Fishing ban extension sought
By James Gonser
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer
The National Marine Fisheries Service wants to extend the moratorium on harvesting seamount groundfish from the Hancock Seamount in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands for six more years to protect what remains of the pelagic armorhead fish.
"It is a sad story," said Lewis Van Fossen, Resource Management Specialist, Sustainable Fisheries Division of NMFS, of the perchlike fish nearly wiped out by Japanese and Russian trawlers in the 1970s and '80s.
"It is kind of like the buffalo, and nobody really knows about it. The pelagic armorhead are at 0.1 percent of their original biomass."
The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council recommends extending the moratorium in effect since 1986 to Aug. 31, 2010.
The armorhead has never been part of domestic U.S. fisheries, but a portion of them live inside the Exclusive Economic Zone and thus need protection, Van Fossen said.
The juveniles live in the open ocean and return to the seamounts to breed. Knowing where and when to find them made them an easy catch for foreign fishermen, he said.
Armorhead have very bony heads and a nice oily flesh, Van Fossen said. They are sometimes prey for the Hawaiian monk seal.
The only area in U.S. waters for the fishery is southeast Hancock Seamount, 1,400 nautical miles northwest of Honolulu.
The management council's Bottomfish Plan Team considers the armorhead an overfished stock that has not recovered.
"The council is trying to manage the resource," Van Fossen explained. "We are supposed to conserve our fishery resources and not exploit them wherever possible."
He said there would not be a domestic fishery for armorhead until the stock recovers, which could be decades away.
Comments on the plan must be received by tomorrow, e-mailed to 0648AR85.PIR@noaa .gov or mailed to William L. Robinson, Regional Administrator, Pacific Islands Region, NOAA Fisheries, 1601 Kapi'olani Blvd., Suite 1110, Honolulu, HI 96814.
For more information, call Van Fossen at 973-2937.
Reach James Gonser at jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com.
