Hawaiians set the model for sustainable aquaculture, with traditional fish ponds, a Sierra Club member said Wednesday evening. Hawaiians set the model for sustainable aquaculture, with traditional fish ponds, a Sierra Club member said Wednesday evening. ADVERTISING “They didn’t use
Hawaiians set the model for sustainable aquaculture, with traditional fish ponds, a Sierra Club member said Wednesday evening.
“They didn’t use electricity,” Sierra Club Marine Action Team member Dave Raney said during a presentation at the West Hawaii Civic Center. “They didn’t use pumps, they didn’t use plastic. They used gravity. The Hawaiians didn’t have to add fish feed into their operations. It was there.”
But even trying to restore and build such fish ponds around the state run into bureaucratic hurdles, Raney added.
He’s looking into ways to promote sustainable aquaculture, while keeping a critical eye on open ocean aquaculture projects. Nationally, 84 percent of the seafood people eat is imported, and about half of that imported seafood was grown in aquaculture. Just 5 percent of aquaculture-raised seafood Americans consume is raised within the United States, he said. “That’s been identified as a $10 billion trade gap,” he added. “That’s part of (the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s) national policy. We have to address that trade gap.”
Hawaii residents consume about 50 million pounds of seafood annually, with 63 percent of that imported, most of which is imported from other countries, he said. “I don’t know what the dollar value is,” Raney said. “That’s a big market they’re looking at.”
He provided an update on conditions state and federal officials have imposed on the latest proposed open ocean aquaculture project off the Big Island’s coast, Hawaii Oceanic Technology Inc. Those conditions include periodically sampling the tuna being raised and fish from outside the pens for parasites and other diseases. The company is also required to immediately notify the Department of Land and Natural Resource’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands if the oceanspheres in which the fish grow fail, if there is a “major fish escape,” disease outbreak, theft, vandalism or other unusual event pertaining to the pens, Raney said. The feed the tuna eat cannot contain supplemental hormones or antibiotics.
Testing results and other monitoring reports must also be available at the Kona Division of Aquatic Resources office, which is at Honokohau Harbor.
Hawaii Oceanic Technology has a lease for 247 acres off the Kohala Coast, Raney said. The scale of the operation is important, North Kohala resident Tom Oiye said.
“It seems to me the industry has done a pretty good job of trying to compare the Kona kampachi project with the HOTI project,” Oiye said, noting the Kona kampachi project, in Kona, is about one-fifth the size of Hawaii Oceanic Technology’s. “It’s a matter of scale. On a small basis, it can be OK.”
Neil Sims, who co-founded Kona Blue Water Farms, the predecessor to Keahole Point Fish, which grows Kona kampachi, said he was glad to see the Sierra Club promoting fish pond restoration and aquaponics, and talking about aquaculture.
“It’s encouraging to see the Sierra Club and other leading (nongovernmental organizations) recognizing the importance of a broad range of solutions,” Sims said.
