Molokai community seeks subsistence fishing designation

WAILUKU, Maui (AP) — Residents of Molokai are seeking protected status for a subsistence fishing area on its coastline.

The residents have monitored the north shore for more than 20 years and are pushing for a community-based subsistence fishing area designation form the state, reported The Maui News. Such a designation wouldn’t prevent fishing and gathering, but it would place restrictions on catching the most threatened species.

Molokai homesteader Kilia Purdy-Avelino takes her homeschooled children to the north shore to see the declining marine life every Wednesday. She said kids might think there seem to be plenty of fish, so she enlists the help of longtime conservationist Kelson “Uncle Mac” Poepoe.

“When you get to see it from a kupuna’s eyes that was there 40 years before us, they can see the depletion of the fish,” Purdy-Avelino said. “What we see might look like plenty to us, but we have nothing to compare it with … If we wait 40 years down the road to realize that the fish and our resources are depleting, it’s going to be too late.”

In 1993, such old-timers on Molokai noticed that resources were declining, according to Molokai resident and University of Hawaii ethnic studies professor Davianna McGregor. Then-Gov. John Waihee put together a task force to survey residents and found that 28 percent of Molokai families’ diets came from subsistence activity, including fishing, hunting and growing food. For Native Hawaiian families, it was 38 percent.

A recent series of public meetings on Molokai and the islands of Oahu and Maui have paved the way for an official rulemaking process to begin. Supporters on Maui said Wednesday that the time is ripe for a designation.

“We’re at a critical transition of stewardship,” said McGregor, adding that the subsistence fishing designation will help the next generation address the challenge.