8. The Council’s Fishery Management Plan As the Council developed its Billfish FMP, it discovered substan tial flaws in the PMP effort. Management measures were not intended to drive all foreign fishermen from U.S. waters in the Pacific. Never theless, the PMP restrictions on fishing were simply too burdensome for foreign fishing companies, and many of them chose to withdraw from the U.S. EEZ. Opinions in the islands were different than they were on the U.S. mainland. The U.S. island territories of American Samoa, Guam and the CNMI welcomed the foreign fishing investors for the spending they did in the small island economies and the interesting economic possibilities that joint ventures raised. The management objectives of the proposed Billfish and Associated Species FMP for the Western Pacific were very clear: 1) collect information on these species and their fisheries; 2) encourage increased domestic use; and 3) minimize the impact of regula tions on the domestic industries (WPRFMC 1980). The FMP was intended to be based on science so the fishing targets set for commercial fishermen would satisfy the demands established in the MSA to achieve both the MSY and optimum yield (OY)3 for each fishery. Japan continued to compute and print the yearbooks of longline statistics and to collaborate with NMFS in assessments of North Pacific albacore and annually shared data for that effort. However, after 1980, Japan ended external distribution longline statistics yearbooks (e.g., to the Honolulu Laboratory). Japan later explained that it feared it would be excluded from fishing in U.S. waters for tuna in the future in order to satisfy a new U.S. national agenda that specified “billfish should be reserved for recreational fishermen” rather than
used for human consumption (Shima 1989). Japan vehemently objected to any plan that prioritized the release of fish for recreation over products it insisted were essential to Japanese culture such as kamaboko and other Japanese fish products. U.S. fishermen, on the other hand, had a long-standing fear that their prized fish were being turned into hot dogs (Kane 1966). The loss of access to the Japanese billfish data placed the Council in a difficult situation. The process was doubly painful considering that the Japanese fishing data on billfish and tuna were considered the best in the world at the time. Laboratory head Richard Shomura proved invaluable during this time. As WPRFMC Executive Director Kitty M. Simonds recalls, “You have to remember that we had been working with billfish statistics for 10 years. When the Japanese cut off the information, Richard still had contacts with Japanese scientists and was able to get data.” 4 Other sources of information were diverse and ranged from U.S. Coast Guard data on charter boat and fishing boat registrations to information from the State of Hawai‘i and indepen dent sources. The Council also convened six meetings in Kailua-Kona between 1977 and 1981 to enhance participa tion of billfish fishermen in the fishery management decision-making process. In 1981, while preparing the FMP, the Council contracted Lovejoy again for further work (Lovejoy 1981).
That same year, Council Chair Yee at the 23rd HIBT convened a special meeting where he fielded questions from local big game and artisanal fishermen who angrily said the U.S. government was not doing enough to protect them and that he was equivocating for fear of offending the State Department. They wondered if there would be enough marlin left to last another 23 years. It was time one charter boat captain said “to make a big stink” (Kwon 1981). When the Council submitted the completed draft Billfish FMP to NMFS in 1981, the United States was in recession, the billfish angling business was down and so too was business in Kona. Worries continued about whether Japanese and Taiwanese longlining might ruin Kona’s new big game fishing enterprise. The Council’s draft FMP proposed prohibiting foreign fishing from shore out to 200 nm of the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) from May through September and out to 100 nm from November through April; from shore out to 50 nm around Guam between November and June; and from shore out to 12 nm around the rest of the Hawaiian Islands, around Guam between July and October, and around other U.S. possessions in the Pacific except the Northern Mariana Islands, which was still subject to the PMP. Poundage fees of 50% ex-vessel value were to be assessed on the billfish taken within the FCZ except for those fish landed in American Samoa. Unlike the PMP, the FMP rejected the use of non-retention zones for foreign longliners as being wasteful. Alternatives requiring extensive shipboard monitoring were also rejected because of the high cost of surveillance and enforcement.
3. Optimum yield means the amount of fish that will provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and recreational opportunities, and taking into account protection of marine ecosystems. 4. Kitty M. Simonds in discussion with the author, Aug. 14, 2019.
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