Board of Land and Natural Resources splits vote on aquarium fishing in West Hawaii

The state Board of Land and Natural Resources on Friday could not reach a majority decision to accept or reject an environmental review assessing the impacts of commercial aquarium fishing in West Hawaii.

The seven-member board was scheduled to decide whether a “revised final environmental impact statement” properly addressed the possible outcomes of issuing permits that would allow the collection of aquarium fish in the West Hawaii Regional Fishery Management Area.

But the vote ended in a 3-3 tie.

Board members Thomas Oi, Wesley “Kaiwi” Yoon and James Gomes voted to reject the revised final EIS, while Chairwoman Suzanne Case and board members Samuel Gon and Christopher Yuen voted to approve it. Board member Vernon Char was absent from the meeting.

State law requires a majority vote to take any action, but the DLNR said in a news release that a tie results in the approval of the environmental review if no resolution can be made in 30 days. The 30 days started June 8, when the EIS was published, although it can be extended an additional 15 days upon request by the EIS applicant.

Commercial aquarium fishing in the WHRFMA has been a contentious issue for years, but a November Circuit Court order effectively banned all commercial aquarium fishing in Hawaii in January until the completion of the environmental review.

Oi was not convinced that the applicant that submitted the RFEIS, the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, explained how it would help Hawaii, while Gomes worried that enforcement in the area would be an issue for an already resource-strapped Department of Land and Natural Resources.

“The state of Hawaii is not benefiting from this aquarium fishery — that’s what I look at,” Oi said to the board, presumably referring to the argument that the out-of-state pet fish industry would benefit while stakeholders in Hawaii would bear the costs.

Yoon was concerned that the revised EIS was not done in good faith.

“One of the primary intentions of any EIS is trying to find the balance between economics and environment,” he said. “If the process was done with pono intentions and good actions, we wouldn’t be at this significant rift here today.”

Those who have opposed the collection of aquarium fish have cited a number of problems with reopening the fishery on top of its potential impacts on fish stocks and other natural resources.

Lisa Bishop, president of Friends of Hanauma Bay, said in testimony that the revised EIS “fails to accurately analyze the cultural and socioeconomic consequences of aquarium collection in West Hawaii” while ignoring research that shows Hawaii will not benefit from the fishery.

Case, by contrast, commended the review.

“I have a lot of misgivings myself about aquarium fishing. I don’t think it’s the only problem with our reef fish — we have overfishing problems in all categories,” Case said. “But I do think … there was a good-faith attempt to address the comments that we raised a year ago.”

The board in May 2020 unanimously voted to reject a previous EIS, which Case attributed to a lack of real measures to protect the future of depleted fish stocks.

She also noted that the revised EIS proposes a reopening of the commercial aquarium fishery with a “very strong limit.” Only seven permits would be issued for the commercial catch of aquarium fish in the WHRFMA, and licensees would be allowed only to catch fish from a list that includes just eight species.

The revised EIS also proposes a catch quota that would allow the seven licensed fishers to catch fewer than 247,000 individual fish per calendar year.

Prior to the collection ban, there wasn’t an annual catch limit in place, and an unlimited number of aquarium permits and commercial marine licenses, or CMLs, could be issued to catch fish from 40 different species.

The DLNR in November said that of the 3,000 total issued CMLs, 41 licensees were reporting aquarium catch.

The environmental review, along with its proponents, say that the fishery can prove and has proved to be sustainable.

But even if the revised EIS is accepted, it does not mean fishers are free to begin aquarium fishing. The Circuit Court, in its November decision to effectively ban commercial aquarium fishing, said the DLNR has discretion in issuing, suspending or renewing CMLs.

“This EIS is not the same as issuing (licenses for) aquarium fishing,” Gon said, adding that the issues regarding the “permitting side of things or the management plans of this particular fishery” would still have to be addressed if it was accepted.

Hawaii’s commercial aquarium fishery in 2017, as described by PIJAC’s revised EIS, “was the most economically valuable commercial inshore fishery in the state.” It said the WHRFMA alone was responsible for $1.29 million of the fishery’s earnings that year and 45% of the aquarium fish caught in Hawaii.

The fishery has been a subject of debate for decades, but in 2017 decisions from the Hawaii Supreme Court and Circuit Court prohibited the DLNR from issuing new aquarium permits to catch fish for aquarium purposes.

The commercial take of aquarium fish in West Hawaii was prohibited in 2018 before a Circuit Court decision invalidated all CMLs in January this year.