Oahu fish auctions
up and running

After brief hiatus, Hawaii
longliners deliver their catch

---

By Diana Leone
Star-Bulletin

The fish are back.

Yesterday's auction at United Fishing Agency racked up sales of 85,000 pounds of fresh fish -- a pretty good day for Oahu's only commercial fish auction.

It's a wave of plenty that is welcome after a dry spell prompted by a court-ordered ban on Hawaii-based longline fishing the last two weeks of March.

New guidelines approved by U.S. District Judge David Ezra allowed tuna longliners to head to sea in early April. But after two weeks out of the water, it took fishermen a little time to find their prey again said Frank Goto, United Fishing Agency manager.

In April 2000 the auction sold about $6 million worth of fish, Goto said. This April sales were nearer $2 million, mostly in the second half of the month.

"It was a disastrous April. It'll take a little while before it levels out a little," he said.

A permanent ban on longlining for and closure of a 2 million mile fishing ground during April and May are the court's solution for saving more endangered sea turtles accidentally hooked by the fishermen. Because of the new rules, the annual sales of longline-caught fish may go down 60 percent to 65 percent of what it has been in recent years.

Since so many fishermen took to sea at the same time after the ban was lifted, the fish have been coming back in waves, too.

"It's not like dry goods, or frozen stuff -- you can't sit on it," Goto said.

There's more albacore than most fishermen would want. It's the favored tuna for canning, but not for Hawaii's high-end sushi-eaters. The area closed to avoid turtle interactions is where foreign-based boats are currently having good success with the higher-grade tuna.

Though many are optimistic that Hawaii's longline industry will recuperate from the unwanted vacation, it's going to take a while.

"That was a bummer," Abe Kam of Kam's Catering said of the two-week break in fishing that turned into almost a month of little or no local fresh fish. "It affected a lot of people. The sushi bars I go to, they had to import fish, use different recipes."

In addition to the fishermen themselves, "the closure has affected everyone -- all the restaurants, supermarkets, and distributors had to rely on imports," said Jed Inouye, president of Seafood Hawaii.

"As far as surviving the closure, I don't think anybody went broke, but everyone's been hurt," Inouye said. "I think everyone's still in shock."