Cargo shipments between Honolulu and six neighbor island ports fell 1.1 percent in the third quarter of 2012 from the same period a year earlier, according to a report issued today by Young Brothers Ltd., the state’s main interisland shipping company.

The decline followed a 2.7 percent drop in the second quarter and a 2.6 percent increase in the first quarter. For the first nine months of the year interisland shipments are down 0.2 percent from the same period a year earlier.

“We saw a slight down-tick in the third quarter but, overall, cargo volumes were relatively stable,” said Glenn Hong, president of Young Brothers. “Still, we’re hoping to see our quarterly comparisons get back into positive territory as we round out the last quarter of 2012,” he said.

 The cargo data was included in the Young Brothers Quarterly Shipping report. The report tracks cargo volumes using a standard unit of measurement called “container/platform equivalents. Young Brothers uses the CPE measurement so it can compare cargo volumes across different sizes of containers.

For the July-through-August period the volume of cargo from Honolulu to six neighbor island ports totaled 32,135 CPEs, down 1.1 percent from 32,494 CPEs in the third quarter of 2011.

Hong noted that while overall cargo volume decline shipments of agricultural products rose 10 percent. Young Brothers provides a discount of 30 percent to 35 percent for locally produced agricultural products.