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PF: So, I do have a couple of presentations – an overview of my organization – Hawaii <br />Fishermen’s Alliance for Conservation and Tradition, and then Robert Duerr also asked <br />me to do an overview of the Department of Aquatic Resources, Holomua Initiative – so <br />I have a presentation on that as well. So, let me know how you want me to proceed. <br /> <br />CO: I guess if you – do any of the Commissioners have a preference before we begin? <br /> <br />AA: No. <br /> <br />CO: OK. You have the floor Phil, whatever you’d like to speak on, go ahead. <br /> <br />PF: So, I’m gonna try to share my screen, let’s see what I can do here. OK. I’m trying to <br />bring up my presentation. Hopefully, you can see it at this point. <br /> <br />SW: Ah, yes, we can see it as a document so you… <br /> <br />PF: OK. <br /> <br />SW: …. want to start the slide show and I will probably go… <br /> <br />PF: Yeah. OK. So hopefully you can see this. Our organization is a statewide organization <br />that was founded in 2013 so we are now officially eleven years old. Our primary <br />mission is to be the eyes and ears of fishermen and so what we try to do is work in the <br />space between government and the fishermen – we try to collect input from fishermen <br />and provide it to government and then try to understand what government is doing <br />and provide that information to fishermen. What we found was that the language used <br />in government is different than the language that is understood by fishermen. So we’re <br />sort of a translator of all of that. All of the board members – and we have board <br />members primarily on Oahu, Big Island and Kauai - we do not have a core member <br />from Maui – are all lifelong fishers. We are funded by fishermen – donations from <br />fishermen – and not funded by the state nor the federal government. We are <br />advocates for non-commercial shoreline as well as boat fishers, but we also represent <br />the small boat commercial fishers. In total, our base of membership is about 3, 500 <br />across the entire state of which more than half turns out to be commercial fishers <br />because they have more \[unclear\] than \[unclear\] line and non-commercial boat fishers. <br />The board members are members of a variety of different organizations – both state <br />and federal as well as regional – which would be the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries <br />Management Council, but we encourage our members to participate in all of various <br />committees that may be around the state. Our basic principles – we consider fish as <br />food, we don’t like, we don’t play with our fish – we fish to eat. And so that is the <br />number one guiding principle. We also consider fish to be a major part of Island culture <br />and tradition and we consider fish to be very important. We listen to fishers and as you <br />probably know there are many, many fishers in Hawaii that are multi-generational <br />fishers – that means that they learned how to fish from their grandfather, and father or <br />13 <br /> <br /> <br />