Hawaii consumes more seafood per capita than any other state — about 11.5 percent, nearly twice as much as the U.S. average. This is not surprising considering that Hawaii is the only island state. It works out to be 39 million edible pounds of commercial fish and another 11.5 million pounds of noncommercial catch. Hawaii residents spend about $100 per person annually on seafood.

There are at least 300 businesses in the state that buy and sell seafood. And these do not include restaurants, lunch wagons, schools, the military, hospitals and bars. Many other businesses participate indirectly, including those involved in the maintenance and repair of the fishing boats.

What may be most surprising is that nearly half of Hawaii’s seafood is imported, with 90 percent of the imports coming from foreign countries.

An example is swordfish. Hawaii’s local fishing boats use longline gear to catch swordfish in the North Pacific Ocean for the U.S. seafood market. The Hawaii boats compete with foreign longline vessels for the same swordfish.

While fishing, both domestic and foreign long­liners accidentally catch sea turtles, primarily leatherback and loggerback turtles. Federal law requires Hawaii swordfish longliners to stop fishing when they catch a certain limit of turtles. These turtle limits are based on the best available scientific information, some of which comes from a National Marine Fisheries Service observer who is placed on every swordfish fishing trip to monitor sea turtle catches. The best science is deep and complex considering the difficulty of studying the pelagic marine ecosystem.

Of course, good science is better than bad science, but any science is better than no science at all.

 Hawaii’s longline fishery has 94 percent compliance with the Food and Agriculture Organization’s code of conduct, the only global standard for responsible fisheries. Apparently some people believe that there should be no longline fishing by Hawaii’s fishermen at all, or that fishing should be "perfected" so there is no bycatch of turtles at all. This is unrealistic unless we expect people to stop eating seafood, which is not going to happen under any circumstances since seafood is a valuable source of protein for Hawaii and even more so for many other parts of the world.

If there is no Hawaii longline fishery for swordfish or the fishery is shut down when a turtle catch limit is reached, it produces the potential for a spillover effect that ripples through the fishery, the fishing industry and the economy.

When Hawaii fishing boats are forced to stop fishing, it opens the fishery to foreign vessels, most of which are unregulated, have no observers on board, no bycatch limits, and do not use the technology that U.S. vessels have to limit hooking unwanted species. For example, many countries allow their fishermen to use J-shaped hooks baited with squid that are banned for U.S. swordfish fishermen.

Shutting down our fishery has several economic and ecological effects. First is the obvious economic impact. That the Hawaii fleet does not catch and sell fish hurts the fishermen, the industry and the local economy directly. A less obvious and secondary effect is that Hawaii will pay to import the very fish that its fleet was prevented from catching.

On the ecological side, bycatch limits on the local fishing fleet just open the opportunity for foreign fishing vessels to continue taking fish from waters normally fished by the Hawaii fleet. Since many foreign fleets lack enforceable bycatch limits, more turtles are likely to be caught, and they may not be treated with the ecological kid gloves required by U.S. regulations.

It may be that allowing Hawaii-based fishermen to catch more swordfish responsibly using gear less likely to harm sea turtles is better for turtles overall than importing those same swordfish from countries that have no restrictions on fishing gear and observers to prevent and mitigate the incidental catch of sea turtles.

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Richard Brill is a professor of science at Honolulu Community College. Email questions and comments to brill@hawaii.edu.