HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0862.076 2008-2010 Testimony in Support of County Council Resolution 363 -10
From: Tina Owens
Executive Director, LOST FISH Coalitiion
P. O. Box 390508
Kailua -Kona, HI 96739
To: Chair Emily Naole- Beason and the County Council Members
Madam Chair and County Council Members, thank you for hearing this resolution and allowing
me to testify.
I am strongly in support of Councilmember Greenwell's resolution 363 -10.
Although I came before you several months ago asking you to pass Councilmember Hoffinan's
resolution to support the West Hawaii Fisheries Council's efforts to manage the aquarium
industry, I now see that the industry is completely out of control and they are rendering the
fishery unsustainable.
As you will remember, at the County Council meeting in March, a good number of people
showed up to present information to the Council members as well as to support the resolution.
The Council's committee unanimously voted to pass the resolution on to the Council as a whole.
However, when the fish collectors heard about it, they completely forgot that a) they had been
consulted on these things and b) had agreed to them. They showed up en masse at the April
meeting to shout it down.
This has long been their tactic: to agree to management and then to come out at the last minute
and kill any attempts to regulate them. Consequently, they continue to be able to take as much
marine life as they can, with no restrictions on licensing, on catch limits, or species they can
catch. Their only restrictions are geographical.
Initially, state legislators told us that we should try management before attempting to ban the
industry. For ten years we tried. No one can say we haven't tried to work with them. Thousands
of man -hours spent on struggling to keep our reef populations healthy, and all the collectors have
to do is object and all goes to waste.
If management doesn't work (and it isn't going to as things stand now), the only alternative is to
rid the state of an industry which does little good for Hawaii and does a great deal of harm.
Madam Chair, I would like to present the Council with a petition the LOST FISH Coalition put
online in June. In this short period we have 678 signatures of people who out -and -out want to
ban the aquarium industry in West Hawaii: almost half of those are from the state of Hawaii and
252 are from this island.
People everywhere are saying they hate this industry. Please help us convince the state to deliver
us from this evil. Please pass this resolution.
Thank you. �j
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Ref. Dote JUL 2 0 2011