Bob Hampton, chairman of the board of Waikiki Beach Activities Ltd., wants to expand his business at the Hilton Hawaiian Village to keep up with demand from visitors, who are expected to surpass 8 million by year’s end.
"I’m got one canoe captain, but I’d probably hire two more and run programs seven days a week instead of three and I’d contract with more surf instructors if there wasn’t a waiting list for the state to qualify people," Hampton said. "We can’t even move up employees like well-known waterman Ka‘ai Bruhn or hire people like Manny Kulukulualani (founder of the Paddling Athletes Association) because they haven’t been able to test."
Since the mid-1990s the state Department of Land and Natural Resources has required catamaran and canoe captains, surf instructors, sailboard instructors and commercial motorboat operators in Waikiki and Kaanapali to pass a written and surfing test.
"We’re about a year behind," said Ed Underwood, administrator for the department’s Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation. "We don’t have the staff to keep up in Waikiki, and the program has never been implemented in Kaanapali. It isn’t required anywhere else, and frankly we don’t think we are qualified to make these kinds of assessments, so we are pushing to end the operator licensing program."
The division also has begun other rule-making procedures to bring parity to regulation of commercial activities in the state’s navigable waters and at its boat harbors and facilities. For instance, the division wants to require commercial users of the state’s ocean area, navigable streams and beaches to get approval before proceeding. It also wants to define insurance requirements, raise the fee to register rental surfboards and standardize the fee for catamaran registrations, which would increase the cost for some users.
"It’s time to update our rules so they are fair and equally applied to commercial operators operating everywhere in state waters," said William Aila, department director. "There has been a significant increase in the volume and types of recreational and commercial activities taking place in state waters since these boating rules were written and last revised nearly 20 years ago."
The boating division started the process for the department last week with a series of public hearings that have already begun to generate controversy among commercial ocean users. Some business owners like Hampton, who would like to expand beyond the 1,000 or so customers that he has daily in Waikiki, want the department to allow the responsibility and liability for employees to rest with employers.
"In my 40 years of working in tourism in Waikiki, I have never understood why the state would take on this kind of responsibility," said Hampton, who contends that employers are better qualified to screen employees. "We might not even hire the guys that the state has passed. We do our own testing to satisfy requirements for our insurance and for Hilton."
But many Waikiki beachboys say the tests harks back to the days of Duke Kahanamoku when the watermen who operated on the beach maintained safety standards by evaluating applicants. Tom Copp of the Palekaiko Beachboys Club said removing the licensing program would affect tourists’ safety and could affect the jobs of water experts.
"Private enterprises could come in and hire teenagers for $10 an hour," he said.
Louie Ferreira, a permitted surfing instructor for Hawaiian Oceans, said the rule changes appear to focus on easing workloads for state employees and increasing state revenues rather than on public safety.
"They should be more concerned about safety," Ferreira said. "This is all about the money."
George Lindsey, an attorney who represents the owners of the Mana Kai, Manu Kai and Nahoku II catamarans, said he objects to the boating division charging higher fees while providing fewer services.
"When you don’t get anything back for your fee, I would argue that it’s really a tax," Lindsey said. "My clients already are paying enough of those."
Additional costs could hurt large and small commercial operators throughout the state, Lindsey said.
"They would have to raise prices more than 7 percent to cover the additional cost of doing business," Lindsey said. "How can you raise prices that much and stay competitive? The increases probably will cost everyone at least one job."
The boating division contends that the rule changes bring needed revenue and flexibility so that it can adjust to the increasing volume and changing scope of commercial ocean users, which now include the possibility of exotic operations such as so-called motorized water rockets. Standardization also would reduce ambiguity and make rules enforcement easier for the division, officials said.
"Right now in Hawaii all of our state waters are overrun with commercial activity," Underwood said. "We are getting complaints that surf breaks are overrun and commercial activity is destroying fishing and coral."
City Ocean Safety Chief Jim Howe said his division has no opinion on the removal of the operator licensing program, but he intends to work with the state to develop appropriate guidelines for where commercial activity takes place.
"Proliferation is creating user conflicts and that’s a concern for us," Howe said. "Some activities are socially, culturally or environmentally incompatible with certain locations, and frankly there are some places where beginners just shouldn’t go, so we shouldn’t permit commercial activity there."
On Oahu, Underwood said, people mostly complain about commercial saturation in the ocean off Kailua, Maunalua Bay and in Waikiki, where some watermen are fighting over surf breaks and the right to make their living off state waters.
"It’s a big-time territorial thing in Waikiki," Underwood said.
