Hawaii’s longline fleet that brings in the islands’ fresh ahi is sitting pretty this year, with an expanded quota of 6,554 metric tons — aka a lot of fish. International longline fleets including Hawaii’s had been set smaller quota limits over past years, but recent monitoring indicates that a higher catch limit won’t shrink overall populations.

In fact, Hawaii longliners have been able to bring in about the same tonnage of bigeye over the past several years by buying a portion of quotas allotted to American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands; eliminating that cost may even bring a small price cut (fingers crossed).