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Fisheries agency works
to avoid environmental
lawsuits

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By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

The National Marine Fisheries Service is working hard to correct problems leading to lawsuits against the agency in Hawaii, says a federal official.

"The best way to avoid litigation is to be in compliance with the law and make sure programs are structured to stay that way," said Penny Dalton, fisheries director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The western Pacific was one of the quietest and least controversial fisheries areas in the nation until the past two years, she said in an interview and recent talk here to NOAA's Science Advisory Board.

Then "all hell broke loose," she said, with environmentalists filing lawsuits to protect monk seals by banning lobster fishing and limit longline fishing to protect sea turtles.

The three most valuable U.S. fishing ports are in the Pacific -- Honolulu; Agana, Guam; and Pago Pago, American Samoa -- Dalton pointed out. "The fisheries are very important socially and economically."

But, she said, "There was a lot of controversy about the way fisheries were handled with regard to protection of endangered animals."

U.S. District Judge David Ezra called the fisheries service "an agency that didn't do its job" in issuing a ruling in April aimed at maintaining a longline fishing industry while protecting endangered sea turtles.

After an injunction was sought in federal court to ban lobster fishing, the fisheries service voluntarily halted it in June to try to restore declining lobster numbers.

Dalton said the agency is looking at technology needs, infrastructure and "the way we relate to the outside world ... We're interested in changing the way we do business in terms of stakeholders ... We do a lousy job of talking to the public about what we're doing. This is reflected in the way the public views us in many cases."

Aging facilities and ships and inadequate funding have strapped the agency, she said.

This year's federal budget contains $4 million to figure out whether to renovate the fisheries service's Honolulu Laboratory in Manoa or tear it down, Dalton said.

Besides fisheries and endangered-species research, stock assessments and guidance for fishery management plans, she said the laboratory must prepare dispositions for court in litigations.

The fisheries service had no funding for court-required biological observers on longline fishing boats but got a program running with help from U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, she said. She said a Florida-based company was retained to provide observers on a short-term basis. The fisheries service hopes to get more local involvement for a long-standing solution to the observer problem.