure.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, he [Crabtree] has delayed what the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court has ordered him to do, which is to enjoin commercial aquarium collection,\u201d said Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff, who represents the plaintiffs. Crabtree had scheduled a hearing for October 27 to consider evidence on the form of relief he would order, but the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court had already decided that, Achitoff continued.<\/p>\n

Rather than signing the plaintiffs proposal for an immediate injunction, submitted on October 3, Crabtree asked the parties to file \u201cany appropriate motions\u201d regarding injunc- tive relief \u201cand is entertaining a full-blown evidentiary hearing, at PIJAC\u2019s request. Moreover, the Circuit Court\u2019s scheduling order regarding injunctive relief does not have a completion date for issuing the pro- hibitory injunction this Court ordered weeks ago,\u201d the petition states.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Supreme Court did not authorize the\u00a0Circuit Court to \u201creceive evidence regarding the purported harmlessness of the ongoing illegal extraction of public trust resources, or require Petitioners to prove anew what this Court already has found,\u201d the petition adds.<\/p>\n

The DLNR responded to the petition in a press release. The agency reiterated its belief that current aquarium fishing practices are sustainable and environmentally sound and noted that \u201cdozens of local businesses and families depend on the industry for their livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

At last month\u2019s meeting of the Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council, Ryan Okano of the DLNR\u2019s Division of Aquatic Resources presented data showing that the aquarium fishery is by far the most valuable of the state\u2019s inshore fisheries, generating an average annual revenue of about $2.25 million dollars, mostly from fish collected around Hawai\u2018i island. (The state\u2019s reef fish and bottomfish fisheries were tied at a distance second, each generating about $1.5 million a year between 2012 and 2017.)<\/p>\n

To bolster the DLNR\u2019s case that the fishery is, indeed, sustainable, despite the fact that each commercial permit allows unlimited commercial take, Okano showed charts depicting the trends in the number of animals caught per hour and the revenue generated per hour between 2008 and 2016. Except for perhaps Maui Nui, the \u201ccatch per unit effort\u201d trends for both scenarios were generally stable or increased for all islands, the charts indicated.<\/p>\n

Given that that vast majority of the fish collected for the aquarium trade are taken from waters off West Hawai\u2018i, Okano presented evidence that suggested that fish replenishment areas (FRAs) established by the department more than a decade ago and spanning more than a third of the coastline have successfully protected populations of the most collected species.<\/p>\n

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Populations of yellow tang, which made up more than 75 percent of the West Hawai\u2018i aquarium catch in 2016, have increased within FRAs and marine protected areas, skyrocketing in the last few years, the DLNR found. Outside the protected areas, populations have fluctuated, but have been on an increasing trend since 2011. For kole, the second most collected species in West Hawai\u2018i, and for the rest of the ten most-collected species, population trends in all areas have increased between 1999 and 2016, Okano\u2019s chart\u2019s showed.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFrom our perspective, the fishery seems to be doing okay. … We see it as a sustainable fishery. That\u2019s why we struggle now. We\u2019re probably going to have more rules on it,\u201d Okano said.<\/p>\n

Whether or not the fishery is sustainable, the plaintiffs argue that the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court found in September that all 300 or so existing commercial aquarium collecting permits are in violation of the Hawai\u2018i Environmental Policy Act, and are, therefore, illegal. While PIJAC has argued to Crabtree that existing permits should be excluded from any injunction, \u201cexcluding existing permit holders from the injunction would render an injunction meaningless as a practical matter, making a mockery of [the Hawai\u2018i Supreme] Court\u2019s decision,\u201d the petition states. What\u2019s more, it adds that the high court \u201cdid not leave room for the Circuit Court to undertake any \u2018tailoring\u2019 analysis, nor to parse which commercial permits may or may not be covered under the injunction.\u201d<\/p>\n

On October 27, Crabtree ruled that all existing commercial aquarium fish permits are illegal and invalid, but denied the plaintiffs\u2019 request for a moratorium pending completion of the environmental review process. The DLNR said it \u201crespects Judge Crabtree\u2019s ruling and will fully comply so long as it remains in effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Teresa Dawson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In September, when the Hawai‘i Supreme Court ruled that commercial aquarium fish collection permits issued by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources require an environmental review, many thought an injunction closing the fishery would soon follow. The high … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[428],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-10041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-november-2017","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}