There’s a feeding frenzy at Hanauma Bay hurting the famous Oahu nature preserve.

The problem, though, isn’t about feeding fish. That was was banned in 1999. The troubling situation, which has persisted for close to 25 years, deals with visitor transportation companies bringing snorkeling tourists to the bay under the guise of taxi services with names that today include Snorkelfest, Snorkel Adventures, Hawaiian Ocean Promotions and Wakeboard School Hawaii.

This long-running siege on one of the state’s most popular visitor attractions and fragile marine ecosystems plays out six days a week at the East Honolulu attraction. But it’s mainly out of view of local residents, while city employees who manage the bay have been unable or unwilling to address the situation.

Recently, a private tour company’s proposal to take over managing all transportation access to the bay stirred up awareness of the problem and got stakeholders thinking about possible solutions.

“It’s a tough situation,” said Alan Hong, Hanauma Bay’s former manager who retired in 2011 after 21 years. “There is no simple solution to this.”

The situation with tourist-packed taxis inundating the bay stems from city efforts in the 1980s to reduce the harm visitors were having on the environment — damaging the reef, polluting the water and creating unnatural fish behavior — as largely unfettered access ballooned from 384,000 visitors in 1975 to 3 million in 1988.

IN 1990 the city implemented a management plan that took aim at the biggest source of visitor traffic to the bay: tour companies dropping off visitors by the busload.

The roughly 55-passenger buses, which accounted for most of the roughly 9,000 people per day invading Hanauma Bay at the time, were banned from dropping off beachgoers and were limited to stopping for only 15 minutes to allow sightseeing from scenic vistas adjacent to the preserve’s commercial vehicle area.

“All commercial companies will be restricted from dropping off visitors at Hanauma Bay, except for sightseeing at the upper level,” the 1990 plan stated.

One exception was for a handful of companies that obtain state permits to operate tours with snorkel or dive guides on weekdays excluding holidays. There are about 20 such permits, and the guided groups are limited to six people including at least one guide.

The city’s management plan, which said residents shouldn’t be crowded out of visiting the bay, limited parking to a 300-stall lot. Getting into the preserve was not limited for people walking, catching the city bus or arriving by taxi.

Pretty much immediately after the rules were implemented, tour companies acquired vans with taxi licenses or partnered with taxi operators to continue bringing tourists to Hanauma Bay, according to Hong. Others have also started up since then.

Skirting the rules

The 1990 rules succeeded in dialing back visits to the bay by two-thirds, to about 1 million from about 3 million. This was achieved by the bus restriction as well as the addition of ticket windows and requiring that every visitor watch an orientation video that emphasizes the need to stay off the reef and not feed the fish.

The video, shown every 15 minutes to 125 people, is the key regulator limiting the number of visitors in the water or on the shore, which the city aims to keep to about 2,000 people at once. Hong said that goal is usually met.

Still, transportation companies, posing as taxis but not charging taxi rates, bring a steady stream of tourists who flood admission gates and contribute to long lines that discourage many residents from visiting and diminish the visitor experience for everyone, Hong said.

San Francisco resident Ken Newberry explained how he arrived at Hanauma Bay with his mother, wife and son on a recent Friday.

First, a shuttle bus picked up his family at a Waikiki hotel and dropped them off in a residential neighborhood near the bay. Then a taxi limousine picked them up and brought them into the bay’s commercial transportation drop-off area. Newberry didn’t pay the taxi driver. He paid the transportation firm $13 per person including snorkel gear and a scheduled ride back to the hotel.

“We’re all thinking, ‘Why are we getting in a limo?’” Newberry said. “They kind of have a system going on here. Everyone seemed to know everybody between the limo guy and the van guy.”

On the same day, another taxi firm, Kaimana Tours, pulled up in a van equipped with a rack of masks, snorkels and fins inside the rear door and dropped off 10 exchange students despite the official taxi passenger limit of eight. There were actually 40 in the group, according to the students who took four taxis into the preserve.

Debate over legality

The city staffs a booth leading into the commercial vehicle drop-off area with 11 spaces, but typically taxi drivers either call out or flash a number using their fingers to indicate how many passengers they have without verification.

This flow of taxis — vans, limos and minivans — can be constant, with some of the same vehicles returning with new arrivals within 30 minutes.

Lisa Bishop, president of the nonprofit volunteer group Friends of Hanauma Bay, said the parade of taxis violates the spirit of the rule that sought to ban large tour operators from dropping off big groups.

“This is a tour service,” she said. “Tour companies are dropping off their clients.”

Bishop said the taxi services represent an illegal operation at the bay. But the city Department of Customer Services, which oversees taxi operators, disagrees.

By law, taxis are supposed to run a meter while transporting customers, and they may not charge passengers more than the metered total. Yet they can charge less. The law also allows “shared ride” taxi service at rates independent of maximum metered rates as long as a tariff of services and fares is filed with the city.

Hanauma Bay Tours, a shuttle operator that runs the website hanaumabay statepark.com, claims a one-way taxi ride from Waikiki to the bay runs $50 to $60. The company offers round-trip shuttle service for $25 a person including snorkel equipment.

Sherilyn Kajiwara, Department of Customer Services director, said that transferring passengers from a larger vehicle to a taxi that collects no fare doesn’t violate the law. “If nothing is being paid directly to the taxi, how can one conclude the taxi driver is charging more than the allowable rate?” she said.

Kajiwara added that taxi inspectors monitor Hanauma Bay at least twice a week and report that taxis are running meters and not overloading vehicles.

The city has said in past years that it has goals to improve the situation and visitor experience. But nothing much has changed.

Proposal shot down

Michele Nekota, director of the city Department of Parks and Recreation, which oversees Hanauma Bay, said she’s not sure the taxi situation is a problem that needs correcting. She said visitors and residents understand that long lines are part of the trade-off to protect the bay’s natural environment.

Earlier this year one of the state’s largest tour operators, Roberts Hawaii, proposed taking over transportation management from the city through a concession, and cited the taxis as circumventing rules.

Roberts proposed implementing a taxi permit and fee system to eliminate what it called illegal operations. The company also proposed moving public bus stops away from the bay and overhauling the $1 parking charge for private vehicles by making parking for residents free and charging nonresidents by the hour.

Another piece of the plan called for allowing Roberts to bring 50 to 55 visitors to the bay every 30 minutes on its own buses where passengers would receive tickets and watch the orientation video so they can skip the lines at the preserve.

Roberts said it anticipated that the overall visitor count wouldn’t increase.

Friends of Hanauma Bay opposed the plan from Roberts, and the company dropped its bid.

Bishop said she doubted that tourists would pay attention to the video on a tour bus ride. “People aren’t going to watch an orientation video driving through Waikiki,” she said. “They are going to be looking out the window.”

She added that bypassing the ticket window and theater would defeat the main regulator of traffic into the preserve. “That metering function is vital,” she said. “Hanauma Bay is not a park. It’s a nature preserve. We’re not a Disneyland. Every visitor leaves a footprint.”

One idea in the Roberts plan Bishop likes is charging transportation companies entering the commercial vehicle drop-off area. Nekota said the city can look into that.

Hong said city leaders in the 1980s looked at various options for regulating visitors to Hanauma Bay, including a ticket lottery, reservation system and demand pricing. The first two were rejected due to concerns that commercial transportation firms would manipulate those systems. Demand pricing was rejected because it would discriminate against the less affluent.

Hong said some solution is needed to close the taxi loophole, especially with record numbers of tourists visiting Hawaii in each of the last several years. “Hanauma Bay cannot accommodate every person that wants to get in,” he said.