Column: DLNR pushing limits for commercial aquarium trade

How much bad behavior does it take for people to say, enough is enough? The aquarium trade and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources are truly pushing the limits.

A 2017 Hawaii Supreme Court ruling confirmed that stripping marine life from Hawaii’s reefs for the aquarium pet industry requires full consideration of the environmental impacts under the Hawaii Environmental Policy Act. The state environmental court then halted commercial aquarium collection until collectors and DLNR complete the legally required public process of determining how much, if any, collection our reefs can sustain.

Instead of embracing these court rulings and its own core mission to protect natural resources, DLNR has given the trade a pass to continue collecting at least 576,000 marine animals since 2017 — likely, far more — under a newly fabricated loophole that no environmental review or permits are required so long as collectors don’t use fine-meshed nets. Extraction of this magnitude would be impossible without fine-meshed nets, but DLNR does nothing to ensure compliance with this made-up loophole. Nor does it monitor or enforce against poaching in West Hawaii, where all collection is currently banned.

DLNR’s blatant end run around the court rulings has compelled us to file suit again. We are fighting the agency’s deregulation of the trade to ensure that our children and grandchildren can experience Hawaii’s natural ocean aquariums rich with native fish and healthy corals, and so that Native Hawaiians can continue fishing to feed their ‘ohana as they have since time immemorial. Although the Hawaii Constitution enshrines the state’s duties to safeguard these resources and practices, DLNR instead caters to the trade at every turn, putting private profits over the public good.

The industry exports countless marine animals out-of-state, while depleting and destroying our marine environment. Collectors commonly extract hundreds of a single species at a time, juvenile fish who haven’t had a chance to replenish populations, and herbivorous fish that maintain reef health by consuming algae. Some crush coral to trap animals or force them out their shelters. Many grossly underreport their catch and collect covertly in restricted areas, which compounds the harms of DLNR’s watered-down regulation and monitoring.

And to what end? Unlike public aquariums, which are trained to care for captive marine life and operate under special permits for scientific and educational purposes, the hobbyists who purchase our wildlife from big-name retailers aren’t as capable of keeping these animals alive in their at-home tanks. The industry depends on our fish dying in peoples’ living rooms to maintain constant demand for this “product.”

Meanwhile, the ongoing environmental review process for West Hawaii and Oahu — led by a continent- based organization notorious for seeking deregulation of the pet industry — is a sham because it’s based on the same flawed interpretation that collection outside of West Hawaii without fine-meshed gear can continue scot-free without any oversight.

The Territorial Legislature enabled the aquarium trade back in the 1950s based on the outdated assumption that “tropical fish” had no inherent value for food, recreation, the islands’ natural beauty, or sustainability from mauka to makai. We realize today that this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s time for the state government to get with the times and protect Hawaii’s reefs and the people who rely on them, and for our island communities to let the government know that enough is enough.

Kylie Wager Cruz and Mahesh Cleveland are attorneys for Earthjustice and represent plaintiffs in this lawsuit; Mike Nakachi is a scuba diver and small business owner who is a plaintiff in the current and past lawsuits.