2019 02-12 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

Home

Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – February 12, 2019 the FRAs, and the MLCDs it encompasses 37% of the coastline on the West side of the Big Island, so it’s – and that’s been in place since 1999-2000 – in addition to that they set up some other regulations and rules such as labeling the boat – you have to put AQ – it has to be a certain size – one foot high, six inches wide, one inch block letters on a contrasting background. A pennant that has to be flown on the boat that it’s a yellow pennant but has an A on it so that people from the shoreline can clearly observe you if you’re out there aquarium fishing – and that was pretty much that for Act 306. They did another rules making process in 2014 – it actually began in 2012 and it wrapped up in 2014 – it was implemented in 2014 – I forgot the HAR code on it but basically what that one was is it established further regulations – it created what’s called a white list – it’s a list of approved species – so originally before pre-2014, pre-2015 you could take any type of marine fish, basically, there really wasn’t any restrictions or rules. This further defined what the aquarium fishery was actually allowed to catch so it reduced the amount of species available – the aquarium fishery from my belief 230-40 approved species – so that’s what’s known as the white list. In addition to that – there was bag limits and size restrictions and what’s called a slot limit – that was put on the top three fish of the fishery: the top three fish of the fishery, number 1 is the Yellow Tang, the Hawaiian name on it is Lau’ipala – the second fish is the Kole Tang – and the third fish is the Pakakui, which is also known as the Achilles Tang. Those three fish are the top three landed fish in the fishery and they account for 97% of the entire fishery – what’s landed and reported. The other 3% would be the balance of the white list – the other 37 fish on the 40 fish white list – they make up 3% of fish landed so it’s a much smaller amount. So primarily the focus in the aquarium fishery are those top three fish – of those top three fish Kole and Pakakui are taken at a much lower rate than the Yellow Tang. The Yellow Tang – it’s pretty much a Yellow Tang fishery because Yellow Tangs are in extremely high density – they’re very abundant – especially along the coastlines of the Big Island of Hawaii. It’s the number one place. Yellow Tangs come from other places in the world – they can – they actually span all the way over to the Philippines and Guam but they’re not in close to the same concentrations – they actually think the Yellow Tang originated in the Hawaiian Island and actually it did like a reverse – after it kind of adapted and evolved over a long, long period of time it actually started to spread back toward the Mid-Pacific, which is kind of unusual – a lot of fish actually radiate the other way – from like the end of Pacific out – but in this case – some of the fish have evolved in Hawaii for such a long time some of them are actually bouncing back out and that’s how they’re spreading that way. The Yellow Tang is the number one fish landed, like I said, the populations on the Yellow Tang – let me get back to the regulations, I’m sorry – so the bag limit and the size restriction, the slot limits – so what it is, is for the Yellow Tang it has a slot limit on it – which means you can catch fish from 2” to 4.5” inside that slot. You’re not allowed to catch under or over – there’s a bag limit. You can take 5 over or 5 under of, you know, like over 4.5 or under 2” per diver per day. The Kole Tang – it’s not a 23