Bringing the Fish Back by Empowering Communities:
Hawaii’s coral reef fish stocks—including species found nowhere else in the world—have declined 75-80% since 1900, according to the Waikiki Aquarium. With more than 1.2 million residents, 7 million visitors annually, as many as 200,000 active fishermen, only 4.8% of nearshore waters designated no-fishing or no-access areas by the State and the military, extensive coastal development, the replacement of a local konohiki management system with a woefully underfunded state Department of Land and Natural Resources charged with caring for 3 million acres of nearshore waters (the fourth longest coastline in the United States), Hawaii is a very challenging place to implement effective marine conservation.
The stakes are high: Hawaii contains up to 80% of the country’s coral reefs, our visitors come to Hawaii for its physical beauty, and the diet of many residents depends heavily on fish. Most important of all is the deep cultural connection that we have with fishing in Hawaii. Many of us remember what it felt like when our parents or grandparents first took us fishing and taught us how to appreciate the beauty and power of the ocean. We must make sure that today’s children have the opportunity to teach their grandchildren how to fish and how to take care of Hawaii’s amazing coral reef ecosystems.
To address this problem, the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation began to fund the work of Sara Peck, the UH Sea Grant College coordinator for West Hawaii, about seven years ago. Ms. Peck has played a critical role in facilitating the work of the West Hawaii Fisheries Council, which used a community-driven process to select 35 percent of the West Hawaii coastline to close off to aquarium fish collection, as mandated by state law. Just four years later, these Fishery Replenishment Areas recorded a 26 percent increase in fish, and Big Island aquarium fish collectors had a record year of gross income. Sara also established a range of volunteer-driven citizen education and engagement activities called ReefTeach, ReefTalk and ReefWatch.
Based on the success of the West Hawaii initiative and on the pioneering grantmaking of the Hawaii Community Foundation in marine conservation, the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation has built on these early investments in community co-management. The Foundation’s largest initiative in this field has been a suite of grants totaling $2,015,087 for the 2002-2010 period that has enabled The Nature Conservancy, the Community Conservation Network, the Maui-based Hawaii Wildlife Fund, and West Hawaii UH Sea Grant to increase capacity for community-based marine conservation in two dozen communities on six islands. This network of four groups, which forms the nucleus of the Managing Better Together (MBT) Network, has established the DLNR-supported Makai Watch program that allows communities to become re-engaged in community co-management. The MBT Network meets 8-10 times per year, gathers community leaders twice per year, gives frequent technical assistance to coastal volunteer groups throughout the Islands, and is highly regarded by grassroots communities and by the State Division of Aquatic Resources. Communities involved in recent Network meetings include Milolii, Hookena, Honaunau, and Puako from Hawaii Island; Moomomi from Molokai; Hana, Honolua, and Waihee from Maui; Maunalua, Heeia, Ewa, Pupukea, and Waianae from Oahu; and Haena and Hanalei from Kauai. Participants are largely Hawaiian and are mostly active fishermen and local leaders with deep generational roots in their communities.
The Harold K.L. Castle Foundation believes that monofilament lay gill nets are highly destructive to a healthy nearshore fishery, killing immature fish before they grow to reproductive size and taking away the ability of free divers, throw-netters, and pole-and-line fishermen to catch ample fish. Recent grants to SeaWeb established the Fair Catch Campaign, which amplified community leaders’ voices in the media and in policy circles precisely at the time that lay gill-net restrictions were being reviewed by the Board of Land and Natural Resources and by Governor Lingle. (Those restrictions were approved and are now in force.)
At their June 2007 meeting, the Foundation’s Directors endorsed this community-based approach and directed staff to focus the Foundation’s nearshore grantmaking effort even more tightly around one overarching theme: the development of a critical mass of communities that enhance marine resource protection through co-management and form the core of an effective constituency for marine conservation in the state. If this approach is successful, we expect to see a doubling of fish biomass over the next decade in all nearshore areas that have strong community co-management in place.
Responding to this tighter community focus, the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation’s Directors in August 2007 approved new grants to support research, action, and public engagement in three new communities (Kailua, Waimanalo, and Waikiki); to give up to11 communities the chance to measure their impact in the water through state-of-the-art scientific monitoring; and to create and distribute educational materials that should appeal to school teachers and the recreational fishing community statewide.
For more information, contact Terry George at tgeorge@castlefoundation.org.