|
information on the impacts of Hawaii aquatic life from the black oxygen mining with the metals?
<br />So just those three. Ah, sorry so much, but that’s what I’m thinking of.
<br />
<br />RO: The first one was about concerns about opihi and lobster and what is our information related to
<br />that. You know, I’ll be honest with you – we don’t have much information on lobster and we
<br />don’t have much information on opihi and we recognize that and we actually trying to solve that
<br />and we’re talking stories within our agency to figure that out, because when you, for example,
<br />you look at the rules that have been coming out from communities, there was - the those
<br />community-based sustainable fishing areas – and, on Kauai, Kipahulu on Maui and I think
<br />sometimes – and there’s couple other, oh, Milolii?
<br />
<br />LT: Milolii, yeah.
<br />
<br />RO: If you look at those rules – not all of ‘em but some of ‘em get rules on opihi and lobster, you
<br />know, they making more stringent rules on these species and we recognize that, oh, they
<br />making rules though, we don’t know much about them, lobsters is hard to, hard to – they kinda
<br />scare to begin with and they kinda hard to find, what I mean, like our traditional surveys is, we
<br />go out during the day, run a line and count the fish on the reef – that’s the traditional surveys –
<br />and, you do capture a lot of information that way, but you as fishermen that’s not the best way
<br />for survey or look for certain species, for example, like the things living in the holes – like lobster
<br />– you not gonna find them just swimming around. You may be lucky if you find one crawling
<br />around sometimes. So that we did an effort with some scientists they went Kalaupapa –
<br />someplace was supposed to have plenty lobsters and I guess had decent number of lobsters to
<br />try and figure out a method over there so I don’t know exactly how that worked out – I think it
<br />didn’t work out as good as they thought, but they trying – we trying to figure out for lobsters,
<br />yeah, and the other one is opihi is one mean area, you know, inner tidal zone is one mean area
<br />to work in, it’s dangerous, it’s a dangerous area to work in. So, we, I mean, and that’s not, you
<br />know, there’s many reasons why opihi information is, I think is lacking. We focus a lot of time on
<br />the fin fish, because the other – most people, I guess, statewide eat fin fish but at the same time
<br />we recognize the cultural significance – the special thing about opihi – I do for sure – and we,
<br />and this is a project that I have been trying to develop myself and, it’s very early but, trying to
<br />use technology to monitor that inner tidal zone – map monitor the limu – the haukiuki – the
<br />opihi – using like a drone maybe to take pictures of that area, you’re not even, cause the drone
<br />– at least you not there – you can fly over that so it’s safer, and then you can get areas with the
<br />drone probably better than a person could get to – so, I don’t know, we’ll see, but, yeah, we lack
<br />information in that areas but at the same time if there’s committed interest and community
<br />support on making, management decisions for those species I think our agency would be open
<br />to those discussions, so, yeah, that’s kinda what the Holomua thing is about, what I mean, like
<br />for us – the thing that we manage, the thing that we can make rules on is the aquatic resources
<br />and by that I mean the fish, the limu, the coral, the hihiwai, the opae – all those things – that’s
<br />what we can make rules on – we can make rules on how much you can take, when you take, and
<br />what places you can take or no take. That’s what we do – we can make rules about that. But at
<br />the other time, we have concerns about stuff like water quality, no doubt, and we do, do things
<br />to improve water quality. We have projects to reduce sedimentation, projects to cut down
<br />mangroves, improve habitat – we have those types of projects but at the end of the day, you
<br />guys had that discussion earlier – we don’t make rules on water quality – we don’t say how
<br />clean or how dirty the water is – but we can take actions and do activities to improve the
<br />19
<br />
<br />
|