Saving Seafood

Council to consider fishing rules in marine monument

September 20, 2022 — Possible changes to fishing regulations within the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument could allow cultural fishing practices, although such changes are also viewed as “harmful ” to Native Hawaiian traditions.

This week the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, or Wespac, in its, will consider options in a list of alternative commercial and noncommercial fishing regulations in the monument.

The Papahanaumokuakea monument, located around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, is one of the largest fully protected conservation areas in the world, covering around 580, 000 square miles of ocean.

There has been no fishing activity in the monument since former President Barack Obama established a “monument expansion area (MEA )” in 2016 that prohibited commercial fishing. Noncommercial fishing is allowed, but there isn’t a permitting process in place to give fishers entry into those waters to fish.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has since initiated a process to consider designating the monument as a national marine sanctuary, and Wespac was given an opportunity to draft fishing regulations for it.

Most of the alternative regulations under consideration would codify the MEA boundaries and ban commercial fishing, so much of the discussion about them has revolved around the establishment of a permitting and reporting system for various noncommercial activities, including fishing for cultural, recreational and research purposes.

Read the full article at Yahoo News

First Hawaiian fishery achieves MSC certification

September 19, 2022 — The Hawaii Longline Association’s (HLA) swordfish, bigeye, and yellowfin tuna fishery, has achieved Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification, making it the first fishery in the U.S. state of Hawaii to achieve MSC certification.

“HLA is proud to receive the certification as it is recognition of the fleet’s stringent management and monitoring regime. We believe our fleet produces the best-quality and highest level of monitored tuna in the world. We look forward to working with MSC, WPRFMC, NMFS and others on the continued and long-term production of sustainably and responsibly harvested fish landed by our fleet,” HLA Executive Director Eric Kingma said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

HAWAII: Hawaii Longline Association certified for sustainable fishing

September 14, 2022 — The Hawaii Longline Association has achieved a globally recognized certification for sustainable fishing by the Marine Stewardship Council.

The MSC Fisheries Standard, which the council says is the world’s most recognized benchmark for sustainability, follows a 16-month certification process that assesses if a fishery is well-managed, with three core principles it has to meet: sustainable fish stocks, minimizing environmental impact and effective fisheries management.

Read the full article at Star Advertiser 

Mission to remove tons of garbage from marine sanctuary underway

September 14, 2022 –A million-dollar mission to remove garbage from an important marine sanctuary is underway.

Kevin O’Brien, founder of Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project, and his crew of 16 are preparing for their fifth mission to clean the Papahanaumokuakea Marine Sanctuary in the Northern Pacific, more than 1,000 miles away from Honolulu.

“There’s the main Hawaiian islands,” O’Brien explained pointing at a map. “Big Island, Kauai — and then we’re headed up here. This little string of tiny dots is Papahanaumokuakea.”

They depart Thursday for the month-long expedition.

According to O’Brien, they’ll likely return with garbage weighing as much as a small commercial jet airplane. He said it will fill three shipping containers and be piled in a huge mountain of garbage on the deck.

Read the full article at KHON

NTSB: Electrical fault suspected in Hawaii longliner fire

September 9, 2022 — An electrical fault likely triggered a wheelhouse fire that doomed the Hawaii-based longliner Blue Dragon in November 2021, according to a new report from the National Transportation Safety Board.

The agency’s findings stress two major “lessons learned” from the Blue Dragon case: The danger of substandard electrical systems, and the value of personal locator beacons (PLBs) as a safety supplement to emergency position indicating radio beacons (EPIRBs).

Both types of beacons played a critical role in the survival and speedy rescue of the Blue Dragon crew after the fire cut off their wheelhouse communications and knocked out vessel power, the report notes.

The 85-foot steel vessel departed Honolulu Oct. 25 with a crew of six and a National Marine Fisheries Service observer, to fish for swordfish and tuna. At around 11:30 p.m. Nov. 9 the crew was preparing to retrieve the gear about 350 miles off the coast of California, as the owner-captain napped in the wheelhouse, according to the NTSB report narrative.

The observer entered the wheelhouse, discovered a fire burning under the controls console and woke the captain. The observer discharged a dry chemical fire extinguisher into the fire, alerted the crew, and a deckhand arrived with another fire extinguisher.

“The deckhand described the forward bulkhead as being on fire all the way to the overhead of the wheelhouse,” the NTSB report states. “When the remaining crew came to assist, they opened the wheelhouse doors, which, according to the NMFS observer, appeared to fan the flames. While the crew was attempting to fight the fire, the NMFS observer and a deckhand retrieved the 10-person life raft and the vessel’s GNSS-enabled EPIRB from above the wheelhouse. They carried the life raft aft to the vessel’s stern and deployed it into the water.”

The observer went to his berth to retrieve a bag with his NMFS-issued survival suit, EPIRB, PLB, and satellite emergency notification device (SEND), a Garmin inReach. He used the SOS button on the Garmin and texted a “fire” message, manually activated the Blue Dragon’s EPIRB and his own PLB.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Hawai’i Longliners Partner with Researchers to Chart Marlin Migration in the Pacific

August 10, 2022 — The following was released by the Pacific Islands Fisheries Group and the Large Pelagics Research Center:

The most comprehensive effort to date to characterize striped marlin (Kajikia audax) movements in the Central North Pacific has revealed unexpectedly broad movements among tracked specimens, with some traveling to the east coast of Australia or halfway to California from their dispersal points around Hawai‘i.

The original research, funded by a NOAA Saltonstall-Kennedy Program grant, was conducted by scientists associated with the Hawai‘i-based Pacific Islands Fisheries Group (PIFG) and the Large Pelagics Research Center (LPRC) in Massachusetts. It was recently published across two papers in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

The papers’ findings could inform future fisheries management measures affecting striped marlin, at a time when K. audax – a top incidental catch of the longline fishery – is considered overfished in the Western and Central North Pacific.

“There is a major lack of information on the movement and ecology of striped marlin in the Central North Pacific,” said co-author and LPRC Director Molly E. Lutcavage.

“The last dedicated study of striped marlin in the Central North Pacific was almost two decades ago, and involved only a handful of marlin captured by recreational, or sport, fishers.”

Lead author Chi Hin Lam, Clayward Tam and Lutcavage partnered with commercial vessels belonging to the Hawaii Longline Association to deploy 31, $4,000 popup archival satellite tags (PSATs) on striped marlin between 2016 and 2019. Tam’s cooperative, science-based relationships with skilled longline captains made the partnerships successful.

“This is another example of the Hawaii longline vessels playing a significant role in cooperative research with leading scientists,” said Eric Kingma, Executive Director of the Hawai’i Longline Association (HLA). “We have a long history of scientific collaboration and our fleet has served as a research platform for decades. HLA congratulates the authors on their important findings and looks forward to working with PIFG and other scientists on future fisheries management and marine conservation research.”

The PSATs recorded vast horizontal movements throughout the Pacific Ocean, challenging previously-held notions that striped marlin are highly localized in their regional, coastal aggregations.

The tagged marlin, which were tracked for up to one year, routinely crossed multiple fisheries management boundaries and ocean features like seamounts and fracture zones.

One tagged marlin, PG01, made a trans-Pacific journey not previously observed for its species. Having been tagged in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, PG01 eventually made its way thousands of miles to the central east coast of Australia.

“We didn’t expect a tag showing up off Australia,” Lam said. “I would say that was 50% luck and 100% hard work. Consulting with our captains and tagging partners docked at Pier 38 in Honolulu and providing first-hand training for scientific tagging paid off.”

The tags also showed the striped marlin spent 38 and 81% of their day and night, respectively, in the top five meters of the water column.

The papers’ horizontal and vertical movement data is important for fisheries managers and stock assessment scientists, who require timely, high-quality biological and habitat data to inform population modeling and stock status.

Such data also helps identify best practices to support sustainable harvest, which could include mandated live release and time-area restrictions.

“Longline fisheries targeting tuna and swordfish benefit from any scientific information that helps to reduce unintended interaction with non-targeted catch like marlin, while pursuing economic returns on targeted catch of tuna and swordfish,” Lutcavage said.

In addition to monitoring tagged fish, researchers collected fin clips from Hawai‘i-landed striped marlin. Genetic analyses of 55 striped marlin were assigned to two genetic groups: Australia, New Zealand and Hawai‘i (19 individuals) and Hawai‘i alone (36 individuals), suggesting the Hawai‘i-based longline fleet interacted with individuals from multiple populations.

Lam, Tam and Lutcavage believe more PSAT efforts and genetics analyses are called for, to fill in the scientific gaps underscored by their latest striped marlin research. Improved technology and knowledge of the species’ biology, physiology and life history will better inform management measures for the sustainable harvest of bigeye tuna and swordfish, and a reduction of incidental catch of non-target species like the striped marlin.

Nearly 100,000 pounds of debris and ghost nets removed from reefs off Hawaii by freedivers

August 4, 2022 — A team of free divers removed nearly 100,000 pounds of debris and ghost nets from reefs and beaches off of Hawaii.

Team members with the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project (PMDP), a Hawaii-based non-profit organization, returned to Honolulu on Saturday aboard the 185-ft ship M/V Imua cleared 97,295 pounds of marine debris — including 86,000 pounds of ghost nets — from reefs and beaches of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (Northwestern Hawaiian Islands).

Ghost nets, or large, tangled masses of discarded fishing nets, get caught on shallow coral reefs of the Hawaiian Islands, which smother and break living coral colonies. The nets also threaten endangered marine wildlife.

Read the full article at KITV

HAWAII: Day without ahi affects Honolulu restaurants and customers

July 25, 2022 — A Manoa Poke Shop is back in business after an Ahi shortage forced them to close for a day earlier this week. Restaurants and wholesalers tell KITV4 no Ahi ships came in on Thursday.

Off the Hook Poke Market was deliciously busy Saturday. The same cannot be said for their Thursday.

The President of the Hawaii Longline Fishing Association, which represents commercial fishermen, is quick to dispel rumors Hurricane Darby had anything to do with the drought. Ahi fishing has been having a down year, but he thinks something else may be at work.

Still the fisherman, Off the Hook, and it’s customers are all optimistic. “By nature fishermen are positive thinking when it comes to fishing. the next fish is always going to be on the next hook,” said Martin.

Read the article at KITV