2020-02-11 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – February 11, 2020 TN: Mr. DeMello would you share all of your pertinent information with us so we can compile all of these information and look into it for you? RD: Just so happen with week we meeting with one lawyer and this lawyer – we going take him all around our Island and show him – so all the palapala that I going pile up on you guys will be given to this lawyer too and then you guys will be all receiving all you guys – all the photos and all the documentaries that I’ve been doing for years now – you guys all shall get it. TN: Teresa, again, District 8 – Kona – could I be part of your round-island trip with your lawyer? RD: Why not Tita. The more the merrier because the more maka see truth – then you guys know what we’re speaking of. TN: OK. Call me. RD: Mahalo nui. Mahalo Tita. OK. Thank you guys. Aloha. AA: Yeah, just speak in it mic. DF: My name is Dean Fukuchi. I was born and raised here in Hilo, Hawaii and, I wanted to ask you folks to look at the Hilo Bay and Wailoa Pond and the Wailoa River ways in terms of a game management and try to come up with some kind of management plan over the years as I was growing up since the Sixties, the Seventies and the Eighties – I see the amount of fresh water that used to come out of Waiakea Pond – that used to flow down to the river ways and coming out to Sui San has diminished greatly. In the Sixties used to be millions of gallons used to come out there and, you know, there wasn’t even any sand, you know, where the river mouth is, you know, the thing used to be just flowing, you could see the fish going see all the rocks and everything. Today, after fifty years, maybe sixty years, the amount of water that flows out of it is diminished – you can see the wave action, you know, reversing, pushing sand in. Eventually, as less and less fresh water comes out of the Waiakea Pond area as in river ways – less would come down, more sand would come in and cut that area off. What I’m afraid of – is that the tie in between the Wailoa River, the pond and the ocean is critical for the Samoan crabs, the mullet, right, aholehole, papios that used to swim in and out of this system. So I think we need to look at that as a whole system – because eventually it’s dying and eventually we not gonna have that connection between those two water bodies and then we’re gonna lose the spawning grounds for the mullet, you know, and the Samoan crabs, you know, they go out to the ocean to lay their eggs and then they’re gonna come back up into the rivers – we’re gonna start losing all of that – that major ecosystem is dying because I think we’re taking out too much fresh water from that lens area. So that’s all I wanted to say and I ask for your help to try and get this started 18