Column: To protect Hawaii and its people, say no to industrial aquaculture

Hawaiians are at a crossroads. Climate change is warming our waters, harming wild fish and making it more difficult and expensive to catch the food our communities rely on.

Now, our islands face a new threat. This summer, developers launched a bid to construct an industrial aquaculture facility in waters off Oahu’s Ewa Beach. These facilities use huge net pens to grow fish, cramming thousands of them together, which increases the likelihood of illness and infestation, often requiring antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals. Industrial quantities of those chemicals and animal waste can leak into surrounding waters and disrupt local marine ecosystems.

Diseases and parasites can also spread to wild species as the pens are flow-through, open to natural waters. Even worse, the fish farmed in these pens are often not native species, and when the cages break — which they sometimes do — the farmed fish escape and threaten wild populations by increasing competition for food, habitat and mates.

The backers of the proposed Ewa facility claim that they will grow only Hawaiian species. But they are missing the larger point. Their goal is to justify the development of an entire new industry in vulnerable Hawaiian waters. Even the federal government is helping to push this agenda — just this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recommended more than $11 million in funding for aquaculture research and development and continues to scope new projects in Pacific waters.

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When we consider the impacts of permitting this new facility, we should look to common behavior throughout the industry. And the truth is, most aquaculture facilities use stationary pens and farm non-native fish — despite the higher risk for environmental harm. Often, the seafood produced is not affordable for local communities, because these facilities require high-dollar investments.

Neil Sims, the CEO of Ocean Era, which is backing the project, downplays these concerns. He cites the facility’s design to claim minimal environmental harm and low costs for consumers. I’ve heard him make similar promises to “feed the world” at industry conferences. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him: He’s not here to feed the world; he is here to feed the rich, because most of us Hawaiians cannot afford to buy his expensive fish.

With so many Hawaiians challenging long-held assumptions about the value of extractive industries, like tourism, now is the time to stop further degradation of our cherished wild places. Fortunately, there’s another way forward. For generations, Hawaiians have used traditional fishponds — loko i‘a — to grow fish for human consumption while protecting marine ecosystems.

Traditional loko i‘a systems use the ocean’s brackish water to grow fish above ground by controlling algae levels, the fish’s main food source. This method does not negatively impact ocean ecosystems, and our traditional fishponds can even be used to restock our reef populations, which have been declining due to overuse, pollution and the changing climate.

It’s time for the government to stop treating traditional fishponds as relics of the past, only using them in museums and as fodder for the tourism industry. A good first step would be to create local commissions that advise how to use these fishponds in a way that honors their original purposes: feeding our community. The government should fund and work with traditional fishpond practitioners to help restock our oceans and feed our people.

Hawaiians don’t need outside corporations telling us how to produce seafood and feed ourselves. Our ancestors knew how to thrive on these little dots of land in the middle of the Pacific. Instead of building a new dangerous and dirty industry, where we don’t even need it, we must restore our traditional loko i‘a, honor our cultural traditions and respect the importance of living off our lands and waters sustainably. This is the pono future we need.

Walter Ritte is the founder of ‘Aina Momona, which advocates for environmental health and sustainability through restoring social justice and Hawaiian sovereignty.