May 6, 2020 — About 145 commercial longline fishing boats are based in Honolulu and the group that represents them say they are facing a financial disaster.
Each year, Hawaii’s fishing industry brings in about a $100 million worth of fish on a wholesale basis. That’s according to Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association.
He says that in the last eight weeks as demand from restaurants has plunged, revenue losses for longline fishing have run about 60 percent over that time period.
And Kingma says this is not just a short-term issue..