Saving Seafood

HAWAII: Suisan evaluates its sourcing policies

November 1, 2016 — A September Associated Press report regarding labor conditions of foreign workers on Honolulu fishing boats has prompted many in the industry to review or reasses their own sourcing practices.

On the Big Island, Suisan undertook an evaluation of its policies.

The retailer purchases all of its seafood from local fishermen and does not buy from longline boats, but wanted to “reassure the public that these are our fishermen here, and you don’t have to worry about that issue,” said vice president and general manager Kyle Kawano.

The Associated Press report last month found abuses of basic labor practices by some longline boats in Hawaii’s commercial fishing fleet. A federal loophole allows foreign crews to work on the vessels but they are not legally allowed to enter the country and cannot leave the boats.

Since then a new crew contract was developed by the Hawaii Longline Association that will be required of all boats who want to sell at the Honolulu fish auction. That contract is not federally enforceable by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, the industry will still be self-regulating.

Suisan president Glenn Hashimoto said that one of the boats Suisan works with employs two foreign workers who are relatives of the captain’s wife. He said they each have contracts like their American counterparts.

“They’ve been verified,” Kawano said.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than 80 percent of Hawaii’s commercial fish landings are from longline boats. Troll fishing comprises just over 10 percent.

Handline and seamount boat fishing account for 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.

An undated fisheries overview by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which manages fish stocks, notes that handline-caught tuna plays a “significant role in the local tuna supply, particularly on the Big Island.”

Suisan sources 72 percent of its fish from day boats, which typically spend one to two days at sea, while 28 percent comes from seamount boats, which spend about a week at sea.

Read the full story at West Hawaii Today

HAWAII: Fishermen Catch 11% More Bigeye Tuna Despite Overfishing Status

October 27, 2016 — U.S. commercial fishermen hauled in 2.5 million pounds more bigeye tuna last year than they did in 2014, landing almost all of it out of Honolulu, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

Bigeye landings in 2015 totaled 25.8 million pounds, an increase of nearly 11 percent compared to last year. 

And that tuna was worth a bit more too, averaging $3.17 per pound in 2015, up from $3.08 in 2014, according to the most recent Fisheries of the United States report by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Overall, U.S. commercial fishermen landed 32 million pounds of seafood last year operating out of Honolulu, the 27th highest nationally by weight. 

But that seafood — mostly bigeye tuna, which fetches top dollar in local sashimi markets and high-end restaurants — was worth $97 million, making it the sixth-highest catch in the country by value. 

Bigeye tuna continues to be subject to overfishing, however. It’s one of 28 stocks on the federal overfishing list. Only 9 percent of fishing stocks monitored by the feds are subject to overfishing, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Officials say they cannot enforce Hawaii fishing contracts

October 21st, 2016 — Federal officials cannot enforce a contract being proposed by the commercial fishing industry as a solution to concerns about foreign fishing crews in Hawaii, leaving the industry responsible for enforcing its own rules.

Federal and state officials met with vessel owners, captains and representatives from the fleet Thursday at a pier in Honolulu.

The normally private quarterly meeting was opened to media and lawmakers to discuss conditions uncovered in an Associated Press investigation that found some foreign fishermen had been confined to vessels for years.

U.S. Custom and Border Protection “does not review contracts, we just make sure that these fishermen … are employed on the vessel,” said Ferdinand Jose, Custom and Border Protection supervisory officer. “Whatever you negotiate … is between you folks, not us.”

The Hawaii Longline Association, which represents fishing boat owners, created a universal contract that will be required on any boat wanting to sell fish in the state’s seafood auction.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WGEM NBC

Hawaii lawmakers hold public meeting on foreign fishermen

October 20, 2016 — HONOLULU — Hawaii lawmakers held a meeting to discuss conditions in the Hawaii longline fishing fleet and heard from an observer who described what it’s like to live on the boats.

“The worst conditions would be no toilet, no shower, no hot water,” said Ashley Watts, a former observer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who spent weeks at sea with various boats over seven years at the federal agency. “You have a cold water deck hose as a shower…the water tastes like iron.”

The meeting on Wednesday followed an Associated Press investigation that found some fishermen have been confined to vessels for years.

A federal loophole allows the foreign men to work but exempts them from most basic labor protections. Many foreign fishermen have to stay on the boats because they are not legally allowed to enter the United States.

“It’s hard to sleep, because every day we don’t do something is another night that some folks are suffering,” state Rep. Kaniela Ing said. “It’s very frustrating to just hear people just kind of punt or say maybe over time we can find a solution.”

Ing and other lawmakers pressed representatives from the fishing industry and government agencies about what can be done to increase oversight and improve conditions in the industry. Ing asked Jim Cook, board member of the Hawaii Longline Association, whether fishing boat captains could provide copies of contracts between fishermen and boat captains to the state, and Cook said he believed that would be possible.

The Hawaii Longline Association, which represents fishing boat owners, created a universal crew contract that will be required on any boat wanting to sell fish in the state’s seafood auction.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Fight Over Papahanaumokuakea Expansion Isn’t Over

October 20, 2016 — Hawaii’s commercial fishing industry leaders are not finished fighting the fourfold expansion of a U.S. marine monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

President Barack Obama signed a proclamation in August to make Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument the world’s largest protected natural area after several months of intense lobbying for and against the proposal.

Now the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which actively opposed the expansion, wants the government to study the potential effects and find ways to alleviate them.

Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council Chair Edwin Ebisui, left, and Executive Director Kitty Simonds, at Wespac’s meeting last week.

“The impacts to the Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities as a result of monument expansion are considerable,” Council Chair Edwin Ebisui Jr. said in a statement Friday. “The Council will write to the President about these and request the Department of Commerce to mitigate them.”

Wespac sets fisheries management policies for a 1.5-million-square-mile area and advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on how to minimize bycatch, protect habitat and prevent overfishing.

The latest wave of opposition to the monument rolled in earlier this month at the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee meeting in Honolulu. 

New committee member Ray Hilborn, a prominent marine biologist from the University of Washington, railed against large marine protected areas.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Researchers find abundant life in Hawaii’s twilight zone

October 5, 2016 — HONOLULU — Coral reefs in Hawaii’s oceanic twilight zone, where light still penetrates and photosynthesis occurs, are abundant and host a wide variety of life, a new study shows.

A paper published Tuesday in the journal PeerJ revealed that some of these ecosystems off the Hawaiian archipelago, particularly an area off Maui, are the most extensive deep-water reefs ever recorded.

The ecosystems, found in waters from 100 to 500 feet deep, host more than twice the amount of unique Hawaiian fish species as their shallow-water counterparts, and they are much more extensive than previously known.

“What is unique about this study is how vast and dense the coral cover is,” Richard Pyle, a Bishop Museum researcher and lead author of the publication, told The Associated Press.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KSL

How Foreign Crews Are Able To Work Aboard US Fishing Boats

September 22, 2016 — Foreign crew members reportedly working in slave-like conditions for monthly wages as low as $350 would not have found their way onto Hawaii’s longline fishing boats without an exemption carved into the law almost 30 years ago, according to longtime industry leaders, federal officials and government records.

Today, almost all the vessels in the longline fleet have entirely foreign crews.

It wasn’t always that way.

As the Cold War was coming to an end in the late 1980s, there was a push to “Americanize” the country’s fishing fleets by instituting requirements similar to those imposed under the Jones Act on vessels engaged in coastwise trade — namely, that U.S.-flagged ships be built in the U.S. and crewed by U.S. citizens.

Congress passed a bipartisan bill to that effect, and President Ronald Reagan signed it in 1988 as the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Anti-Reflagging Act.

But the legislation exempted commercial fishermen fishing for highly migratory species, such as tuna and swordfish, from the law’s requirement that U.S. citizens comprise at least 75 percent of each crew.

At about the same time, the longline industry — then comprised of just a few dozen vessels — and more established purse seiners were leaving the West Coast to set up shop in Hawaii and Pacific Island territories. 

They left because of depleted stocks and, in the case of purse seiners, pressure to stop killing so many dolphins. 

The purse seiners were setting their huge nets, up to 500 yards deep, around schools of tuna near pods of dolphins. It created a national controversy that led to new restrictions and “dolphin-safe” tuna.

The longline boats, which catch fish by extending miles of line with thousands of hooks, initially remained strictly crewed by U.S. citizens. This changed as the fleet grew and it became harder to find local residents willing to work on the boats. Fuel prices also soared after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, adding to operational costs.

This spurred the longliners to take advantage of the foreign-crew exemption that had been pushed by members of Congress from the West Coast who were looking after the purse seiners’ interests, said Jim Cook, who co-owns several longline fishing vessels, a marine supply store and fish restaurant at Pier 38 in Honolulu. 

“It slowly infiltrated our fleet,” he said.

The longline industry now includes roughly 140 vessels, nearly all of which are ported in Honolulu, and most have entirely foreign crews, according to industry leaders and federal officials.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Stricter standards for Hawaii’s longline fishing fleet

September 20, 2016 — More oversight and regulations are requested by outside groups and the industry itself.

After reports of slavery and unsafe working conditions, the industry takes steps to reel in problem boats and protect contract workers.

Unlike regular jobs, the fishing day ends when all the lines are back in, recovering broken lines, or hauling in completely full ones, making the long days even longer.

“Fishing is a brutal industry,” said Jim Cook, Hawaii Longline Association. “We have the highest fatality rate of anyone in the industry. We have working hours that the average person couldn’t come to grips with.”

After facing allegations of forced labor and poor working conditions on some boats, the Hawaii Longline Fishing Industry hopes to set standards for all crews to follow, including inspections of boats, questionnaires of workers to make sure conditions are safe, and proper documents; that includes a standardized crew contract.

If not come October 1st, they won’t be allowed to sell their catch at the Honolulu Fish Auction.

“We want you to show us your crew contracts, your I-95 & passports, prior to unloading, and if you don’t – you don’t get to unload,” said Cook.

The changes won’t shorten the long hours of fishing or hard work involved, but will make set standards for the industry.

“If there are outliers out there in this community, bad actors, we’re going to discover them. We’re going to find them,” said Cook.

Read the full story at KITV

Fishing industry pushes back following questions about labor practices

September 15, 2016 — HONOLULU — Allegations of harsh treatment of workers in Hawaii’s longline fishing fleet have made headlines nationally.

Now, the industry is defending itself, one day after a grocery store chain stopped buying tuna from Hawaii’s fish auction.

There are 140 longline boats and 700 fishermen in Hawaii’s fishing fleet. The undocumented workers’ employment is legal.

“It’s a very in-demand job for them,” Hawaii Longline Association president Sean Martin said.

University of Hawaii professor Uli Kozok interprets for Indonesian fishermen. He’s heard complaints of physical abuse aboard the boats.

“They’re quite a few stories that I’ve heard where fishermen were beaten by the captain or by the first officer,” he said.

He said fishermen complain of insufficient food and third-world working conditions.

Martin thinks the allegations are unfounded.

“It’s a long ways from slave labor and human trafficking,” he said.

He insists the fishermen are treated fairly and humanely.

“The idea that there’s these abuses going on and nobody knows about it and they haven’t been reported — I can’t buy it,” he said.

Immigration attorney Clare Hanusz helped a foreign fisherman who sustained a serious eye injury.  He claimed his captain refused to take him to the doctor.

“So I asked the man could you go and show me what kind of medication that you had been given. He went back on the boat and came back with a vial of Visine,” she said.

The fishermen sign contracts to work for $500 a month.

Read the full story at Hawaii News Now