What the National Marine Fisheries Service had proposed was simply unacceptable to Roger Dang, whose family\u2019s longline vessels make up a significant portion of the Hawai\u2018i swordfish fleet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He likened it to the NBA limiting LeBron James to just two technical fouls per season. If James hits that limit, \u201che\u2019s out of the game, out of the season, and not getting paid,\u201d Dang complained at a meeting of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council last month. The council had convened the meeting to comment on the service\u2019s new draft biological opinion (BiOp) for the fishery and make new recommendations for operating the fishery given the new information in the document. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With regard to the swordfish fleet, the\n\u201ctechnical fouls\u201d would be the incidental\nhooking of leatherback sea turtles, whose\npopulation of about 1,400 in the Western\nPacific is declining at a rate of 5 percent per\nyear, and \u201cis at risk of falling to less than\nhalf of its current abundance in as few as\nthree years,\u201d the opinion states.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The swordfish fleet is one component of the commercial fishing industry in Hawai\u2018i, which consists of around 145 permitted longline vessels. Most of them fish exclusively for bigeye tuna, which requires that the hooks be set deep in the water column. However, some of them also are configured at times to target swordfish, which requires setting the hooks at shallower depths. This leads to the so-called shallow-set fishery interacting more frequently with sea turtles, including leatherback and loggerhead, both of which are endangered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Siding with Dang and other representatives of the Hawai\u2018i Longline Association, the council rejected the service\u2019s proposal to impose annual hard caps on individual vessels, in addition to the longstanding limits on turtle interactions for the entire fleet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The council instead recommended that\nthe service adopt a more forgiving scheme:\nforce vessels that catch two leatherbacks\nin a single trip to return to port for a few\ndays, but allow them to continue to fish for\nthe rest of the year, or until the fleet-wide\nlimit is reached.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With regard to loggerhead sea turtles, the council stuck with a recommendation it\nmade last year to establish a trip limit of five\ninteractions, also known as takes. NMFS\u2019s\nBiOp proposed a vessel limit of six.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service has also proposed increasing\nthe fleet-wide hard cap for loggerheads from\n34 to 36, and reducing the leatherback cap\nfrom 26 to 16. The council did not oppose\neither change.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service\u2019s draft BiOp, released in late- March, evaluated the shallow-set fishery\u2019s effects on a broad range of protected species, including the giant manta ray and oceanic whitetip shark \u2014 both federally listed as threatened last year \u2014 as well as loggerhead, leatherback, green, and olive ridley sea turtles, as well as the endangered Guadalupe fur seal. But what the council and HLA awaited most anxiously were the opinion\u2019s recommendations regarding loggerheads and leatherbacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On March 19, NMFS closed the shallow-set fishery because it had hooked too many loggerheads. As part of a federal court settlement last year, after the fleet had caught 33 loggerheads, the service reduced the hard cap for the species from 34 to 17 pending the issuance of the new BiOp. The BiOp would not only describe the fishery\u2019s impacts, it would also include an incidental take statement detailing the protective measures the fishery would be subject to or be required to implement. Those could include hard caps, as well as gear restrictions or area closures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The document was expected to be\ncompleted by last October, but NFMS\ndid not release a draft until late March. In\nthe meantime, the fishery not only hit the\nloggerhead cap set in 2018, it exceeded it.\nAll told, the fishery had hooked 20 of them\nby the time the fishery closed.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the draft BiOp, the service determined\nthat the fishery does not jeopardize the\ncontinued existence of any of the protected\nspecies known to interact with the fleet.\nEven so, the service proposed imposing\nseveral conservation measures:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to setting new vessel and fishery limits on leatherbacks and loggerheads, the BiOp tasked the service\u2019s Sustainable Fisheries Division with analyzing loggerhead and leatherback interactions to evaluate interaction patterns, issuing a report on that analysis and an action plan for working with vessels that interact with a disproportionate number of the turtles within 18 months of the final BiOp being signed, and, within two years, implementing measures to \u201creduce incidental take and associated mortality of leatherbacks and loggerheads by at least 25 percent.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With regard the latter measure, the BiOp directed the division to evaluate closing the area east of 140\u00b0W in the first and fourth quarters of the year and prohibiting fishing in the sea surface temperature bands preferred by foraging turtles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the service\u2019s analysis suggests that loggerhead numbers may be increasing \u2014 which is why it was proposing to increase the annual cap \u2014 the BiOp stressed the agency\u2019s uncertainty surrounding that conclusion. It noted that the data supporting the increasing trend came from a single subpopulation of loggerheads, and \u201cthe variance around our estimate suggest that the species could be declining, and we do not know the trends for the other two primary subpopulations.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBeing that the species is comprised of\nsubpopulations that impart specific benefits\nto the species as a whole, the reduction of\ntake to these subpopulations is important to\nthe conservation of the species as a whole,\u201d\nit stated.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That being said, the BiOp left the door\nopen to modifying the annual hard caps\nif the fishery implemented measures that\nachieved a 25 percent reduction in take.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another recommendation in the BiOp\nwas that NMFS\u2019 Protected Resources\nDivision hold a workshop to determine\nwhether there are more effective ways to\nremove more fishing gear from hooked\nleatherbacks to increase survivorship. Also,\nthe division should expand the protected\nspecies workshops it now holds for vessel\ncaptains to include crew members, the BiOp\nrecommended.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Ann Garrett, assistant regional administrator for NMFS\u2019s Pacific Islands Regional Office Protected Resources Division, summarized the BiOp to the council and its Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) on April 12, members of both bodies questioned why the service had chosen to add hard caps on individual vessels rather than adopt the council\u2019s trip-limit approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
SSC member Steve Martell pointed out that if the fishery closes or vessels hit their limit, \u201cthey have something that\u2019s equally profitable to switch into,\u201d referring to the deep-set fishery. Given that, the limits as proposed didn\u2019t provide a strong incentive to avoid catching turtles, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trip limits would force the vessels that hit their limits to return to port and idle in Honolulu for a few days before heading back out, providing a much stronger incentive to try to avoid turtles, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By keeping vessels fishing for swordfish, it would also benefit the market and support a\ncleaner fishery that has 100 percent observer\ncoverage. Only 20 percent of the deep-set\nfishery is covered, and that coverage is likely\neven less in foreign swordfish fleets.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Garrett said her division had considered\ntrip limits, but in evaluating the past 16 years\nof bycatch data, it was clear that a large\nportion of the total turtle takes was coming\nfrom a handful of vessels. Forty-one percent\nof leatherback interactions was attributable\nto five vessels, or 15 percent of the fleet, and\n40 percent of loggerhead interactions were\nattributable to four vessels, or 11 percent of\nthe fleet, she said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Targeting individual vessels allows the fishery to stay open, since most vessels have, at most, only one leatherback interaction and fewer than three loggerhead interactions in a given year, she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vessel limits ensure the burden is borne\nby those few vessels that may need to adjust\ntheir behavior, she continued.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A vessel limit of six loggerheads would\nhave affected just three vessels in the past two\nyears given historical take levels, she said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The leatherback vessel limit would likely\naffect even fewer vessels. She noted that the\naverage number of vessels with a history of\nmore than two leatherback interactions a\nyear was 1.25.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service had considered a leatherback vessel limit of three, but decided it would provide no real conservation benefit, she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martell asked how the service accounted\nfor the potential change in the fishery\u2019s\nbehavior under vessel limits.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe did not accommodate for that. We\njust looked at the numbers of animals that\nwould have been affected,\u201d she replied.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martell again stressed how the scheme\nNFMS proposed lacked incentives for\nfishermen to avoid the turtles. With a vessel\nlimit of six for loggerheads, and a fleetwide\ncap of 36, six vessels could shut down the\nfishery, he also noted.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWouldn\u2019t it be better to send him back\nto port rather than allow him to fish in that\narea until he hits six turtles?\u201d he asked.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Garrett pointed out that the number of times a given vessel interacted with loggerheads six or more times in a single year was pretty infrequent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the Endangered Species Act, the conservation measures contained in the service\u2019s incidental take statements must not \u201calter the basic design, location, scope, duration, or timing of the action\u201d and must involve only minor changes to the action, which in this case is the operation of the shallow-set fishery as proposed by the council. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the SSC meeting, chair Jim Lynch\nasked Garrett why she felt the measures\nin the draft BiOp met that requirement.\n\u201cThis is a pretty big change from what was\nproposed,\u201d he argued.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Garrett replied that the vessel limit measures could allow the fishery to stay open because they only affected vessels with high interaction rates, and those made up \u201ca pretty small percentage of the fleet.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With regard to the measure calling for the implementation within 18 months of a plan to reduce turtle interactions by 25 percent, she said that is an aspirational goal. The service chose 25 percent because \u201cit\u2019s reasonably easy to meet from a variety of sources,\u201d such as using Turtle Watch, a service that tracks the temperature bands preferred by\nthe animals, and dealing with the amount of\ntrailing gear on leatherbacks, she said\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt would be easy enough to take a suite of\nmeasures to reduce mortalities and perhaps\ninteractions,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Hawai\u2018i Longline Association executive director Eric Kingma, who until recently was the council\u2019s National Environmental Policy Act coordinator, the measures proposed by NMFS would, in fact, significantly affect the fishery. He argued that the vessel limits would \u201cremove participants in the fishery to an extent that will not allow the fishery to continue in the future.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
HLA president Sean Martin, a former\ncouncil chair, put it more bluntly: \u201cIf\nNMFS is looking to change fishermen\u2019s\nbehavior, this will do it. It will be to not go\nfishing for swordfish, ever. If NMFS wants\nto end the Hawai\u2018i swordfish fishery, this\nwill do it,\u201d he testified before the council.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martin said he thought the fleet-wide\nhard caps were unnecessary, but that his\norganization would not oppose them,\nfor now. The vessel limits, however, were\nplainly unlawful, he said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dang also pointed out that the vessel\nlimit may not solve anything in those cases\nwhere the high take level is a result of the\ncaptain\u2019s actions. The vessel may be forced\nout for the season, but the captain could\njump onto another boat, he said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With regard to the possible measures to reach the 25 percent take reduction goal, Martin dismissed them as either illegal or impractical. Closing waters east of 140\u00b0W would decimate the fishery, since over 80 percent of it occurs there, and a prohibition on fishing within certain temperature bands would be nearly impossible to enforce, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pronounced the HLA could accept a loggerhead trip limit of five and a leatherback trip limit of three. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The HLA is also taking steps on its own to reduce turtle interactions, he continued, including improving fleet-wide communication and crew training, as well as funding the development of a branch line cutter that could reduce the amount of trailing gear on released turtles, thereby reducing post-hooking mortality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To the council and fishery representatives,\nthe conservation benefit of a leatherback\nvessel limit of two simply wasn\u2019t worth the\ndamage it would cause to the fishery.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Analysis of historical data showed that a vessel limit of two would have resulted in six turtles being saved over the past decade or so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If that rate were to apply to future takes, \u201cin my opinion, it\u2019s a pretty small benefit compared to displacing vessels in the fishery,\u201d council member Mike Goto told Garrett. Goto manages the Honolulu fish auction and is also an HLA board member. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Garrett, the ESA\u2019s requirement that\nagencies take steps to conserve endangered\nspecies forced strict action with regard to\nleatherbacks.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The leatherback population that interacts with the Hawai\u2018i fleet is declining at 5 percent a year, she said, adding, \u201cWe believe that trip limits don\u2019t do anything for leatherback turtles. Probably the biggest problem with trip limits [is that] vessels would still be going back out. A trip limit should address other issues, such as fishing selectivity. … The vessel limit for leatherbacks is very clear what it will do to reduce the catch of leatherback turtles,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The BiOp points out that while the Hawai\u2018i fishery may have only a minor effect on the leatherback population, \u201cNevertheless, more must be done to ensure the recovery of leatherback sea turtles. … NMFS has not investigated the survivability of adult leatherback sea turtles in this\nfishery, and still knows very little about\nthe long term prognosis of those individual\nadult leatherback sea turtles that interact\nwith this fishery. Given our concern for\nthe West Pacific Ocean leatherback sea\nturtle\u2019s status, immediate additional steps\nto help mitigate the effect of the [Hawai\u2018i\nshallow-set longline] fishery on leatherback\nsea turtles are necessary.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Garrett told the council that if it has another model that supports its position that trip limits are superior, it should provide it to NMFS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the council meeting, the agency\u2019s protected species coordinator, Asuka Ishizaki, presented her analysis of the conservation benefits of vessel limits vs. trip limits. She found that trip limits were better for loggerheads, but not leatherbacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similar to Goto\u2019s sentiment, she said that while the vessel limits may save more leatherbacks, they would hardly benefit the species and would have a greater economic impact, especially since the vessels that have had the most turtle interactions over the years also set the most hooks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She suggested that reducing the leatherback post-hooking mortality rate \u2014 currently at 20 percent \u2014 would provide a greater conservation benefit. Adjusting mortality estimates and cutting branch lines just above the hook would go a long way toward achieving that, she argued. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact that the council needed to\nexplore ways to reduce the fishery\u2019s take of\nleatherbacks at all seemed to gall the HLA\u2019s\nKingma. He pointed out that the BiOp itself\nfound that the likelihood the shallow-set\nfishery will significantly affect the turtle\u2019s\npopulation is minuscule. \u201cThere\u2019s a greater\nchance a meteor will strike the earth and kill\nall organisms,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even so, the council ultimately chose\nto be slightly more conservative than the\nHLA in its recommendations regarding\nleatherbacks. While Martin had said he\ncould accept a trip limit of three, the council\ndecided two would be better. According\nIshizaki\u2019s analysis, that stricter limit would\nhave avoided 23 leatherback interactions\nbetween 2004 and 2018, while the higher\nlimit would have avoided only three.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014Teresa Dawson\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What the National Marine Fisheries Service had proposed was simply unacceptable to Roger Dang, whose family’s longline vessels make up a significant portion of the Hawai‘i swordfish fleet. He likened it to the NBA limiting LeBron James to just two … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,8,453],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-11241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-endangered-species","category-fisheries","category-may-2019","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11241","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=11241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}