Longliners set to resume fishing
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
When longline swordfish fishing returns to Hawai'i next month after more than four years, it's hoped that the impact on sea turtles will be minimal.
Longline fishers will return to fewer fishing days, federal observers on board at all times and strict limits on the number of turtles that can be snagged alive or dead — 16 in the case of leather-back turtles, 17 for loggerhead turtles.
Once that cap has been reached, swordfish fishing for the entire fleet will be halted immediately for the remainder of the year.
The impact of these changes on the returning fleet remains unclear. News yesterday that swordfish fishing in California waters will soon be banned and the state's dozen-boat longline swordfish fleet could be headed to Hawai'i has further clouded the issue.
The main complaint against longline fishers, who use miles of monofilament and hooks that reach depths of 50 to 1,000 feet, is that the hooks snare turtles and sometimes birds in addition to fish.
After swordfish fishing was banned in Hawaiian waters in 1999, Hawai'i longline fisher Minh Dang converted all eight of his boats to tuna fishing. Now he says he'd like to return to catching swordfish.
But he says he can't know if it will be economically feasible because, as yet, nobody knows how many boats will be fishing here for swordfish. While some will return to catching swordfish, others will stay with tuna fishing.
The total number of "set" days for all swordfish fishing here will be restricted to 2,120 sets a year (a set equals one day's fishing per boat). That figure represents roughly half the average number of annual sets all swordfish boats used before 1999.
But since Dang doesn't know how many boats will be dividing up the 2,120 sets, he can't know how many "sets" his boats will get. So he isn't sure what he'll do.
For now, longliners are happy but cautious, environmentalists are upset and the federal agency that oversees the Hawai'i fishing region says it has put together a good plan.
"We won," said Scott Barrows, general manager of the Hawai'i Longline Association. "And we did it by taking the high road. We had a problem and we wanted to solve it. To do that you've got to work with people."
Barrows said his group has worked with federal officials to come up with a workable solution to the turtle dilemma. In addition to the limits and severe penalties, that solution involves using circular hooks and a type of bait that reduces turtle bycatch by 60 percent to 90 percent.
"There are a lot of people who are worried about turtles — and rightly so," Barrows said.
But Paul Achitoff, managing attorney for the Hawai'i office of Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental public interest law firm, says the timing of the California ruling, which takes effect April 12, and the reinstating of swordfish fishing in Hawai'i on April 1 is no coincidence.
"It appears to be part of a coordinated effort to simply move the swordfish longline vessels from California back to Hawai'i," he said. "Many of those vessels were fishing out of Honolulu until swordfish longline fishing was banned. ... So, they relocated to California.
"Basically, they're just saying: 'OK, guys, you can't fish here anymore but you can go back where you started.'"
Achitoff says the outcome will be a negative for endangered sea turtles.
Paul Dalzell, senior scientist with the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, a federal agency that oversees the management of the Pacific region, sees things differently.
Because of rigid limits on interaction with turtles and strict caps on the number of fishing days allowed, fishers will be forced to take turtle safety seriously, said Dalzell. They will also be aware of the risks involved.
"It's a gamble," he said. "We could open up the fishery, and they could all go out and get in two weeks or a month of fishing, and that's it."
It's a necessary gamble, added Dalzell, because it gives fishers a strong incentive to minimize contact with sea turtles.
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
