Last week, I broke the news that President Bush designated the Northwest Hawaiian Islands a National Monument--OK, I didn't really BREAK the news, but I was quick to find the story on the Washington Post website and repost it here, so I deserve some credit, right? While hailed as a win for conservationists and conservatives, not everyone is happy:
The monument designation is not being welcomed by everyone in Hawaii. One consequence of the president's declaration is that within five years fishing in the area must cease.
OK, valid complaint, and worth weighing against the benefits of the conservation plan. What about the welfare of the hundreds of anglers that make their living in the NWHI? Oh wait, I made a mistake, allow me to rephrase that: What about the welfare of the hundreds of EIGHT anglers that make their living in the NWHI?
That's right, there are currently eight commercial fishing permits for the NWHI. How much harm can eight anglers do in an area almost the size of California? Apparently enough.
Currently there are only eight fishing permits allowed in NWHI. "Eight doesn't sound like it could harm anything," said the Ocean Conservancy's Heinemann.
But he said a comprehensive look at fishing populations there over the past 15 years, using statistics from NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, shows the area has been overfished in 11 of the 16 years from 1988 to 2003, even with a relatively small number of commercial fishermen.
"Fish populations don't respond instantaneously; there's a time lag in the process," Heinemann said. "These tend to be long-lived fish. It may take many years or a couple of decades to recover from being overfished."
That analysis was published last year by the Ocean Conservancy and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.
Timm Timoney and her husband hold one of the fishing permits. They have been fishing for seabass and snapper in NWHI since 1983.
"We fish mostly in 50 fathoms and deeper. We never anchor on live coral, actually we are usually miles away from a reef," Timm Timoney said by e-mail to CNN.
"The National Marine Fisheries Service should be holding this fishery up as the poster child of sustainable fisheries. We have almost zero bycatch and about the same amount of interactions with protected species. We supply local folks and visitors with quality seafood," she wrote. "I believe Hawaii will be missing out on a part of local traditions if fishing is banned in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands."
I'm going out on a limb and declaring that the benefits of the fishing ban outweigh the costs this time.
