Tuna Farming & A Disappearing Dolphin

Getting sushi from the farm...

This is the Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.

A company in Hawaii wants to build the world’s first commercial bigeye tuna farm. Bigeye tuna is also known as ahi and it’s a popular fish for sushi. Rebecca Williams got the story on this – so Reb... farming tuna?

RW: Yeah – bigeye tuna is getting overfished in the wild. So a company wants to raise these tuna in giant underwater cages in deep ocean water off the coast of Hawaii. They call the cages Oceanspheres. And they’d be huge – they’d have the diameter of half a football field.

Bill Spencer is president and CEO of the company – Hawaii Oceanic Technology. He says they’ll raise 20,000 fish in each cage – which will get up to 100 pounds each... starting from fish fry they’ll raise in the lab.

“They’re typically a schooling type fish so they’d be able to school together and swim around in the Oceansphere so we think that would give them the ability to get the kind of muscle tone that would be appreciated by the consumers.”

But... with fish farming there are worries about pollution and that fish will escape and spread disease to wild fish. Spencer says ocean currents will sweep away fish poop so it won’t concentrate... and he says the cages will use very strong netting so tuna can’t escape.

LG: Hmm... we’ve heard that before… but big eye tuna in the wild are in trouble.

RW: Yeah, I think a lot of people weill be keeping a close eye on this… hoping it does more good than harm.


(((STING)))

This is The Environment Report.

Commercial bait and hook fishing in the oceans of the US has done a lot to reduce accidentally catching marine mammals such as dolphins. But there’re still problems. Ari Daniel Shapiro reports on new concerns about one kind of tropical dolphin called the false killer whale.


Ari: There’s a mystery in the waters surrounding the Hawaiian islands.
Robin Baird’s a biologist with Cascadia research, and he says the numbers of false killer whales have been declining dramatically. But no one knows why.

Baird: I think it’s clearly the most serious conservation or management issue for whales and dolphins in Hawaiian waters today.

Ari: There’re a few possible explanations. Baird suspects these false killer whales are moving farther offshore, where they’d get hooked when trying to eat tuna caught by the longline fishery. ** But that hasn’t been proven yet.

Each longlining vessel casts miles of fishing line with thousands of baited hooks. ** Jim Cook’s been a fisherman in Hawaii for 18 years.

Cook: You know, it used to be real simple: catch a fish, sell it, and go back out and try and catch another one.

Ari: Now things are more complicated. Regulations on Hawaiian longlining are likely the most restrictive of any longline fishery in the world.

So the question is: should the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, come up with even more regulations for the longline fishery in case false killer whales move offshore looking for tuna?

Well, the environmental group Earthjustice and a coalition of conservation groups think so. They’ve sued NMFS over failing to develop a plan to protect the false killer whales. The agency hasn’t responded officially to the lawsuit yet. But NMFS administrator Bill Robinson says an action plan is in the works.

Robinson: Hopefully by the fall, we’ll be able to not only appoint the team, but have the team begin work on a take recovery plan that will make recommendations to the agency to reduce the incidental take of false killer whales in the fishery.

Ari: Such a plan might end up costing the commercial fishers money. But Jim Cook says he’s willing to pay. That’s because false killer whales pick fish off the lines before they’re hauled in.

Cook: I can say that we would very much welcome any methodology almost irrespective of cost because we’re suffering quite a bit economically as it is.

Ari: But the National Marine Fisheries Service first has to find that methodology.