HFACT Facts:<\/b> The newly minted Hawai`i Fishermen\u2019s Alliance for Conservation and Tradition made headlines in April 2013 when it petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to remove the North Pacific humpback whales from the federal list of endangered species. Its president, Philip Fernandez, told Environment Hawai`i at the time that his group had no affiliation at all with the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, despite the presence on the HFACT board of two individuals closely allied with Wespac.<\/p>\n
Less than six months after HFACT\u2019s incorporation, on September 1, 2013, Fernandez received a grant from NMFS for $14,100. Under grant terms, Fernandez was to educate \u201cmarine users on the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Marine Sanctuaries Act \u2026 and the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act.\u201d One means by which this was to be done was through creation of \u201cweb-based tools to assist fishers,\u201d including \u201ca library of existing major laws\u201d on the website.<\/p>\n
The grant term expired on August 31. As of September, HFACT and Fernandez had two websites up and running. One, hfact.wordpress.com, had a \u201clibrary\u201d link, with no entries. The home page had two links to the same law (\u201cThe Federal Billfish Conservation Act\u201d and \u201cThe Billfish Conservation Act\u201d). The other, hfact.org, had no link to any federal or state act relating to fishing. It did, however, discuss why \u201cexpanding the Pacific Islands marine national monument [is] wrong on all fronts,\u201d with links to no fewer than four Wespac statements on the subject.<\/p>\n
Cesspool Phaseout:<\/b> Describing cesspools as \u201clittle more than holes in the ground\u201d and \u201can outmoded 15th century technology,\u201d the state Department of Health has proposed new rules that are intended to phase out the use of cesspools. Hawai`i has some 90,000 cesspools, the DOH states, and each year, approximately 800 new cesspools are installed.<\/p>\n
But the proposed rules, which would require cesspools to be replaced with approved septic systems whenever a property is sold, have generated heated criticism, much of it from organizations representing real-estate brokers. They generally argued that the new rules would create a hardship for sellers, would not achieve the desired goal within any reasonable time frame, and would discourage development (by prohibiting individual septic systems for developments of 16 or more subdivided lots).<\/p>\n
The public comment period on the rules ended October 17.<\/p>\n
Take Limits on False Killer Whales:<\/b> The National Marine Fisheries Service has approved final rules authorizing takes of three marine mammals by the Hawai`i longline fleet: sperm whales, humpback whales, and false killer whales.<\/p>\n
Interactions with all three species are infrequent, and in the case of the first two, there is little concern that any harm to animals resulting from interactions with longline fishing gear will have an impact on the overall health of the species.<\/p>\n
In the case of the population of Main Hawaiian Islands insular false killer whales, however, which has been federally listed as endangered, the number of individuals is so low \u2013 hovering around 150 at most \u2013 that serious injury to even one animal may harm the population\u2019s chance of recovery.<\/p>\n
As expected, however, NMFS authorized the take of .3 of the MHI false killer whales per year \u2013 or one death or serious injury of a protected false killer whale every three years. It did so even though, by its own admission, preliminary data for recent years indicate that the level of takes by the fishery may be exceeding the level of injury that can be sustained by the population.<\/p>\n
NMFS justified the allowed level of take with the argument that protective measures put in place in 2013, intended to reduce the impact of the fishery on the false killer whales, will have the desired effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cNMFS believes that the measures in place, coupled with the [False Killer Whale Take Reduction Team] process, provide a meaningful, adaptive management tool with which to quickly monitor, identify, and respond to any unanticipated longline fishery impacts to the Main Hawaiian Islands false killer whale population,\u201d it stated in the final rule, published in the Federal Register on October 16.<\/p>\n
Volume 25, Number 5 November 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HFACT Facts: The newly minted Hawai`i Fishermen’s Alliance for Conservation and Tradition made headlines in April 2013 when it petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to remove the North Pacific humpback whales from the federal list of endangered species. Its … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,321],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fisheries","category-marine","category-november-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6083","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=6083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}