2019 02-12 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – February 12, 2019 TN: Do you have any current data given to you by DAR as to the sustainability and could you share that with us. EK: I’m not prepared right now with all this stuff on me – but what I could do is I can forward copies of pertinent information to you guys and then you’ll have to look at it in your leisure. A lot of it’s real long – I don’t really have any condensed version – a lot of these studies are several, several, I mean, forty, fifty pages long – but what I could do is I can send these things over to you and I’ll point out page numbers and things like that, paragraphs to look at – you can kind of see for yourself what I’m talking about, but, yeah... Yeah, there’s absolutely – there’s plenty of studies... TN: Because the fishery is dependent upon its ability to be sustainable, right? And so the EIS study is gonna show us that the fisheries either is not sustainable or is sustainable, right. Isn’t that what they’re looking at and isn’t that what the conservationists are saying – that the fisheries are not sustainable for marine collecting? EK: The Earth Justice and these environmental groups that doing this, yeah, they’re saying that it’s not sustainable and that there’s all these problems. They’ve actually shifted their argument over the years – it’s gone from moral issues kind of like what the gentleman earlier was talking about Mr. Hurt – with the PETA people. You know they started out talking about moral issues like you know don’t expose a fish to air – don’t withhold the fish’s food – don’t do this – it’s inhumane – all this kind of stuff to – now we’re in cultural, you know, like is this fish culturally, is it, you know, is it a significant fish... TN: We have to sum it up over here and so we’ll wait until the EIS study is done and then we can go forward from there and so if you could forward any research that shows that aquarium collecting is sustainable in Hawaii and there’s not a lack of or depletion of marine species – that would help us support efforts, the same fish you catch for aquarium collecting – those are the same fish that people eat – your Pakapui – your Kole... TN: You know, and DAR Division is telling us fishermen because of the RPL issue that we’ve depleted the resources here so... You know, your studies would be very important to us. BKK: Does any of the other commissioners have any questions? OK. Eric if you can just take a minute or two – just to summarize and then we’ll just move forward – I also wanted to thank you for coming over today. EK: In summary this is just more informative – we were asked to come and kind of discuss what’s going on – I guess the only take-away thing that I would kind 27