Pat Tummons, editor of Environment Hawaii, an independent newsletter, commented on post, “Monday Meda Quibbles.” Her comment raises some serious concerns, so I’m posting it here today for more visibility.
Thanks to you, I just read the KHON report on possible cuts to the longline quota. And, apart from the ghastly writing, there are some real problems in the fact that the reporter quotes only people very closely tied to the industry.
In point of fact, the quota of 3,763 metric tons (I’m relying on memory, so this may be off a few hundred tons) is meaningless. For the last two years, the longline industry has been allowed to continue fishing even after the quota is reached by ascribing the excess part of its catch to American Samoa, which enjoys no limit on bigeye (it is regarded under the international — not U.S. — commission as a territory that is developing its fishing industry). This excess has amounted to hundreds of tons — although the exact amount is not easy to find out.
So no crocodile tears from me for the commercial longliners. Even when the rest of the member countries to the WCPFC were told to cut their catches by 30 percent in 2008, the Hawaii longliners escaped with just a 10 percent cut.
Altogether, the story on KHON is distressing — and not just for reasons of the cringeworthy language.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
One thing she doesn’t mention about local longliners is the fact that they make up only a fraction of the tuna harvested in the Pacific. Our fleets are ancient and depend on seamanship most of the time to find and get fish. Fleets from Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan dwarf our few ships that represent the US catch.
Additionally, the foreign fleets are often times outfitted with sophisticated satellite and computer guided targeting of the fish stocks that it like shooting fish in a barrel for most foreign fishing fleets, compared to the rust buckets that represent the US.
(Comment edited)
oh, who wants to eat ahi or aku anyway? Too much mercury. So go ahead and catch them all, deplete your fishery. Sardines are supposed to be a healthier fish to eat, lower on the food chain.