Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

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Two tuna trollers will arrive in Honolulu Harbor Monday from waters north of Midway Island, brining the first catch of what may prove to be a goldmine to Hawaii’s fishing industry.

The Typhoon and the Jinita, two four fishing boats chartered for a Pacific Tuna Development Foundation project, have hauled in 80 tons of albacore, the most lucrative and highest grade of tuna caught.

At the current market price of $1,100 per ton, this fish story should attract trollers now based along the West Coast to the Midway site and to unload their catch at Hawaii canneries, foundation chairman and president Andrew Gerakas said.

The foundation is a private, non-profit organization formed in 1974, with members from the fishing industries of the United States, Western Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas and the Trust Territory of the Pacific.

"This opens a direct supply of the best tuna fish for Hawaii," Gerakas said. "If I were a troller fisherman, I’d be heading there right now."

After unloading in Honolulu, the two boats will return to the fishing grounds, joining the Cornucopia and the Three Jacks. All four boats should return to Honolulu next month, after three successful years of the Pacific Albacore Trolling Project, Gerakas said.

The boats began their expedition last month, receiving a $25,000 operations subsidy from the foundation for participating in the project.

Word has spread among local fisherman, he said, and two independent boats were encouraged to set off for Midway to reap their own share of the albacore harvest.

Albacore breed off the eastern coast of Japan, and migrate towards the west U.S. coastline, Gerakas said. The Midway fishing area intercepts their easterly route, resulting in a consistently profitable yields during the past three seasons.

Hawaiian Tuna Packers, a subsidiary of Bumblebee Tuna, depends on imports for about 80 percent of their business.

Without growth in the local industry, nothing would stop the packers, now employing 425 workers, from relocating at the parent company’s Astoria, Ore. headquarters, he said.