Letters | 2-28-15

Plenty fish? What’s the truth?

Hauhili ka ai a ke kawelea … the kawelea takes the hook and tangles the lines. A confusing situation. This ancient Hawaiian saying applies to the argument about whether we have plenty fish or not. Some are saying yes, some are saying no. How can we know what the true situation is?

One way is to ask our kupuna. Francis Ruddle has been fishing since he was a little boy at Paniau 70 years ago. Uncle Francis says “for every fish you see now, there were seven before.”

Alan Friedlander of University of Hawaii at Manoa has studied this, and found that many of our reef fish have declined to one quarter or less than our ancestors found. The trend is continuing: a long-term study in Puako by the Department of Aquatic Resources found that the fish numbers in that area have been cut in half over the last 30 years alone.

Kekaulike Tomich of Kaupulehu, Kona, wrote this a few years ago in West Hawaii Today: “I am only 20 years old and in my short life I have seen our fish populations decimated.”

The long-term trend is clear. There have been some recoveries in protected areas, and occasionally we have a year with many juvenile fish surviving, but the overall direction is indisputably downward.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources seems to not be concerned. It promotes the notion that what we are doing, taking and taking without restoring, is sustainable. What does this mean?

One of my diver friends said “sustainable means can’t get any worse.” That’s a joke, but this idea that no better than sustainable at depleted levels is OK is being used to justify keeping things at our current low numbers, and not changing our ways.

Why does this matter? Wouldn’t it be OK to just settle for no worse than today? Is sustainable enough?

The answer is that one-quarter of normal or worse is not healthy for the reef. Many of our wild reef fish eat algae growing on the coral. If there are not enough of them to do this, the algae spreads and smothers the coral. The coral dies, and the amount of coral area declines. Then, the fish numbers decline further, to match the coral area. You can see this already on many reef areas on Oahu and Maui.

Our parrotfish are the source of our white sand beaches. If we take too many, or too many of the big ones, there is less coral sand produced to replenish our beaches, so they shrink in size.

Another reason restoring normal fish numbers matters is that our population is growing rapidly, while the area of coral reef is limited and not growing bigger. That is where we do our subsistence and recreational fishing.

The next time someone tries to convince you that “we got plenty fish, no problem,” or that sustainable, at one-quarter of normal, is good enough, remember what Uncle Francis said.

We can do better. E malama i na koa o ke kai.

Mel Malinowski

Chairman of the South Kohala Reef Alliance

South Kohala