Environment / Fishing in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI). Former President Bill Clinton doesn’t want it. Neither does Gov. Linda Lingle. Rep. Ed Case. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve Advisory Council for the NWHI. Even Zenen Ozoa, one of the fishermen permitted to fish the waters around the NWHI.

Their message: Fishing in the proposed marine sanctuary at the NWHI must not happen.

But the people at the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (Wespac) don’t appear to be listening. They apparently want to increase fishing at the proposed national marine sanctuary in violation of a series of executive orders issued by President Clinton. Those orders began the process by which NWHI may one day become a marine sanctuary, one where the ecology is preserved and animal life protected.

Wespac claims that there are currently 17 permits available–all of them bottomfish permits according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the governmental organization that will oversee the proposed sanctuary. However, Wespac economist Marsha Hamilton says that only eight are active.

In its new plan, while Wespac wants to decrease the number of bottomfish permits from 17 to 14, it appears it wants to increase the number of pelagic permits to three from, well, that number is up for debate.

According to Stephanie Fried of Environmental Defense, the number of permits is presently capped at eight and can’t go any higher. ‘Right now, the only way you can fish up there is if you were grandfathered in and if you had fished up there in the period of 1996-2000. They are proposing increasing the number of people that can go up there and bringing in new people,’ Fried says. ‘The way it was set up before, the fishery would have closed through attrition because it’s a use-it-or-lose-it permit. If you didn’t use it, you lost it and it couldn’t be transferred.’

Clinton’s executive order states that no additional permits ‘beyond the number of permits of that type in effect the year preceding the date of this order’ would be permitted. Later, the document mentions, ‘There shall be no permits issued for any particular type of fishing for which there were no permits issued in the year preceding the date of this order.’

While the language of the executive orders may clearly show to some that no new fishing permits can be issued, Hamilton says the orders aren’t quite so crystal. ‘The executive orders are not extremely precise,’ Hamilton says. ‘I don’t think that text was intended to be the text to cover the sanctuary.’

With this new plan and at least one other, Wespac appears intent on revising Clinton’s orders. But so far, NOAA, the agency in charge of approving the plan, will have none of it. The council’s previous plan was rejected by NOAA.

The government organization maintained that Wespac’s plan failed ‘to provide limits or controls necessary to maintain ecosystem integrity.’

NOAA may find that Wespac’s latest plan isn’t much better. In it, the council apparently advocates increasing the number of permits for pelagic fishing.

According to Fried, the number of permits currently available for the fishing of commercial non-longline pelagic fish–tuna, mackerel, wahoo and mahi mahi–amounts to zero. That’s right. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Fried says that the only permits actively in use are for bottomfish fishing. Meanwhile, Wespac maintains that there are some pelagic fish permits under the executive orders.

In a Feb. 16 document from Wespac, the group says that when it comes to non-longline commercial pelagic fishing ‘the number of permits might be set at either one or two, depending on how the phrase ‘the year preceding December 4, 2000,’ is interpreted.’

Is there another assumption one can make from this admission once one takes into account Wespac’s new fishery management plan other than that the council wants to increase the number of permits in violation of executive orders?

But this simply isn’t a simple matter of permits. It’s a matter of increasing the amount of fish that fisherman can catch and haul back to shore. This is about pounds.

According to the executive order, when it comes to bottomfish fishing, ‘the annual aggregate level for each permitted bottomfisher shall be that permittee’s individual average taken over the five years preceding December 4, 2000.’ Fishermen cannot go above this amount. Furthermore, ‘[t]rolling for pelagic species shall be capped based on reported landings for the year preceding December 4, 2000.’

According to the same February 16 document, the five-year average of bottomfish–hapu’upu’u (grouper), onaga (ruby snapper), opakapaka (pink snapper)–caught in first of the two designated fishing zones amounted to 105,200 pounds. In the second zone the average jumped to 230,800 pounds. Together that’s 336,000 pounds.

So what is Wespac’s proposed cap in their current fishery plan? That would be 381,500 pounds, a full 45,000 more pounds than the combined five-year averages of bottomfish catches in both zones. Wespac’s proposed cap is far less than the 448,784 pounds the February Wespac report lists as the NWHI’s maximum sustainable yield.

But when it comes to the annual catch of non-longline commercial pelagic fishing, the February document reports a total of 78,400 pounds at an average of 5,600 pounds per permit. (Hmm. Let’s see: 78,400 divided by 14–the number of bottomfish permits–equals, 5,600. Interesting.)

However, the proposed limit set by Wespac in their new proposal is significantly more than the total amount of pounds given in the February report. How about 102,000 pounds more, bringing the cap to a whopping 180,000 pounds.

So what does Wespac have to say about what appears to be an effort on its part to increase fishing in the NWHI? According to Hamilton, the fisheries management council is not seeking to expand fishing in the NWHI. She adds that at the moment there are no current caps on either bottomfish or pelagic fishing based on the pounds of fish caught and brought to market. Only bottomfish fishing is limited, and that is by the number and size of the vessels allowed to fish. Approved pelagic fishermen can catch as much as they like.

NOAA has yet to issue their opinion on Wespac’s new fishery management plan.

A draft environmental impact statement on the NWHI will be released in June by NOAA, while a public hearing on the NOAA-approved plan is scheduled for late June or July.