More Fish in the Sea

Ways to help kokua the ocean

Posted on March 9th, 2009 by Hannah Bernard in Take Action

r Cjj

Here’s one way you can help kokua the ocean so we can all have More Fish in the Sea!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 7:52 am and is filed under Take Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Ways to help kokua the ocean”

Karen Chun says:

May 6, 2009 at 11:15 am

Interesting letter in the Maui News today. Even the tourists are noticing our fish are decimated:

I have been a frequent tourist to Hawaii since 1983 and usually go to the Big Island, but I visited Maui last week. I was shocked to see how degraded and suffocated your coral reefs have become in the past three years, and saw no apparent effort to stop the damage.

And where are the fish? They are few and small, and I wonder when they’ll be gone entirely. I swam about four hours every day, April 20-27, on the Kihei side, and saw these problems all the way from Ahihi-Kinau to Charley Young Beach.

Unfortunately, I saw the same problems last December when I stayed at Napili for a week and swam 3-4 miles a day, eventually covering the inshore reef all the way from Honolua to just below the highway tunnel – much cloudier water, fewer fish, and reefs covered with the same silt (from golf courses?) which added up to, ultimately, a depressing trip.

I am so sorry to say that I won’t be back, and I will encourage all my friends to go to the Big Island instead. It’s heartbreaking, because I have always loved Maui and the aloha of its people. Best wishes, and mahalo for the happy memories.

Sherrill Futrell
Davis, Calif.
More Fish says:

May 19, 2009 at 4:09 pm

Letter to the editor by Pat Borge reproduced here:

I want to thank Russell Sparks of the state Division of Aquatic Resources for his efforts to protect our reefs and reef fish at Kahekili in West Maui (The Maui News, May 6).

We all understand that while development run-off and injection wells that damage the reefs are outside of DAR’s control, the issuing of commercial fishing permits is the responsibility of the Division of Aquatic Resources.

Which do you think would be more beneficial to our reefs? The banning of the recreational fisherman who take only small amounts for home use or the commercial aquarium fisherman who, with permits, use lay nets to catch every living thing on our reefs without limits? Or the commercial fisherman who is literally permitted to use scuba tanks to catch manini, palani and uhu at night without limit? They fill coolers with these sleeping fish, the same kinds of fish Sparks is trying to protect.

Why not have bag limits for fishermen, ban the commercial aquarium fishermen and stop issuing permits for this destructive practice. I witnessed the amount of fish these commercial aquarium fisherman took over a period of five days in a week.

After being stopped the first day at La Perouse by Department of Land and Natural Resources enforcement officers, they returned to catch every possible fish for the next week with a permit issued by the Division of Aquatic Resources in hand. It’s a shame.

Pat Borge
Makena