Hawaii longline fishing recovering from COVID-19

Hawaii’s longline fishery became more active in 2021 as the state began its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, but the increase didn’t necessarily lead to more fish caught.

Commercial fish catch in Hawaii plummeted in 2020 as the coronavirus forced the closure of hotels, restaurants and other businesses, and along with them the demand for fish.

But Hawaii’s economy has been slowly returning to form, and in 2021 the state’s 146 longline fishing vessels made 1,734 fishing trips, up from the 1,679 in 2020.

Additionally, the vessels set out 63.5 million hooks during their fishing trips — a record number for the industry, said Russell Ito, a fishery biologist for the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.

Ito on Wednesday presented an annual report on Hawaii’s longline fishery to the Scientific and Statistical Committee, an advisory body to the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

About $8 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act was appropriated to Hawaii’s fishing industry to help buoy it from the impacts of COVID-19, which Ito said may have helped along with the recovering economy.

Committee member Erik Franklin from the University of Hawaii’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology said the data showed the pandemic didn’t have as much of an effect on fishing as he would’ve expected.

“I’m a little surprised to see not much of a lag in (fishing) effort due to the pandemic,” Franklin said. “With the markets in the islands shut down … I was anticipating a bigger drop for one of these years.”

But the increased fishing activity did not necessarily lead to a bigger catch. For example, just over 187,000 bigeye tuna, the most frequently caught species by Hawaii longline fishers, were hauled in last year, compared with more than 208,000 in 2020.

The skipjack tuna catch also fell, but from 20,700 fish in 2020 to 17,900 in 2021.

Yellowfin tuna, meanwhile, increased substantially to 78,300 fish caught in 2021, up from nearly 54,900 in 2020.

To what degree the coronavirus and other factors affected those numbers is still unclear.

In the case of annual bigeye tuna catch, there had been a general decline starting in 2016 — well before COVID-19. The yellowfin tuna catch spiked in 2017 and, including 2021, has remained high since.

Also notable was the annual catch for moonfish, also known as opah, which dropped by more than half — about 7,800 fish caught in 2021, compared with 16,900 in 2020.

When asked what caused the drop in catch, Ito said, “That would take … more interviews and talk-story with fishermen on why these things (are happening).”

He also said that fish prices have recovered and even exceeded those from before the pandemic, but added that fishers are facing higher costs in fuel and supplies because of inflation.